DOGE used ChatGPT in a way that was both dumb and illegal, judge rules

The Department of Government Efficiency’s cancellation of over $100 million in grants was unconstitutional, according to a ruling on Thursday. The ruling, which stems from a 2025 lawsuit filed by humanities groups, says “it could not be more obvious that DOGE used the mere presence of particular, protected characteristics to disqualify grants from continued funding” from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

• In her decision, Judge McMahon ultimately found that DOGE’s elimination of over 1,400 NEH grants was unlawful and unconstitutional, citing violations of the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection law, and DOGE’s lack of authority.
• McMahon also pushes back on the government’s argument that “there is no real constitutional problem here because any viewpoint-based classification was ChatGPT’s doing, rather than the Government’s:”
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Watch next: Judge McMahon writes that DOGE deemed hundreds of grants “wasteful because they related to Blacks, women, Jews, Asian Americans, and Indigenous people,” adding that “the very subjects DOGE treated as markers of waste, lack of merit, or ideological contamination are the subjects that Congress made expressly germane to NEH’s mission.” Some of the grants lumped into the “wasteful” category are related to projects about the Holocaust, civil rights, and an educational experience that would allow participants to “explor[e] indigenous knowledge, culture, and climate.”