Earlier this week, Tufts University joined a dozen other universities in a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services over President Donald Trump’s Feb. 7 executive order to restrict federal grants covering the indirect costs of university medical research.
The executive order was temporarily blocked on Monday, the day it went into effect, by Massachusetts federal judge Angel Kelley.
The plaintiffs — including the Association of American Universities, American Council on Education and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities — argue that the executive order violates federal administrative law and federal grant regulations.
Filed Monday, the lawsuit calls the restriction of grant funding a “flagrantly unlawful action” by the agencies that would dramatically upend medical research conducted by universities nationwide.
“Cutting-edge work to cure disease and lengthen lifespans will suffer, and our country will lose its status as the destination for solving the world’s biggest health problems,” the document reads. “At stake is not only Americans’ quality of life, but also our Nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”
Tufts, currently drawing $115.2 million from the NIH for 2025, has long relied on the agency to provide funding directly to medical research and laboratory infrastructure that indirectly supports projects. These indirect costs — for which Tufts receives $26.9 million from the NIH — include the routine maintenance of laboratory space, upkeep of data processing servers and other costs not specific to individual projects.
Trump’s executive order would reduce indirect coverage to a flat 15% rate, eliminating approximately $20 million in funding for the coverage of Tufts’ indirect costs, according to Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations. In the past, NIH grants offered differing rates of indirect coverage based on research institutions’ unique financial needs and typically hovered between 27% and 28%.
Tufts, with a relatively small endowment of $2.6 billion and having budgeted around support from the NIH, is not prepared to shoulder the unexpected burden of its indirect costs. Without typical grant coverage, the administration will be forced to make staffing reductions and decide on long-term reallocations of funds, according to the lawsuit.
“If these cuts to NIH funding stand, the impact on Tufts will be significant,” University President Sunil Kumar, joined by other top administrators, wrote in a message to the school’s faculty on Monday. “The university does not have the resources to absorb these additional facilities and administrative costs, and, as a result, we will need to reduce the NIH-funded research done at the university.”
NIH grants fund over 200 research projects across the university, making up 60% of Tufts’ federally funded research.
Reducing NIH-funded research as a result of lost grant funding “would be a terrible outcome,” the administrators wrote.
Kelley is set to hold a hearing on the motion on Feb. 21 in Boston.
“Even if the cuts are restored, we will need to be agile, prudent, and efficient in [delivering] on our research mission moving forward,” Kumar, writing before the order was blocked, wrote.
