Civil and Human Rights Organizations Sue Trump Administration Over DEI, Gender Orders
A slew of nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration on Wednesday in response to its Executive Orders targeting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
The case was filed by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Lambda Legal on behalf of the National Urban League, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. The lawsuit—titled National Urban League v. Trump—alleges that the Trump Administration is infringing on the organizations’ right to free speech and due process by forcing said organizations to adopt the Trump Administration’s view regarding DEI.
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The case filing also points to Trump’s Executive Order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which bars the federal government from recognizing the existence of transgender people, as a discriminatory practice.
Read More: What Is DEI and What Challenges Does It Face Amid Trump’s Executive Orders?
“Beyond spreading inaccurate, dehumanizing, and divisive rhetoric, President Trump’s Executive Orders seek to tie the hands of organizations, like our clients, providing critical services to people who need them most,” said Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of LDF, in a press release. “The three orders we are challenging today perpetuate false and longstanding stereotypes that Black people and other underrepresented groups lack skills, talent, and merit—willfully ignoring the discriminatory barriers that prevent a true meritocracy from flourishing.”
The lawsuit comes after the Trump Administration filed three Executive Orders in January that called for an end to all federal DEI and asked agencies to lay off the staff working on such initiatives. Online information pages on the sites of numerous federal agencies mentioning diversity initiatives have been removed. And, per NPR, the National Park Service removed any direct mention of “transgender” from its history page on the Stonewall Uprising.
Interestingly, the lawsuit is not the first of its kind questioning the constitutionality of the anti-DEI Executive orders.
The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore also previously filed a lawsuit against Trump on Feb. 3.
In both cases, plaintiffs argue that the federal funding they rely on to engage with underserved communities and provide social and health services has been compromised.
Read More: The Implications of Trump’s Executive Order on Sex
“The terms of the Executive Orders are extraordinarily vague and could prohibit Plaintiffs from engaging in any targeted effort to help a specific group of people facing unfair disadvantages. said Wednesday’s case filing. “Without any discernible standards or criteria of what is and what is not ‘dangerous, demeaning,’ ‘immoral,’ and ‘illegal’ DEIA, as understood by this Administration, the future of Plaintiffs’ fiscal viability and programming are subject to the unfettered discretion of an Administration that has made clear its predisposition against any speech or action that advances equal opportunity for historically marginalized groups, including people of color, women, LGBTQ people, and/or people with disabilities.”
DEI being a target has been a broadband strategy of the Republican Party, and signals a cultural switch from conversations about systemic racism that spiked in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd. In the past few months, several corporations—including Target and Walmart—have announced rollbacks to their DEI initiatives in the workplace. Meanwhile, in early February, the Attorney General in Missouri sued Starbucks claiming “systemic discrimination” as its workplaces have “become more female and less white.”
Lamda Legal previously sued the Trump Administration over the September 2020 Executive Order titled “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.” The organization challenged how the Executive Order “prohibits federal contractors and grantees from conducting workplace diversity trainings or engaging in grant-funded work that explicitly acknowledges and confronts the existence of structural racism and sexism in our society.” The court ruled in the plaintiffs favor, enjoining the Executive Order.