In Albany, New York, there is a brick townhouse where abolitionists Stephen and Harriet Myers once sheltered people escaping slavery — some of them led by Harriet Tubman herself. For over twenty years, the Underground Railroad Education Center has called that house home, using it to teach that the Underground Railroad wasn't just a historical footnote. It was a civil rights movement. And it still has something to teach us.
Last week, L4GG volunteer attorneys filed a federal lawsuit on the Center's behalf to get back the funding the Trump administration took from them. It is exactly the kind of case we exist to fight.
What Happened
In 2023, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Center a $250,000 grant through a rigorous, competitive process. The money was meant to fund a new Interpretive Center — a space that would have expanded the museum's reach, preserved its growing collection of over 27,000 artifacts, and created jobs in one of Albany's most economically marginalized neighborhoods.
The Center met every single requirement. Then, in May 2025, the grant was canceled. No warning. No appeal.
The cancellation came on the heels of a sweeping directive tied to President Trump's executive orders banning DEI programs across federal agencies. Over 1,400 humanities grants were terminated including 98% of those that focused on Black history and culture.The grants that survived? Projects focused on white presidents and founding fathers.
Why This Case Matters
This isn't about paperwork or bureaucracy. It's about who gets to tell the story of America — and who gets erased from it.
Nina Loewenstein, a volunteer attorney on the case through L4GG, put it plainly: the cancellation is "just explicitly erasing things associated with the Black race." She and the team of volunteer lawyers argue that the Underground Railroad Education Center is just one of thousands of organizations unlawfully targeted by the Trump administration.
Our lawsuit argues three things: that the withdrawal was racially discriminatory, that it unconstitutionally punished the Center for its viewpoint, and that it violated the NEH's own legal mandate to support diverse and underrepresented communities — a mandate Congress reaffirmed as recently as 2025.
The Underground Railroad Education Center did everything right. It earned this grant. And the history it preserves belongs to all of us.
We're asking the court to reinstate the funding and strike down the directive that caused these mass terminations in the first place. Because if we allow the government to defund Black history and call it fiscal responsibility, the damage goes far beyond one museum in Albany.
This is what L4GG's network of attorneys shows up for — to stand with organizations doing vital work that have been wronged. We are proud to bring this fight.
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Cases like this one are handled through L4GG’s Pro Bono Litigation Corps (PBLC) — our flagship program that mobilizes litigators to take on high-impact cases just like this. If you're a litigator looking to do meaningful pro bono work, learn more at L4GG.org/PBLC.