Judge Declines to Block Portions of Trump’s DEI Executive Orders

The judge wrote that plaintiffs did not establish a position to file their case and would likely fail.

A federal judge on Friday refused to block the enforcement of provisions in President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in response to a lawsuit filed by the Pro-LGBT organization.

In a 58-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote that the motion filed in court failed to establish itself.

“The previous court motion, while defined in a particular context, is not about whether DEI policies are good public policies, nor about whether certain DEI initiatives comply with the Anti-Discrimination Act,” “instead of whether the plaintiff has shown that he is entitled to an interim injunction prohibiting the enquiry of the executive order in question.”

The judge said the plaintiffs (National Urban League, National Fair Housing Alliance and Chicago’s AIDS Foundation are unlikely to “won the merit” and “the court will deny the motion.”

They also “failed to demonstrate that they are likely to succeed in challenge their due process to the provisions they may be standing on,” the judge said, adding that “they have not identified the interests of protected property or freedom that these provisions pose a threat.”

The lawsuit focuses on Trump’s order to block organizations from DEI-related grants, bans another organization, a federal fundraising group from engaging in the DEI program, with a third defending women from “gender ideological extremism,” recognizing men and women as two genders, according to the Lamba Legal and the Legal Legal Fund.

The group argued that the president’s order would severely limit the ability of organizations to provide important social and health services, including HIV treatment, fair housing, equal employment opportunities, affordable credit and civil rights protection, and that it would harm “color, women, people with LGBTQ+ disabilities, people with disabilities and people living in HIV.”

A statement from the White House regarding Trump’s order on DEI grants says that for the past 60 years, businesses, governments, law enforcement agencies and schools are increasingly using “so-called racial and sexually-based preferences” that the administration claims to violate civil rights laws under so-called race-based, so-called race-based, sexual and sexually-based preferences.

The second will end the “radical and wasteful” federal program, including DEI, affecting “federal contractors who provided DEI training or DEI training materials to agents or department employees.”

DEI policies are part of the organisational framework that reduces discrimination based on identity or disability, and provides more expression to groups that some people say are subject to discrimination against their own identity or disability.

However, critics say Day may actually promote discrimination against other groups. A 2024 study found that DEI training and policies actually increase organizational bias, particularly against white people.

The DEI policy, which has been rapidly deployed across industry and government after the 2020 black lives protest, has been firing in recent years from Republicans, particularly those in the Republican world. In recent months, a handful of major companies have either launched or have already reopened DEI-related policies, including Walmart, Tractor Supply, John Deere and McDonald’s.

Its proponents, including the Private and Human Rights Leadership Conference, say the DEI program is intended to assist employers in complying with certain groups’ “long-standing increased civil rights obligations and opportunities.” The organization also said the DEI program “makes the business more competitive, successful and profitable.”