And, the court continued, “DEI is, of course, a viewpoint,” because it “inherently conveys … that the exclusion of historically disadvantaged groups is undesirable.” Here, the record “establishes that the termination decisions were driven by an expressly ideological method of classification. There can be no genuine dispute about this point. Indeed, the Government has all but admitted as much.” That was especially apparent where the government in part used a ChatGPT prompt to examine whether grants “relate[d] at all to DEI,” which, the court noted, “reflects a purely ideological filter that has no other purpose than to identify disfavored viewpoints the Government wants to suppress.”
The court also held the terminations “likewise violated the First Amendment” to the extent they were “based on their perceived association with the Biden Administration.” Here, too, the government “may not leverage its power to award or deny subsidies on the basis of subjective criteria into a penalty on disfavored viewpoints,” including any “basis that infringes … constitutionally protected interests—especially … freedom of speech,” and ”[p]olitical association is one of those protected interests.” Insofar as “grants were treated as suspect because they were associated with the prior administration” and thus “presumed to not align with the Trump Administration,” the court held, that “is not a permissible funding criterion. It is discrimination based on perceived political association.”
Ultimately, the court held the terminations “reflect the same fundamental constitutional error” in that some “penalized grants because they were perceived to express or reflect disfavored viewpoints” while others did so “because they were perceived to be associated with a disfavored administration,” and “the First Amendment forbids both.” For those reasons, and those involving equal protection violations and/or DOGE action without statutory authority, the court declared the terminations unconstitutional, ultra vires, and without legal effect, and permanently enjoined them.