In late June 2026, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) began contacting recipients of grants it had terminated in April 2025, asking a question research administrators don’t usually have to answer: do you still want this award? The move follows a federal court ruling that found NEH’s 2025 mass termination of humanities grants unconstitutional, and it puts the operational burden of reinstatement squarely on grantee institutions, on a compressed timeline.
What happened, in sequence
In April 2025, NEH terminated more than 1,400 previously awarded grants, together valued at over $100 million — described in subsequent reporting as the largest mass termination of previously awarded grants in the agency’s history. The terminations were carried out as part of the Trump administration’s DOGE-era review of federal grantmaking, which used an AI-assisted screening process to flag awards for cancellation, reportedly on the basis of alleged conflicts with the administration’s priorities on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Grantees and humanities organizations sued. In May 2026, a federal judge presiding in the case — reported as U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon — ruled that the terminations were unlawful on multiple, overlapping grounds: in violation of the First Amendment, in violation of the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and undertaken without statutory authority. The ruling directed NEH to restore the cancelled awards.
Rather than an automatic, agency-initiated reinstatement, NEH’s compliance mechanism puts the decision back in the hands of each grantee: on and after June 30, 2026, affected recipients received a Reinstatement Assurances Form and were asked to affirmatively confirm they still want the award reinstated, and that they retain the intent and capacity to carry the project through.
What the Reinstatement Assurances Form actually asks
Based on NEH’s communications to affected grantees, the form comprises six questions covering, in substance:
- Whether the institution wants NEH to reinstate the award at all — not every recipient will, more than a year after termination, still have the staffing, partnerships, or institutional appetite to resume the original project as scoped.
- Changes to key personnel since termination — project directors, co-investigators, and named staff may have moved on, retired, or taken other positions in the intervening 14+ months.
- Continued institutional capacity and intent to complete the project as originally proposed, or as it would need to be modified.
- Whether the recipient will need NEH’s stated three-month restart period to rebuild project infrastructure — re-engaging subcontractors, partner institutions, or collaborators who dispersed after termination.
- Whether the recipient is seeking reimbursement for costs it continued to pay, from its own funds, after NEH cut off federal reimbursement in April 2025.
NEH has indicated it will process reinstatement applications in the order received rather than in a single batch, and that full processing is expected to take several months agency-wide. Grantees should not assume reinstatement is instantaneous once the form is submitted, and should plan project timelines accordingly.
Why NEH is asking rather than simply restoring
From a compliance standpoint, the reconfirmation step is not mere bureaucratic friction. A grant terminated for over a year is not in the same state it was at termination: personnel have dispersed, subrecipient agreements have lapsed, budget periods have passed, and in some cases the underlying research or public-humanities project may no longer be viable on its original scope. Asking recipients to affirmatively re-attest to capacity and intent gives NEH a documented basis for reopening awards individually rather than reinstating a large cohort of grants uniformly, some of which may no longer have an active project behind them.
For research administrators, this means reinstatement is not simply “the money comes back.” It is functionally closer to a new award action — requiring a fresh institutional review of personnel, budget, subrecipient status, and project timeline — layered on top of a court order that is itself still subject to potential appeal.
What research administrators at affected institutions should do
- Confirm the institution actually appears on NEH’s terminated-and-eligible list before assuming a specific award is covered; not every FY2025 NEH award was among the roughly 1,400 terminated in April 2025.
- Reassemble the award file: original notice of award, termination notice, any costs paid from institutional funds during the termination period (these may be eligible for the reimbursement request referenced on the form), and current personnel status for every named role.
- Loop in research integrity/personnel offices early if key personnel named on the original award have left the institution or the project — the reconfirmation form asks about this directly, and a substituted PI or co-PI may need its own review depending on NEH’s current guidance.
- Do not assume a uniform deadline or automatic reinstatement — NEH has described sequential, several-month processing, not a single reinstatement date for all 1,400+ awards. Track your institution’s specific award status directly with your NEH program officer rather than assuming case-by-case norms from a general public statement.
- Treat this as a live legal matter, not a closed one. A ruling against the government in a case of this size and profile is a plausible candidate for appeal; institutions should not treat reinstatement as legally final until NEH’s own reinstatement determinations are actually issued.
How this differs from the NIH and NSF termination disputes
NEH’s situation is legally and procedurally distinct from the parallel disputes over NIH and NSF grant terminations working through the courts over the same period — different agencies, different statutory authorities, different courts, and (per the ruling reported here) an explicit constitutional finding specific to NEH’s April 2025 action, rather than a narrower procedural or Administrative Procedure Act ruling. Research administrators managing both NEH and other federal humanities or science awards should not assume the reinstatement mechanics described here (the Reinstatement Assurances Form, the three-month restart period) apply to terminated NIH or NSF awards, which are governed by separate rulings and separate agency processes. See CASRAI’s coverage of NIH grant terminations, grounds, process, and appeal rights and the NSF funding cuts and grant-terminations litigation landscape for those separate, agency-specific pictures.
Frequently asked questions
Does every NEH grantee whose award was terminated in April 2025 automatically get reinstated?
No. NEH is requiring each affected recipient to affirmatively submit a Reinstatement Assurances Form confirming continued intent and capacity to complete the project; reinstatement is being processed on an individual, sequential basis rather than as a single blanket restoration.
What if our institution no longer wants or is unable to complete the original project?
The Reinstatement Assurances Form explicitly asks recipients to confirm they still want the award reinstated. Institutions should coordinate between the PI, sponsored programs office, and any partner organizations before responding, since more than a year has passed since termination in most cases.
Can we get reimbursed for costs we covered ourselves during the termination period?
NEH’s reinstatement process includes a mechanism for recipients to request reimbursement for expenses they continued to pay from institutional funds after federal reimbursement was cut off in April 2025. Confirm current eligibility and required documentation directly with your NEH program officer, as agency guidance on this point may be refined as processing continues.
Is this the end of the litigation?
Not necessarily. This is a significant ruling and NEH’s compliance response to it, but institutions should treat the matter as potentially subject to further appeal rather than fully and finally resolved, and should confirm current status with NEH and their own legal/compliance counsel before making irreversible project decisions.
