The U.S. Justice Dept. asked a federal judge to stay ruling barring federal funding of research that uses embryonic stem cells, citing the “magnitude of harms occurring each day that the preliminary injunction remains in effect,” according to news reports.
The Justice Dept. filed a motion today seeking the stay of a ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Lamberth ruled Aug. 23 that federal law prohibits researchers from using federal money to fund experiments using ESCs or cells derived from ESC lines.
President Barack Obama had sought to restore federal funding for the research after it was banned in 1996. Lamberth ruled that Obama’s stem cell funding policy violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which was aimed at stopping the destruction of human embryos.
The Obama administration promptly said it planned to appeal the ruling, taking the first step today in asking for a suspension of the decision until the appeal plays itself out.
Obama’s policy allowed the use of stem cell lines derived from frozen embryos from fertility treatments that were no longer needed and donated according to stringent ethical guidelines. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, argued that the Obama policy violated the Dickey-Wicker rules.
Lamberth agreed, ruling that Sherley and Deisher are likely to prevail in the lawsuit and that the Dickey-Wicker rules clearly bans federal funding of research using ESC-derived lines, because “the language of the statute reflects the unambiguous intent of Congress to enact a broad prohibition of funding research in which a human embryo is destroyed,” according to court documents.