Shortly after the Trump Administration took office, it started cancelling grants for things it had disagreements with: funding for pandemic preparation, efforts to diversify the scientific workforce, those that targeted minority health issues, and more. These terminations were challenged in court, and a consolidate case was heard in the District of Massachusetts, pitting the government against individual researchers, organizations that represent them, and states that host research institutions.
The result was a decisive win for the scientists. As the ruling explained, the government's termination efforts violated a statute against "arbitrary and capricious" policies, resulting in a stay that both blocked implementation of the policy and restored the flow of research funding.
That stay remained intact through appeals that brought it to the Supreme Court, which released its ruling on Thursday. As the result is a complicated split among the Justices, the stay against the policy itself remains intact. However, a slim majority decided that decisions are required to be heard by a different court, and cannot be issued as part of the same ruling. So, researchers who lost their funding due to the now-defunct policy will remain de-funded.
Partial overlaps
A combination of five Justices ultimately led to the final outcome, but disagreed significantly in their reasoning, leading to three different approaches in the text of the decision. Two of them, Thomas and Alito, would have granted the government a lift of all aspects of the stay, but chose not to explain their reasoning. Gorsuch penned an explanation, in which he was partly joined by Kavanaugh, who felt the need to issue a separate one. Gorsuch viewed the commitment to fund grants as the equivalent of a contract in which the government is a party. And, by law, those cases belong in the Court of Federal Claims.
(The motivation for their written explanation appears to be that they thought an earlier decision, Department of Education v. California, had explained that this was the case. So, they're disappointed that, because the circumstances are somewhat different in this case, they have to reiterate the same conclusions. It also gives Gorsuch, who has overturned multiple precedents during his relatively short time on the court, the opportunity to proclaim, "This Court’s precedents, however, cannot be so easily circumvented.")