Crossposted from Nature’s news blog on behalf of Meredith Wadman

In a victory for supporters of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, a US district judge ruled today that government funding of the research is legal, despite an existing law that prohibits US funding of research in which an embryo is destroyed.

The 38-page summary judgment by Royce Lamberth (right), the chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, may not be the final word in the case of Sherley et al. v. Sebelius, the lawsuit that ground US stem cell research to a halt for 17 days last August and September. But it puts the plaintiffs, adult stem cell researchers James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, on a challenging course should they choose to appeal today’s decision to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit or, ultimately, the Supreme Court (Their lawyers did not immediately respond to interview requests today.)

Lamberth is the same judge who issued a preliminary injunction 11 months ago that temporarily suspended US funding for the research on the grounds that it was “unambiguously” prohibited by existing law. He noted in today’s opinion that an intervening decision in April from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “constrains this Court” and obliges him to find that the law, the Dickey-Wicker amendment, is ambiguous enough to allow for National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for hESC research.

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