Court To DOGE Bros: Asking ChatGPT ‘Yo, Is This DEI?’ Is Not Proper Legal Process & Also A First Amendment Violation

Key Points:

• In early 2025, Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh, lacking relevant experience, were assigned government roles to identify and eliminate "woke" initiatives, including reviewing National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants using ChatGPT to determine if projects related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
• Their process relied solely on ChatGPT's brief yes/no responses about DEI relevance, leading to arbitrary cancellations of millions in grants without proper expert evaluation or statutory authority, which a federal judge ruled unlawful and "arbitrary and capricious."
• The court found that DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) officials overstepped their authority by unilaterally terminating grants, ignoring the NEH Chairperson's role and statutory procedures, effectively substituting presidential policy for Congressional law.
• The judge highlighted that the grant cancellations constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment, as the terminations targeted projects for their perceived DEI content and political association, violating free speech protections.
• The ruling criticized Fox and Cavanaugh's misuse of AI-generated rationales as insufficient legal grounds, emphasizing that government funding decisions require genuine, lawful processes and cannot be based on ideological bias or fabricated justifications.