Judge blocks Trump order cutting federal funds to LGBTQ nonprofits
'These provisions seek to strip funding from programs that serve historically disenfranchised populations,' U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of Oakland said in a ruling requiring continued funding of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other organizations across the country while the case continues. It does not apply to other groups affected by Trump's orders.
Those orders require federally funded programs to halt any 'equity-related grants or contracts' and 'programs promoting DEI,' apparently barring any aid to racial, ethnic or gender minorities.
Another provision orders them to cut off funding for programs that 'promote gender ideology.' That would mean denying 'the very existence of transgender people,' Joe Hollendoner, executive director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, said in a filing with the court.
'While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the Constitution,' Tigar, appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, said in his ruling. That means the administration 'cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities or suppress ideas that it does not like,' he said.
A lawyer for the nonprofits, Jose Abrigo of Lambda Legal, said the ruling halts Trump administration orders 'that seek to erase transgender people from public life, dismantle DEI efforts, and silence nonprofits delivering life-saving services.'
'These policies threatened to erase access to lifesaving HIV and health services for transgender, nonbinary, and queer people across the country,' said Dr. Tyler TerMeer, chief executive officer of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. 'The Court's action gives us the fuel to keep fighting.'
Trump's Justice Department argued that transgender advocacy groups, and not the administration, were the ones violating civil rights by allowing people who were born male to compete with female athletes, use women's restrooms and identify themselves as female.
Trump is entitled to 'align government funding and enforcement strategies with (his) policy priorities,' Justice Department attorney Pardis Ghelbi said in a filing asking Tigar to dismiss the lawsuit.
But the judge said Monday that the administration's explicit goals — including the denial of transgender people's existence — were 'facially discriminatory' and 'not a legitimate government interest.'
Trump's orders require federally funded organizations 'who provide specialized services to transgender persons to remove references to those persons — as well as the characteristics that caused those persons to need the services in the first place,' Tigar said.
'It is as difficult to imagine how this would work as it is to imagine a pediatrician not acknowledging the existence of children, or a gerontologist denying the existence of the elderly.'
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