Three humanities-focused organizations have filed a lawsuit against both the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over the “dismantling” of the former organization.
Filed on May 1 in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the suit aims to reverse the cuts in grant programs, staff, and divisions of the NEH that occurred in April, when the Trump administration cut $65 million from its $210 million budget. Around 65 percent of its staff has also been fired as part of the cuts. The suit said the endowment “is now left as a shell of the agency.”
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The plaintiffs in the case are the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the American Council of Learned Societies, a nonprofit federation of 81 scholarly organization that includes in its membership both the AHA and the MLA as well as the College Art Association.
In a statement, ACLS president Joy Connolly said, “Since it was established, with strong bipartisan congressional support, the NEH has exemplified the value and need for the humanities in a vibrant democracy. Its thoughtful grantmaking and partnerships are vital to education, libraries, cultural institutions, and community initiatives that study local history and more. Deep cuts to the programs and staff of the NEH will deprive communities in every state of resources that enhance their quality of life and will hold back the progress of thousands of scholars. It will signal the federal government’s turn away from the civic values it has long espoused.”
In the suit, the plaintiffs say they represent thousands of individuals and organizational members “who rely on NEH to fund and support their projects in the humanities” and have thus “suffered immense harm” from the NEH’s dismantling.
“If those efforts are not enjoined,” the 46-page complaint continues, “hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded projects and research will not be completed and rendered useless, hundreds of millions more in Congressional appropriations will go unspent, and the fostering of the humanities that Congress mandated NEH carry out sixty years ago will disappear.”
In a statement, MLA executive director Paula M. Krebs said, “Cutting the NEH’s funding and staff jeopardizes not only the work of the MLA and its members but also thousands of locally led programs across this country that provide Americans with access to essential education. In the face of these unprecedented and destructive cuts, humanities leaders must fight back together.”
In addition to the two federal agencies, four individuals are listed as defendants: Michael McDonald, acting chairman of the NEH; Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the United States DOGE Service; and Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, reportedly employees of the U.S. DOGE Service or the General Services Administration. (McDonald is being sued only in his official capacity as acting chairman, the suit notes.)
The NEH and DOGE did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.
Both Cavanaugh and Fox are described as having “demanded lists of open NEH grants and then indiscriminately terminated the vast majority of the grants,” according to former and current NEH employees, per the suit. The suit adds that McDonald told employees that DOGE had written the termination letters sent to his staff and “that he was not even aware of the full scope of the terminations.”
Additionally, the plaintiffs state that because DOGE “does not possess any congressionally conferred authority to terminate NEH grants or make other institutional decisions of NEH,” the cuts in fundings are “ultra vires [beyond their legal authority] and should be enjoined and declared unlawful.”
In the complaint, the organizations note that the NEH was formed in 1965 through an act of Congress. Over the past six decades, with bipartisan support, the NEH has doled out more than $6 billion in grants to various organizations, from museums and historic sites, to K–12 and higher education institutions, to libraries and independent scholars. This past March, Congress “appropriated an additional $207 million to NEH to fund its activities, the vast majority of which NEH must use on its grant programs,” according to the suit.
So far, the Trump administration has said it has reallocated $17 million of the cut $65 million to establish a National Garden of American Heroes, a move which, the suit says, the “NEH cannot lawfully fund.
The complaint adds, “NEH has provided little to no explanation, let alone the type of reasoned explanation required under bedrock principles of administrative law. Further, NEH has provided no explanation of how, in its hollowed-out state, NEH intends to comply with its statutory duties and spend all the appropriations that Congress has mandated it spend.”
As a stopgap for a part of NEH funding, the Mellon Foundation announced this week that it would grant $15 million in one-time emergency funding to 56 state councils and jurisdictions.
“The NEH leverages its very small budget to support work in nearly every venue where Americans engage with the humanities,” AHA executive director James Grossman said in a statement. “We cannot deny our nation’s divisions. We cannot heal divisions unless we understand their origins and evolution. It makes no sense to eviscerate the agency that helps all Americans to understand and transcend boundaries of human thought and interaction.”
