The award followed the university association’s successful challenge to a Defense Department plan to cap defense research indirect-cost reimbursements at 15%.
A federal judge in Boston ordered the U.S. government to pay more than $450,000 in attorney fees to the Association of American Universities after the group helped defeat a Defense Department policy that would have capped some reimbursements tied to defense research. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said the fee award was justified under the Equal Access to Justice Act, a 1980 law that lets certain prevailing parties recover limited legal costs from the federal government when its position was not "substantially justified." The underlying lawsuit, brought in May 2025 by 12 universities and three academic trade groups including the AAU, challenged a 15% cap on reimbursements for "indirect costs" such as facilities, equipment and research staff serving multiple projects. Murphy temporarily blocked the policy in June 2025, entered judgment for the plaintiffs in December, and noted the U.S. later dropped its appeal. In awarding fees on Wednesday, he said the Defense Department relied on similar caps proposed by the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Energy even though those measures had also been blocked by judges. Murphy reduced the AAU’s initial $530,000 fee request, calling it "slightly excessive," but rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the association was ineligible because its members include wealthy research universities, finding that the AAU itself spent over $2 million funding the case.