Judge Rules DOGE ChatGPT Grant Cuts Unlawful

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from terminating federal grants after ruling that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unlawfully used race, gender, and other protected characteristics to execute the largest mass termination of grants in the history of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) [1]. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon found that DOGE staffers lacked the authority to make these decisions and rebuked the use of artificial intelligence to target funding based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) keywords [1, 2].

Key takeaways

• Judge McMahon ruled DOGE's termination of over 1,400 NEH grants was unconstitutional and violated the First and Fifth Amendments [2].
• DOGE staffers used ChatGPT and specific keywords like "BIPOC" and "LGBTQ" to identify grants for cancellation without defining DEI for the AI [2].
• The ruling restores federal grants that were shut down due to "DEI" prejudice, though a separate appeals court recently lifted restrictions on DOGE's access to Social Security data [2, 3].

AI and the "Craziest Grants" List

The 143-page decision details how DOGE employees Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh, neither of whom had prior government experience, utilized ChatGPT to scan grant descriptions [1, 2]. Fox testified that he used a standardized prompt asking the AI if a grant related to DEI, admitting he did not know how the chatbot understood the term [2]. He also employed "Detection Codes"—search terms including "BIPOC," "Native," and "Homosexual"—to flag projects he labeled the "Craziest Grants" [2]. Judge McMahon rejected the government's argument that ChatGPT was responsible for the bias, stating there was "no distinction to be drawn here between the Government and ChatGPT" [2].

Judge McMahon highlighted specific cuts, including funding for projects about the Holocaust and civil rights, noting that treating subjects like Black history or Jewish women as markers of waste is "deeply troubling" [1]. She concluded that the review process implemented by DOGE did not resemble the NEH’s ordinary grant-review process and that the very subjects DOGE treated as wasteful were those Congress made expressly germane to the NEH’s mission [1, 2].

Conflicting Rulings on Data Access

While the NEH decision blocks the grant terminations, a separate legal battle regarding data access yielded a different result. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction that limited DOGE’s access to sensitive data at the Social Security Administration (SSA) [3]. This decision came despite a January government filing acknowledging that DOGE associates may have improperly accessed data and shared it with a political advocacy group seeking to overturn election results [3].

The appeals court majority ruled that the plaintiffs had not shown irreparable harm was likely, deferring to a prior Supreme Court decision [3]. However, Judge Robert King dissented, arguing the court should have considered new revelations that SSA provided "patently false information" to the district court [3]. The majority opinion did concede that the government's recent acknowledgments about unauthorized servers and data sharing were "alarming" and could be considered by the lower court in future proceedings [3].