A group of universities that oversee the country's largest federal climate research center filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Trump administration's attempts to dismantle the lab.
The new suitchallenging the decision to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) alleges the Trump administration is waging a "widespread and coordinated campaign of punishment and coercion" against the state of Colorado over ongoing tension between President Donald Trump and the state's governor, Jared Polis
It was filed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit research group made up of colleges and universities that operates the center, which is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, and is the nation's premier research institute for weather modeling and climate science. The Trump administrationannounced in December that it planned to break upthe center.
"UCAR and NCAR are collateral damage," the lawsuit says.
Trump's disagreements with Polis stem from the president's concerns about mail-in voting in Colorado and the prosecution of a county clerk who wasconvicted on state charges of tampering with election equipment in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost and has falsely claimed was rife with fraud. Trump had pushed for Polis to release the clerk and to ban mail-in voting, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, describes "a campaign of retaliation" in which several federal agencies — including the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce and the Office of Management and Budget — have allegedly targeted NCAR as part of that larger fight.
Three of the federal agencies named in the UCAR lawsuit did not immediately reply to NBC News' requests for comment, with the exception of the National Science Foundation, which said it does not comment on pending litigation.
The state of Colorado has sued over other aspects of the alleged campaign to punish the state.
Alawsuitalleges the Trump administration decided to move U.S. Space Command away from Colorado, terminated $109 million in transportation funds and added new requirements for its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program as part of an effort to "punish" the state.
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A district judge has only ruled on one element of the case so far: the SNAP program. The administration argued in court that benefits fraud in Colorado necessitated a pilot program, that the federal government had the ability to mandate such a program and that the state didn't show the immediate, irreparable harm that would warrant a preliminary injunction.
However, a district judge sided with the state, issued a preliminary injunction andoutlined his reasoning in an order on Monday.
The new UCAR lawsuit relies on arguments that are similar to the state's.
It alleges that federal agencies have issued "gag orders" preventing NCAR employees from communicating with the public about the restructuring, terminated multi-million dollar agreements to fund research into climate adaptation and mitigation and saddled NCAR and UCAR with new and unlawful reporting requirements. The federal government has also taken steps to move the center's supercomputing facility in Wyoming out of UCAR's control, according to the complaint.
"The Agencies' ultimate apparent goal is to destroy NCAR entirely," the lawsuit says, noting that the National Science Foundation in January sent out a public notice that it intended to restructure the agency and sought ideas for how to use NCAR's Boulder campus fordifferent public or private uses.
The lawsuit alleges that some of the federal government's recent actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act. It asks the court to halt several of the actions, including the transfer of NCAR's supercomputing facility and the cancellation of a key NOAA grant.
UCAR and NCAR together provide jobs to about 1,400 scientists, engineers and support staff, according to the lawsuit. The center's work focuses on hurricane forecasting, wildfire monitoring, weather prediction and space weather, among other areas. Notably, NCAR operates powerful supercomputers that researchers use for complex modeling work.
In a statement on its website, UCAR said the federal agencies named in the lawsuit took actions that "pose a direct threat to national security, public safety, and economic prosperity and risk setting back the country's global leadership in weather and space weather modeling and forecasting."
UCAR said it would not comment further until the lawsuit is resolved.