A divided US Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to proceed, at least for now, with cancelling roughly $783 million in National Institutes of Health research grants that officials say conflict with the president’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion and gender-identity initiatives. The 5–4 order lifts a lower-court injunction that had frozen the funding, giving the White House authority to terminate more than 1,700 awards tied to studies such as HIV prevention and minority health. The justices left intact a separate part of the lower-court decision that voided NIH guidance documents underlying the policy, signaling that the administration’s broader effort to rewrite grant criteria could still face legal trouble. Writing for herself, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said challenges to individual grant cancellations belong in the Court of Federal Claims, but she joined fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in granting the partial stay. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberals in dissent. The emergency ruling narrows the impact of an earlier finding by US District Judge William Young, who called the terminations “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. Sixteen states and public-health groups challenging the cuts warn that the decision will disrupt years of biomedical research, while Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the government faces irreparable harm if forced to keep paying grants it now rejects. Further litigation over the guidance documents and the venue for future lawsuits is expected.