Brown has joined a federal lawsuit as a named plaintiff and member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) challenging the action announced February 7, 2025, by the National Institutes of Health limiting Facilities and Administrative (F&A) reimbursements to a 15% rate for the agency’s research grants.

The lawsuit was filed jointly on the evening of February 10 by the AAU, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the American Council on Education (ACE), and a number of public and private research universities facing irreparable harm from NIH's action. This lawsuit follows immediately after Brown submitted a declaration supporting a separate legal action filed Monday by almost two dozen state attorneys general to immediately halt the implementation of the 15% cap.

In our communication to the campus yesterday, President Paxson and I indicated that we continued to partner with our educational associations on a response. This lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts is the outcome of those discussions. In our campus message and the accompanying news item, we shared the direct implications to Brown of the significant threats to funding that provides critical support for high-impact research in medicine and health.

Here, I am sharing the joint public statement from Brown and the other plaintiffs in this case:

Statement Regarding the Legal Challenge to the Cuts to NIH Research Funding

On Friday, February 7, 2025, the administration declared that it would cut funding for life-saving medical research. Its announcement that it would limit Facilities and Administrative (F&A) reimbursements to a 15% rate for all NIH research grants would have an immediate and dire impact on critical biomedical and health research nationwide. F&A costs are the real and necessary costs of conducting the groundbreaking research that has led to so many medical breakthroughs over the past decades. A cut to F&A for NIH grants is a cut to the medical research that helps countless American families whose loved ones face incurable diseases or untreatable debilitating conditions.

Besides harming the ability of research universities to continue doing critical NIH research that seeks out new and more effective approaches to treating cancer, heart disease, and dementia, among others, and translating basic science into cures, this cut would also undermine universities’ essential training of the next generation of biomedical and health science researchers. The loss of this American workforce pipeline would be a blow to the U.S. economy, to American science and innovation, to patients and their families, and to our nation’s position in the world as a leader in medical research.

It would be, quite simply, a self-inflicted wound.

Today, February 10, 2025, we have jointly filed suit in United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, along with a number of impacted research university co-plaintiffs, seeking to halt the proposed cut. Besides its devastating impact on medical research and training, the proposed actions run afoul of the longstanding regulatory frameworks governing federal grants and foundational principles of administrative law. Judicial relief is amply justified and urgently needed. This action is ill-conceived and self-defeating for both America’s patients and their families as well as the nation as a whole. We look forward to presenting our case in court.