The University Consortium for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) has won a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration over plans to move management and operation of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center to a third party.

UCAR sued the government in March after the shutdown of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, was announced, and UCAR was instructed to prepare the transfer of Wyoming to another operator, Ars Technica reported.

It has previously been reported that the University of Wyoming (UW) was planning to submit a proposal for management of the facility, which hosts hardware focused on climate and weather modeling.

Although the government argued that no final decision has yet been made, meaning there are no grounds for the lawsuit, Judge Brook Johnson ruled in favor of UCAR due to comments and documentation from government officials earlier this year, which “strongly suggests that the outcome was predetermined,” Johnson said.

The government has since admitted it has yet to fully evaluate the comments it received in calls for public feedback. Consequently, Judge Johnson ruled that the NSF had already reached a decision regarding the transfer of the center and said the decision was subject to review under the Administrative Procedures Act.

As the Ars Technica report noted, the Administrative Procedures Act prohibits actions that are “arbitrary and capricious,” with the judge ruling that in this case, the government had failed “to articulate any rationale” for the decision, meaning it had violated the Act.

Furthermore, UCAR was able to demonstrate that the resulting uncertainties around its future had caused it irreparable harm, with large numbers of its technical staff leaving and replacements with similar knowledge and technical skills expected to be hard to find.

Plans by the US government to dismantle NCAR were first reported in December 2025, with the decision thought to be driven, in part, by President Donald Trump’s dislike of Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis.

The governor has continually refused to grant a pardon to Tina Peters, who was jailed for nine years after being found guilty of committing criminal acts as part of an effort to prove Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election.

Separately, Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, labeled NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” in a post on social media platform X last year.