In Blow to RFK Jr.’s Anti-Diversity Crusade, Judge Voids NIH Directives

Under the oversight of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late civil rights icon, the National Institutes of Health issued directives amounting to the worst case of government racial discrimination that a federal judge said he has seen in his four-decade career.

“I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years,” U.S. District Judge William Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said during impassioned remarks from the bench on Monday. “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Judge Young made those remarks shortly after voiding the National Institutes of Health’s directives purging grants meant to address LGBTQ and racial inequalities in healthcare as “arbitrary and capricious.”

“They are of no force and effect,” Young declared, referring to those directives. “They are void, and illegal.”

The judge issued that ruling under the Administrative Procedure Act, a law designed to prevent the government from making policy changes based on a whim.