4th Cir. Allows Trump to Enforce Anti-DEI Orders Amid Appeal (1)

The Trump administration is permitted for the time being to enforce its orders restricting diversity, equity, and inclusion among businesses and universities, after a federal appeals court agreed to pause a lower court’s injunction.

A panel of judges from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request for a stay of injunction pending the outcome of the appeal in a Friday decision.

The case brought by a group of challengers including the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and Baltimore city officials is one of at least three federal suits broadly challenging the constitutionality of the anti-DEI executive orders Trump signed on his first two days in office. The plaintiffs argued the orders violated their First Amendment free speech rights and their Fifth Amendment due process rights on account of the vagueness of what the directives require.

Those orders ban DEI efforts within the federal government, require federal contractors to certify they don’t operate “illegal” DEI programs, and threaten investigations against private businesses, universities, and others whose programs the administration considers to be discriminatory.

The US District Court for the District of Maryland granted the injunction partially blocking those orders on Feb. 21. The same judge clarified the decision on March 10, ruling that the injunction applies across the entire federal government, not just to those agencies named as defendants in the lawsuit. Before the Fourth Circuit issued its order Friday evening, the district court held a status conference to consider the plaintiffs’ claims that federal agencies were violating the injunction by moving ahead with efforts to enforce Trump’s DEI restrictions on federal grant recipients.

Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz and Judge Pamela A. Harris, both Obama appointees, wrote concurring opinions expressing reluctance to grant the stay of injunction. They found the Trump administration has satisfied the legal requirements for a stay pending the outcome of the appeal, but each voiced concerns about an overzealous government attack on DEI without clear definitions of what types of conduct or policies the administration seeks to ban.

Diaz wrote that DEI efforts can and should be positive forces that help remedy historical injustices, saying the policy has come to be regarded among many like a monster the closet—"a mere shadow, for which the remedy is simply light.”

The constitutionality of the executive orders will ultimately depend on how the government enforces them, Diaz wrote.

Judge Allison Jones Rushing, a Trump appointee, was less reserved in defending the stay of injunction.

The case “does not challenge any particular agency action implementing the Executive Orders,” Rushing wrote in her own concurring opinion. “Yet, in finding the Orders themselves unconstitutional, the district court relied on evidence of how various agencies are implementing, or may implement, the Executive Orders. That highlights serious questions about the ripeness of this lawsuit and plaintiffs’ standing to bring it as an initial matter.”

Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Democracy Forward represent the plaintiffs.

The Justice Department represents the government.

The case is Nat’l Assoc. of Diversity Officers in Higher Ed. v. Trump, 4th Cir., No. 25-01189, 3/14/25