A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions on federal grants given to organizations serving domestic and sexual violence survivors, LGBTQ+ youth, and unhoused communities.
On Thursday, July 24, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose granted a request for a temporary restraining order blocking the conditions on federal grant programs administered by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Advocate reported. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed last week by a nationwide coalition of nonprofit organizations, represented by Democracy Forward and other legal groups, challenging the restrictions.
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As the Washington Blade notes, the new restrictions were put in place in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed, in part, at denying federal funding to organizations with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and that “promote” so-called “gender ideology.”
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In their lawsuit, the coalition noted that both HUD and HHS had implemented new conditions prohibiting recipients from using grant funds to promote DEI programs and “gender ideology.” The restrictions, their lawsuit argues, put the organizations “between a rock and a hard place.”
“They can accept the conditions—and fundamentally change their programming, abandon outreach methods and programs designed to best serve their communities, and risk exposing themselves to ruinous liability,” the complaint states. “Or they can decline the funding and halt their funded programs—displacing domestic and sexual violence survivors from safe housing, ending programs designed to reduce and prevent domestic and sexual violence, and putting previously homeless families and children back on the streets.”
Plaintiffs argue that the Trump administration “is leveraging federal funding to advance the President’s ideological vision,” in violation of the law and the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers.
“The executive branch cannot unilaterally leverage funding Congress appropriated for use on programs Congress created to advance the executive’s own policy goals,” the complaint states. “The separation of powers does not allow that—and, here, Congress did not authorize the Departments to impose the new funding conditions.”
The new conditions on grant funding, the lawsuit argues, violate plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights “by forcing grantees to voice the Administration’s views on gender and by chilling grantees from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion even when not using federal funds.” They claim the restrictions also violate the Administrative Procedure Act “by in some cases outright conflicting with governing law or failing to follow required procedure, and by being arbitrary and capricious in virtually every way that an agency action can be arbitrary and capricious.”
In a Friday, July 25, press release following DeBose’s decision, Democracy Forward said that plaintiffs in the case will now submit a proposal for the precise scope of the temporary restraining order for the court’s review.
In a joint statement, the organizations said they welcomed the decision to halt the Trump administration’s funding restrictions.
“These conditions threaten to undermine decades of progress in supporting survivors of violence, LGBTQI+ youth, and unhoused individuals. Our organizations exist to serve everyone with compassion and equity, and we will not be forced to choose between our values and mission and the communities we serve,” they said. “The court’s order is a critical step in protecting life-saving programs and ensuring that the providers across the country can continue their work without political interference.”
DeBose’s ruling, they said, “affirms what we have long known, that the law does not permit any government to use its funding power to force service providers to abandon their core principles.”
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