For Immediate Release:
Monday, February 10, 2025
Contact: Nazneen Ahmed
RALEIGH – Today, Attorney General Jeff Jackson won a temporary restraining order preventing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from unlawfully stripping funds that support cutting-edge medical and public health research at universities and research institutions across the country.
“This attempt to slash funding for research awards that have already been granted violates the law and would cost North Carolina’s public universities hundreds of millions of dollars every year going forward,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “It would permanently diminish higher education in our state and severely damage many of our state’s core industries, causing major layoffs. The court was right to stop this federal overreach, and I’ll keep fighting to protect our state’s economic future.”
The NIH is the primary source of federal funding for medical research in the United States, helping fund clinical trials and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, reproductive health, diabetes, heart disease, and more. North Carolina organizations were granted more than a billion dollars in NIH funding in fiscal year 2024. On Friday, February 7, the NIH announced it would abruptly slash indirect cost rates – which pay for costs that cover multiple research projects, like helping fund labs, infrastructure, and utility costs critical to biomedical research – to an across-the-board 15 percent rate. This cut would have made it nearly impossible for cutting-edge medical research to continue. Without immediate relief, lifesaving and life-extending clinical trials would have been suspended, research would be disrupted, labs would close, and hundreds of North Carolinians would be laid off. Federal law prohibits categorical and indiscriminate changes to NIH indirect cost reimbursements.
Attorney General Jackson was joined in filing this lawsuit by the Attorneys General of Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
A copy of the complaint is available here.
A copy of the TRO is available here.
###