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A federal judge in New York has ruled that the Trump administration's cancellation of more than 140 humanities grants, worth over $100 million, was unconstitutional.
The case was brought by the nonprofit Authors Guild and several individual recipients of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that were cut by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) because they included alleged ties to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In her ruling, US District Judge Colleen McMahon highlighted how DOGE used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in parts of its decision-making process, but failed to determine if the chatbot's output made sense.
Justin Fox, a former staffer at DOGE, testified that his team used the AI tool to “pull out anything to do with DEI” and to “[h]ighlight why [a] grant may relate to DEI.” According to the filing, ChatGPT was directed to analyze a spreadsheet filled with grant descriptions and was prompted: “Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters.”
However, according to the filing, DOGE’s team did not provide ChatGPT with a definition of “DEI.” Fox also testified that he was unsure of ChatGPT’s understanding of the term, and the chatbot was not directed to factor in “the purpose, methodology, or scholarly substance of a project.”
Another project that had its grant funding terminated, called “How the City Became Plastic,” which focused on how the plastic industry lobbied city officials, was flagged as DEI-related despite focusing on industrial policy and microplastics filtering into the water supply.
"The record reflects that these ChatGPT determinations were generated without any additional context beyond the cursory spreadsheet descriptions themselves," the judge wrote.
The judge also ruled that, due to the “hallucinatory propensities” of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, it would “hardly be surprising” if ChatGPT inferred that DOGE officials supplied rationales “simply in order to satisfy the user’s perceived demand.”
“The utter lack of reasoning behind so many of its ‘rationales’ certainly suggest[s] as much,” the judge concluded.
"The DOGE terminations were sweeping," the judge adds. Approximately 1,477 grants were placed on DOGE’s “to cancel” lists, and only about 40 grants awarded during the Biden administration were spared. Those were largely archival projects such as the Papers of George Washington, the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the Adams Papers, and the Einstein Papers.
ChatGPT usage could continue to crop up in parts of government administration. As of March 2026, Senate aides have been allowed to use AI chatbots such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot to assist with “routine work,” such as summarizing information.