The ruling comes after the National Institutes of Health last year issued new guidelines permitting federal funding for research on certain stem cell lines that had already been created.
The court challenge was brought by adult stem cell researchers who argued the new rules not only would increase competition for limited funds, but violated federal law. A nonprofit group, Nightlight Christian Adoptions, also joined and argued that the government's new guidelines would decrease the number of human embryos available for adoption.
The District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction on the research, saying the plaintiffs would suffer "irreparable injury" from the policy and that the new guidelines violated federal law that prohibits federally funded research involving the destruction of human embryos.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that despite attempts to separate the derivation of human embryonic stem cells from the research process, "the two cannot be separated" because culling those stem cells destroys an embryo.
"The guidelines violate that prohibition by allowing federal funding of ESC research because ESC research depends upon the destruction of a human embryo," he wrote.
The new NIH guidelines did not authorize the explicit creation or destruction of any embryonic stem cells. At issue were rules for working with cells that initially were created using private money.
The Bush administration had limited taxpayer-funded research to a small number of stem cell batches, or lines, already in existence as of August 2001. Last spring, Obama lifted that restriction, potentially widening the field but letting NIH set its boundaries.
The NIH came up with a compromise, saying it deems those old stem cell lines eligible for government research dollars if scientists can prove they met the spirit of the new ethics standards.
The embryonic stem cells are master cells that can morph into any cell of the body -- researchers hope they can be used to one day create better treatments, maybe even cures, for ailments ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's to spinal cord injury.
The District Court previously dismissed the case, saying the plaintiffs did not have legal standing.
But after an appeals court upheld the suit, the District Court reversed course and allowed the case to proceed. The suit names Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a defendant.
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