Today, multiple LGBTQ, Health, and HIV organizations sued the Trump Administration represented by Lambda Legal challenging three executive orders that together seek to erase transgender people from public life, defund the organizations that provide them with life-saving services, and terminate equity-related grants essential to the health and lives of other underserved communities, including communities of color, and people living with HIV.
Filed by Lambda Legal, the lawsuit challenges Trump’s executive order no. 14168, which repudiates the very existence of transgender people and prohibits federal contractors and grantees from recognizing and respecting their identities or advocating for their civil rights. The lawsuit also challenges executive orders no. 14151 and 14173, which terminate equity-related grants and prohibit federal contractors and grantees from employing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility principles in their work.
The nonprofit organizations involved in the lawsuit include four organizations based in California (San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Los Angeles LGBT Center, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco Community Health Center); one in Arizona (Prisma Community Care); one in New York (LGBT Community Center); one in Pennsylvania (Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center); one in Maryland (Baltimore Safe Haven); and one in Wisconsin (Forge).
The lawsuit comes after federal agencies sent notices terminating federal funding to organizations serving transgender people and to entities whose work could be described as “equity-related” because they devote resources to underserved communities, address health disparities, or work to overcome systemic racism, sexism, or anti-LGBTQ bias. Some already have experienced temporary difficulties accessing their federal funds.
“These executive orders pose an existential threat to transgender people and the organizations that advocate for them and provide them shelter, community, and support. Plaintiffs are HIV service organizations, community centers, and healthcare facilities whose work saves lives, in addition to a historical society whose mission is to record the stories of LGBTQ people. They join this lawsuit to fight the Trump administration’s attempt to erase transgender people from public life, and to continue the services they provide to marginalized communities, including communities of color and people living with HIV,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project Director and lead lawyer on the lawsuit.
The orders severely harm nonprofit organizations’ ability to provide programs and services, such as HIV treatment and prevention, sexual and reproductive health screenings and services, youth programs, homelessness prevention, mental health, employment, and many others.
The lawsuit, San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, argues the executive orders violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by limiting the organizations’ free speech, the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; as well as the Administrative Procedures Act.
This is Lambda Legal’s fourth lawsuit against the Trump Administration and the second one against these three executive orders. Yesterday, Lambda Legal filed a similar lawsuit alongside LDF challenging the same three executive orders and representing nonprofits AIDS Foundation Chicago, the National Urban League, and the National Fair Housing Alliance.
