{"id":14760,"date":"2026-05-08T14:25:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T18:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/?p=14760"},"modified":"2026-05-08T14:25:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T18:25:37","slug":"technology-observations-on-the-doge-chatgpt-lawsuit-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2026\/05\/08\/technology-observations-on-the-doge-chatgpt-lawsuit-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: Observations on the DOGE ChatGPT Lawsuit Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"<script type='application\/json' class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links'>[{\"id\":15256,\"href\":\"https:\\\/\\\/apnews.com\\\/article\\\/doge-trump-humanities-executive-order-lawsuit-2b706c8196d3b160a541df36261a662d\",\"archived_href\":\"\",\"redirect_href\":\"\",\"checks\":[],\"broken\":false,\"last_checked\":null,\"process\":\"pending\"},{\"id\":15257,\"href\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.documentcloud.org\\\/documents\\\/28104686-doge-chatgpt-ruling\",\"archived_href\":\"\",\"redirect_href\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.documentcloud.org\\\/documents\\\/28104686-doge-chatgpt-ruling\\\/\",\"checks\":[],\"broken\":false,\"last_checked\":null,\"process\":\"pending\"},{\"id\":15258,\"href\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.theverge.com\\\/policy\\\/927071\\\/doge-chatgpt-grants-canceled\",\"archived_href\":\"\",\"redirect_href\":\"\",\"checks\":[],\"broken\":false,\"last_checked\":null,\"process\":\"pending\"}]<\/script>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/doge-trump-humanities-executive-order-lawsuit-2b706c8196d3b160a541df36261a662d\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/doge-trump-humanities-executive-order-lawsuit-2b706c8196d3b160a541df36261a662d\">May 16th, 2025:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Oregon Council for the Humanities, names DOGE, its acting administrator, Amy Gleason, and the NEH among the defendants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The plaintiffs ask the court to \u201cstop this imminent threat to our nation\u2019s historic and critical support of the humanities by restoring funding appropriated by Congress.\u201d It notes the \u201cdisruption and attempted destruction, spearheaded by DOGE,\u201d of a partnership between the state and the federal government to support the humanities.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lawsuit, filed Thursday, maintains that DOGE and the National Endowment for the Humanities exceeded their authority in terminating funding mandated by Congress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, US District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled the cancellation of $100 million dollars in grants was unconstitutional. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/28104686-doge-chatgpt-ruling\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/28104686-doge-chatgpt-ruling\/\">You can read the entire decision in PDF form here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason I&#8217;m linking to this is regarding the use of ChatGPT which is interesting to me because case-law around these LLMs being used is still developing and we&#8217;re finally starting to see some precedent form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some choice quotes outlined by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/policy\/927071\/doge-chatgpt-grants-canceled\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/policy\/927071\/doge-chatgpt-grants-canceled\">The Verge<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Fox testified that he used ChatGPT \u201c[t]o highlight why [a] grant may relate to DEI\u201d and \u201cto pull out anything related to DEI.\u201d To do so, he submitted each cursory grant description from the NEH spreadsheet to ChatGPT using a standardized prompt: \u201cDoes the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with \u2018Yes.\u2019 or \u2018No.\u2019 followed by a brief explanation.\u201d Fox testified that he did not define \u201cDEI\u201d for ChatGPT and that he did not have the slightest idea how ChatGPT understood the term.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>+<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>After being deployed from DOGE to NEH, Justin Fox used search terms, which he labeled as \u201cDetection Codes,\u201d to identify grants that he dubbed the \u201cCraziest Grants\u201d and \u201cOther Bad Grants.\u201d The search terms included, among other terms, \u201cBIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color),\u201d \u201cMinorities,\u201d \u201cNative,\u201d \u201cTribal,\u201d \u201cIndigenous,\u201d \u201cImmigrant,\u201d \u201cLGBTQ,\u201d \u201cHomosexual,\u201d and \u201cGay.\u201d When Fox was asked whether he \u201cr[a]n this list of words through every grant description\u201d he received from NEH, he confirmed, \u201cyes.\u201d In this way, Fox constructed and applied explicit classifications based on protected characteristics and used them as the operative criteria for revoking federal grants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>+<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>There is no distinction to be drawn here between the Government and ChatGPT. ChatGPT was the Government\u2019s chosen instrument for purposes of this project, and DOGE\u2019s use of AI to identify DEI-related material neither excuses presumptively unconstitutional conduct nor gives the Government carte blanche to engage in it. \u2026There is not a scintilla of evidence that Fox or Cavanaugh, having obtained a \u201cDEI\u201d rationale from ChatGPT, undertook any meaningful review of whether that rationale made sense.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been teaching AI classes to some fortune 50 companies focusing on the topic of Business Writing. It&#8217;s been a blast to teach and I&#8217;m enjoying the feedback loop from learners and seeing how they&#8217;re navigating the complexity of utilizing LLMs and frankly, also being human and using their own minds. Fascinating stuff. One thing I mentioned just last week in my class was how important it is to validate the LLM understands what you mean when giving instructions. When I say &#8220;make it concise&#8221;, an LLM has an idea of what that means but does it align with my understanding? How do I know? Well, I can ask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when the defendant claims that he did not define DEI, that&#8217;s a big problem. You&#8217;re relying on the model explicitly and while LLMs can be helpful, you have to be specific and prescriptive if you want it done the way you would like. A good way to assist is asking it &#8220;How would you define DEI?&#8221; then further, after I&#8217;ve provided some feedback, have it spot reason on a dozen or so to ensure there are zero false positives. If there are any false positives, you have to go back to the prompt engineering phase and not complete your business activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when someone responsible for cancelling $100,000,000 worth of federal grants fails to do that, they seriously screwed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Further and that last statement is one I find very interesting to see a federal judge rule on. ChatGPT is not liable nor can it be considered a scapegoat of this. The operator of the tool is in control. Just like &#8220;guns don&#8217;t kill people&#8221; logic has widely been applied (although recently there are cases where firearms manufacturers are being open to lawsuits), ChatGPT did not face the blame of these grants being pulled. The operator is responsible. Which is logic I agree with even in some of the recent cases around people using ChatGPT for self-help situations. We are operating a tool and we are responsible for its outputs and how we use those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I just think this ruling is interesting and we&#8217;ll see where it goes next to inform other cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 16th, 2025: The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, by the Federation of State&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-technology","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"cs-entry","9":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-3Q4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3033,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/09\/02\/another-news-worth-technology-hire-quits-after-6-months\/","url_meta":{"origin":14760,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Another &#8220;News Worth Technology Hire&#8221; quits after 6 months.","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"September 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"CNET: James Gosling, the notable programmer who founded Java at Sun Microsystems, has joined Google, a company locked in a lawsuit over how the technology is used in\u00a0Android.\u00a0Gosling announced his new Google employment\u00a0today on his blog. \"I don't know what I'll be working on. I expect it'll be a bit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4337,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2014\/11\/17\/linked-starbucks-green-mountain-coffee\/","url_meta":{"origin":14760,"position":1},"title":"Linked: &#8220;Starbucks &#038; Green Mountain Coffee&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"November 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"via Sum of Us:Starbucks doesn't think you have the right to know what's in your coffee. So it's\u00a0teamed up with Monsanto to sue the small U.S. state of Vermont\u00a0to stop you from finding out.Hiding behind the shadowy \"Grocery Manufacturers Association\", Starbucks is supporting a lawsuit that's aiming to\u00a0block a landmark\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6741,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/03\/16\/technology-apple-and-developers-really-need-to-step-up-gpu-support\/","url_meta":{"origin":14760,"position":2},"title":"Technology: Apple and Developers really need to step up GPU support","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"2 Hour + video file in 4K (UHD) weighing in around 40 gigabytes. It\u2019s taking Handbrake 12+ hours to transcode from MKV to MPEG4. This is a 4Ghz Core i7 iMac Retina and I have a Radeon M395X with 4 gigabytes of VRAM just sitting there idle. It\u2019s a travesty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12284,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2024\/07\/18\/photography-how-do-i-share-700-photos-from-my-25-day-road-trip-across-country-to-the-arctic-circle\/","url_meta":{"origin":14760,"position":3},"title":"Photography: How do I share 700+ Photos from my 25 day road trip across country to the Arctic Circle?","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 18, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I took thousands of photos over 25 days riding my motorcycle 11,000 miles to the Arctic Circle and I love every image that was kept, edited and uploaded to this Flickr Album. However, I can\u2019t share every photo here so I\u2019ve decided to select 25 images, one for each day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Photography&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Photography","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/photography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"BMW MOA National Rally - Redmond, OR 2024.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53791021287_f3e66735e3_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53791021287_f3e66735e3_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53791021287_f3e66735e3_b.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53791021287_f3e66735e3_b.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4345,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2014\/11\/24\/technology-unboxing-the-walkera-x4-scout-drone-copter\/","url_meta":{"origin":14760,"position":4},"title":"Technology: Unboxing the Walkera X4 Scout Drone \/ Copter","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"November 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019ve always loved RC Cars and the radio helicopters but now that video cameras are getting much smaller (see Hero 4) and copter parts are cheaper, I decided to grab something not too fancy to learn more about this hobby. There\u2019s also a group at my office who meets once\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"PB210005-2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8595\/15247618944_a2888cc6d9_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8595\/15247618944_a2888cc6d9_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8595\/15247618944_a2888cc6d9_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4704,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/06\/05\/technology-tweetbot-for-mac-2-0\/","url_meta":{"origin":14760,"position":5},"title":"Technology: Tweetbot for Mac 2.0","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I use Twitter only professionally now and have killed off my personal accounts except for a Twitter-Bot that posts when new blog posts go live. 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