Federal Judge Stops President Obama's Embryonic Stem Cell Research Funding Policy, For Now

On August 23, federal district court Judge Royce Lamberth issued a temporary injunction against President Obama's human embryonic stem cell policy, stating that the policy violates the law. Judge Lamberth ruled that Obama's funding policy violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a law which bans federal funds from going to research which destroys human embryos. President Obama's funding policy attempted to get around this law by funding research after the destruction of embryos had taken place. Judge Lamberth found this distinction meaningless.

The judge ruled that the Obama administration’s policy was illegal because the administration’s distinction between work that leads to the destruction of embryos — which cannot be financed by the federal government under the current policy — and the financing of work using stem cells created through embryonic destruction was meaningless. In his ruling, he referred to embryonic stem cell research as E.S.C.

“If one step or ‘piece of research’ of an E.S.C. research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding,” wrote Judge Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan.

In other words, the neat lines that the government had drawn between the process of embryonic destruction and the results of that destruction are not valid, the judge ruled.

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