Dozens of Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration: Say “Bye, Bye” to DEI

Dozens of Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration Filed by Government Employee Unions, Left-Wing Activists, and Democratic Politicians
(full series)
General Challenges to DOGE | Does Bureaucracy Equal Democracy?
Don’t Quit … but Don’t Do Your Job Either! | Say “Bye, Bye” to DEI

Say “Bye, Bye” to DEI

In addition to the lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s DOGE, DOGE-adjacent, and border security policies, at least six others address the federal government’s new standards regarding cultural issues.

National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education [NADOHE] v. Trump seeks to overturn an executive order that instructs the Office of Management and Budget to remove “environmental justice” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs from the federal bureaucracy and grant recipients.

The NADOHE complaint asserts:

Ordinary citizens bear the brunt. Plaintiffs and their members receive federal funds to support educators, academics, students, workers, and communities across the country. As federal agencies make arbitrary decisions about whether grants are “equity-related,” Plaintiffs are left in limbo.

What is being sacrificed because the Trump administration has cut DEI funding?

The NADOHE claims to be “the preeminent voice for chief diversity officers.”

And what a voice they are!

The first of 16 “Standards of Professional Practice” in the NADOHE handbook begins:

Chief diversity officers have ethical, legal, and practical obligations to frame their work from comprehensive definitions of equity, diversity, and inclusion—definitions that are inclusive with respect to a wide range of identities, differentiated in terms of how they address unique identity issues and complex in terms of intersectionality and context.

There are 17, single-spaced pages of run-on gobbledygook sentences just like that. Imagine the hardship that will be inflicted on “ordinary citizens” because whomever wrote it will lose their place at the federal feeding trough.

Co-plaintiffs in the NADOHE lawsuit include the American Association of University Professors (a strident supporter of race-based university admissions), the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (a serial supporter of lefty labor union objectives), and the mayor and city council of Baltimore, Maryland.

During his first week in office, President Trump signed three executive orders aimed at rolling back the excesses of the transgender movement, particularly as it applies to gender reassignment procedures involving children. The orders were named:

• Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation
• Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism
• Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government and Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.

The State Department has also issued a new policy requiring passports to identify individuals as either male or female. This removed options that allowed individuals to change their gender on passports or cite a nonstandard gender identification.

The transgender policies have been targeted in at least five lawsuits:

• PFLAG, Inc. v.Donald J. Trump. The American Association of Physicians for Human Rights is a co-plaintiff. PFLAG is an acronym for “Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.”
• Shilling v. Trump. The plaintiffs are military persons challenging the prohibition on transgender persons serving in the armed forces. The Gender Justice League is a co-plaintiff.
• State of Washington v. Trump. The states of Minnesota and Oregon are co-plaintiffs.
• Orr v.Trump. The plaintiffs are transgender individuals challenging the passport policy.
• Jones v. Trump. The plaintiff is a federal inmate who had previously been permitted to live in a women’s prison but is now facing transfer to a men’s facility.

Finally, at least one lawsuit, Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v Vought, challenges the removal of funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Many of the usual suspects among the Democratic state attorneys general have since filed an amicus brief in support of the suit.

The CFPB was created in 2010, is funded through payments from the Federal Reserve System, and—according to the Pacific Legal Foundation—has controversially behaved as a “Fourth branch of government.”

CFPB is a regulatory body that has no democratic accountability to Congress or the president. The case against its existence is a fitting metaphor for the lack of accountability of much of the federal government that has resulted in a lot of this lawfare.