Federal Relations
Advancing UW-Madison’s interests in Washington D.C. and beyond

UW–Madison participating in legal challenges to prevent wrongful funding cuts, grant terminations and delays (updated 6/12)

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This post was originally published on 4/4/25. The “posted on” date reflects timing of the most recent update to share new and/or re-filed declarations. This page will be updated as new/refiled declarations are submitted.

Since January 2025, the Trump Administration has issued several directives to federal agencies that resulted in the wrongful termination of approved, federally-funded projects at UW–Madison that support the university’s mission of research, teaching and service. In addition, the National Institutes of Health — the university’s largest source of federal funding — has delayed grant application reviews and attempted to drastically cut overhead payments for critical research.

The terminated projects include a study to address concerns about the health and well-being of adolescents in an era of digital and social media, research studies to prevent future coronavirus pandemics, research intended to address mental health disparities among transgender and nonbinary people, a teacher preparation program designed to address the critical shortage of qualified special education teachers serving students in Milwaukee Public Schools, and research requested by the Social Security Administration to inform evidence-based policymaking.

These terminations and delays would have devastating impacts on the university and the broader community, harming the university’s ability to pursue projects of importance to Americans; its ability to make critical, life-saving discoveries; and limiting opportunities to train students to enter the workforce. Funding cuts and delays will lead to layoffs among staff and trainees and interrupt the progress of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students toward their degrees. They also damage the state and nation’s innovation economy and international competitiveness.

The Office of Legal Affairs has worked closely with the Wisconsin Attorney General to pursue legal challenges to some of these terminations by preparing declarations that present factual evidence about the harm of recent actions taken by the federal government. UW–Madison has also provided declarations in cases brought by higher-education associations of which the university is a member. UW–Madison is also pursuing administrative appeals to funding agencies to challenge some terminations.

To date, the university has submitted the following declarations, all of which have been included in lawsuits brought by coalitions of states, and in some cases, partners in higher education. In some cases, lawsuits have resulted in court orders that block the federal government from executing these directives until further legal judgement can be reached (note: listed chronologically newest to oldest by filing date):