DOJ Must Cut Conditions on Domestic Violence Grants for Now (1)

The US Department of Justice is barred from enforcing new conditions on grants for organizations that help domestic violence and sexual assault victims, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women “engaged in a wholly under-reasoned and arbitrary process” in its decision to impose the new grant conditions, violating the Administrative Procedure Act, Judge William E. Smith of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island said in an order granting a preliminary injunction for 17 nonprofits who challenged the conditions.

The injunction bars the administration from attaching the new conditions—which include certifying that grantees won’t use federal funds to promote “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts—to all fiscal year 2025 grants under the Violence Against Women Act.

The organizations suing the DOJ and its Office on Violence Against Women, which administers the grants, are all federally recognized domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions for their respective states. They’re guaranteed funding through VAWA, which created several programs to support women’s shelters, domestic violence hotlines, legal services for survivors, and other efforts.

The nonprofits in this case are also part of a lawsuit alleging the departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development imposed new certification requirements on grantees that seek to advance the administration’s ideological goals that are unrelated to the groups’ missions. Another federal judge in Rhode Island granted a temporary restraining order in that case in July.

The DOJ started requiring VAWA recipients to certify their compliance with several new conditions, including that groups won’t prioritize “illegal aliens,” operate any unlawful DEI programs, and that funds won’t be used for any activities that violate any of President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

But the agency’s decision to “impose the challenged conditions in such a vague and haphazard manner” violated the APA, Smith said.

The office only provided “a single declaration” that doesn’t speak to any of its considerations, beyond pointing to presidential executive orders and a memo from the attorney general. Based on the record as it stands, the office “cannot plausibly claim that it examined the relevant data or articulated a satisfactory reason for its actions,” Smith wrote.

It appears that the agency failed to consider how the conditions would impacts funding recipients, especially how the “vague and confusing language” would cause “significant adverse effects” on the nonprofits and the populations they serve, the judge said.

The coalitions also are confronting a dilemma of either foregoing federal funding or continuing activities that could violate the conditions, constituting irreparable harm, Smith said.

The nonprofits presented examples that some of their work—such as providing services to transgender victims—could arguably violate the challenged conditions and potentially open them up to False Claims Act liability. And the government’s declaration that the office will “be reasonable in its interpretation of the conditions is cold comfort,” Smith wrote.

Jacobson Lawyers Group PLLC, National Women’s Law Center, Democracy Forward Foundation, and DeLuca, Weizenbaum, Barry & Revens Ltd. represent the groups.

The case is R.I. Coal. Against Domestic Violence v. Bondi, D.R.I., No. 1:25-cv-00279, 8/8/25.