NORTH CAROLINA (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced on Monday a temporary restraining order to prevent ‘unlawful health care cuts’.
The order stops the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from stripping funds that support medical and public health research at universities and research institutions across the country.
On February 7, the NIH announced it would cut indirect cost rates to 15 percent, making it hard for medical research to continue.
The NIH is the primary source of federal funding for medical research in the US, essential to funding clinical trials and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and more. Federal law prohibits indiscriminate changes to NIH indirect cost reimbursements.
North Carolina organizations were granted more than a billion dollars in NIH funding in fiscal year 2024.
“This attempt to slash funding for research awards that have already been granted violates the law and would cost North Carolina’s public universities hundreds of millions of dollars every year going forward,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “It would permanently diminish higher education in our state and severely damage many of our state’s core industries, causing major layoffs. The court was right to stop this federal overreach, and I’ll keep fighting to protect our state’s economic future.”
Attorney General Jackson was joined in filing this lawsuit by the Attorneys General of Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
