Oregon Joins Legal Push to Stop Federal Cuts to Local Arts and Education Programs

By Diane Megaw On Jul 3, 2025

In a lawsuit challenging the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) abrupt cancellation of critical support for state humanities councils, a coalition of attorneys general led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed an amicus brief yesterday.

Oregon Amicus Brief Backs Halt Of Humanities Program Cancellations

The NEH suddenly drastically reduced support for state humanities councils earlier this year, forcing the councils to terminate programs, furlough staff, and scale back or banish educational offerings.

Funded every year since 1972, the NEH’s congress-designed “Fed/State Partnership” seeks to ensure every state has access to high-quality, community-based humanities programming.

AG Rayfield said:

These cuts don’t just break the law, they break faith with communities who rely on these programs to learn, reflect, and connect.

In the NEH motion for preliminary injunction filed in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, scheduled for hearing on August 4 at 9 a.m. at the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, the NEH has urged the court to stop the Trump administration from gutting federal support for public humanities programs.

The amicus brief argues that the administration’s actions:

Ignore Congress’s statutory mandate to fund state humanities councils and fail to follow required procedures for terminating grants, violating federal law.
Infringe on Congress’s power of the purse and violate the separation of powers and the ‘Take Care Clause’, overstepping constitutional boundaries;
Cause irreparable harm to programs in civic education, cultural heritage, history, literature, and more delivered by state councils, local organizations, schools, and libraries that depend on NEH funding, for example the cuts already have paused Oregon’s Humanity in Perspective, a long-running program offering free college-credit humanities courses to adults facing economic hardship.

The coalition urged the court to issue a preliminary injunction halting the funding cuts while the litigation proceeds. Rayfield said, “Congress chose to fund this work. Agencies can’t simply walk away from that responsibility.”