Dickey Amendment

The Dickey-Wicker Amendment is the name of an appropriation bill rider attached to a bill passed by United States Congress in 1995, and signed by former President Bill Clinton, which prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) from using appropriated funds for the creation of human embryos for research purposes or for research in which human embryos are destroyed. DHHS funding includes the funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Technically the Dickey Amendment is a "rider" to other legislation, which amends the original legislation. The rider receives its name from the name of the Congressman that originally introduced the amendment, Representative Jay Dickey. The Dickey amendment language has been added to each of the Labor, HHS, and Education appropriations acts for FY1997 through FY2009. The original rider can be found in Section 128 of P.L. 104-99 . The wording of the rider is generally the same year after year. For FY2009, the wording in Division F, Section 509 of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009, (enacted March 11, 2009) prohibits HHS, including NIH, from using FY2009 appropriated funds as follows:

In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order which removed the restriction against federal funding of stem cell research. However, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment remains an obstacle for federally funded researchers seeking to create their own stem cell lines. In August 2010, as part of preliminary motions in Sherley vs Sebelius, Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted an injunction against federally funded embryonic stem cell (ESC) research on the grounds that the guidelines for ESC research "clearly violate" the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. In September 2010, he refused to lift the injunction pending the conclusion of the case and the issuance of his ruling and a likely appeal. In response, the Obama Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to lift the injunction via an order pending the appeal of Judge Lamberth's ruling, which it did on April 29, 2011. Judge Lamberth was thereby obliged to reverse his ruling, and grudgingly dismissed the case entirely on July 27, 2011.

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