This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” Justice Jackson said in dissent. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.

The plaintiffs, including states and public-health advocacy groups, have argued that the cuts will inflict “incalculable losses in public health and human life.”

A federal judge had ruled that the more than $1 billion in cuts to research grants, like studies into HIV prevention, violated federal law.