Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal announced today (Feb. 18) a federal lawsuit on behalf of nonprofit advocacy organizations challenging three anti-equity executive orders from President Trump related to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and transgender people.
LDF and Lambda Legal claim these orders will severely limit the organizations’ ability to provide critical social and health services such as HIV treatment, fair housing, equal employment opportunities, affordable credit, civil rights protections, and many others. This would harm countless people across the United States, including people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities and people living with HIV.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the National Urban League, the National Fair Housing Alliance and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, claims that the administration is violating the organizations’ rights to free speech and due process and is engaging in intentional discrimination by issuing and enforcing the anti-equity orders.
The three executive orders being challenged terminate equity-related grants, and forbid federally-funded entities from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs, and from recognizing the existence of transgender people. Together, these orders reverse decades of civil rights progress and pose an existential threat to the organizations that advocate for the civil rights of transgender people, and provide them shelter, services, and support.
“As a Black man living with HIV who has experienced homelessness, for years, I have relied on the lifesaving services of organizations like AIDS Foundation Chicago, who understood my intersectional identities. Now, as I work in the HIV field, I am deeply concerned about the threat these orders represent to AFC’s ability to serve our communities if they can’t even name the issues our people are facing.” said Will, an AIDS Foundation Chicago program participant and caseworker for another organization.
“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.
“These policies drip with contempt for transgender people, and pose a significant threat to critical health and HIV services that support marginalized communities, putting lives at risk,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV project director and lead counsel on the case.
The lawsuit, National Urban League v. Trump, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that the executive orders violate the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to free speech by censoring and chilling their views on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The plaintiffs also claim that the executive orders are so vague that the organizations do not know what is and is not prohibited, in violation of their Fifth Amendment due process rights. Moreover, the executive orders discriminate against people of color, women, and LGBTQ people, with particular animus towards Black people and transgender individuals, in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
— David Taffet
