A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order restricting the federal government and its contractors from offering diversity training that the president labeled “divisive” and “un-American.”
U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted a preliminary nationwide injunction in the lawsuit filed by LGBT rights groups in November in the Northern District of California, saying the groups were likely to prevail on their First Amendment claims.
“Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success in proving violations of their constitutional rights,” Freeman wrote in a 34-page order Tuesday. “Moreover, as the government itself acknowledges, the work Plaintiffs perform is extremely important to historically underserved communities.”
Critics say the executive order was a broadside against diversity and inclusion programs seeking to reverse patterns of discrimination and exclusion going back decades. The incoming Joe Biden administration is widely expected to scrap it.
“This is wonderful news,” attorney Avatara Smith-Carrington, the Tyron Garner Memorial Law Fellow at Lambda Legal who represented the LGBT groups, told USA TODAY. “We cannot as a nation expect to work towards and achieve equality without first acknowledging and addressing the biases that are deeply rooted in the fabric of this nation.”