Challengers to Trump DEI Orders Lose Bid to Undo Injunction (1)

A federal judge declined to vacate his initial injunction pausing President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders after the challengers sought to reconsider their litigation strategy and pursue different relief.

Judge Adam Abelson on Thursday denied the motion by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and other plaintiffs to vacate the nationwide preliminary injunction he issued Feb. 21. An appellate court has already stayed that order as it reviews the case.

Abelson of the US District Court for the District of Maryland had temporarily blocked the entire federal government from enforcing portions of Trump’s orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, finding them to be unconstitutionally vague.

The plaintiffs asked to vacate the injunction so that they could file an amended complaint and a new request for a preliminary injunction based on new factual developments.

The government’s actions in the weeks following the previous injunction request caused “ongoing and irreparable harm” to the plaintiffs themselves and “millions of similarly situated” groups, Brooke Menschel, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, told the court during an April 10 hearing.

Denying their motion would mean the case would go to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit more than once, the plaintiffs wrote to the court. Meanwhile, granting it would “save judicial resources in both this Court and at the Fourth Circuit,” they said.

But Abelson concluded Thursday that the plaintiffs failed to show that vacating the preliminary injunction is appropriate.

“The problem for plaintiffs is that although they have pointed to new evidence and claims they state they would present in an amended complaint and renewed motion for a preliminary injunction, they have not shown that any of it would materially alter the analysis of whether they are entitled to a preliminary injunction,” the order said.

The challengers told the court that new evidence would show how the Trump administration interpreted and implemented the executive orders since the preliminary injunction was entered. But the judge said he already had “ample evidence before” his initial ruling. The information they’d add in the amended complaint “would be largely the same as those currently asserted.”

The Fourth Circuit will soon determine whether the plaintiffs are entitled to a preliminary injunction. Groups representing university diversity officers, college professors, restaurant workers, and Baltimore city officials argued that the orders violated their First Amendment free speech rights and Fifth Amendment due process rights due to their vagueness.

“While the record may be more developed in that circumstance, plaintiffs have not shown that a new injunction (and its likely appeal) would place the courts and parties in a significantly different posture than the present one,” Abelson said.

Judge ‘Deeply Troubled’

While his ruling is another blow to the challengers, the judge remains convinced that Trump’s orders are unconstitutional. “Part of the explicit purpose” of the orders “is to stifle debate—to silence selected viewpoints, selected discourse—on matters of public concern,” he said.

Trump’s orders called for federal agencies to eliminate all DEI programs it deems discriminatory from the government, while also threatening loss of federal funding and possible civil penalties for private-sector entities that operate such programs.

Additional challengers have sued in multiple federal courts to block portions of the orders or their specific effects on funding, including in a federal court in Chicago, where a judge temporarily blocked the Labor Department from enforcing parts of the order.

“This Court remains deeply troubled that the challenged provisions, which constitute content-based, viewpoint-discriminatory restrictions on speech (in addition to conduct), have the inherent and ineluctable effect of silencing speech that has long been, and remains, protected by the First Amendment,” Abelson said Thursday. “And they do so through impermissibly vague directives that exacerbate the speech-chilling aspects of the challenged provisions.”

The Trump administration had urged the judge to “reject Plaintiffs’ gamesmanship in trying to escape the consequences of an appeal they believe they cannot win by apparently seeking to file successive preliminary injunction motions.”

It also claimed the district court had no further jurisdiction over a case while it is being appealed to a higher court. Abelson rejected that argument, ruling that federal court rules and case law suggest he has the authority to consider the plaintiff’s motion.

Attorneys from Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Democracy Forward represent the plaintiffs, which include the American Association of University Professors, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, and the mayor and city council of Baltimore.

The Justice Department represents the government.

The case is Nat’l Assoc. of Diversity Officers in Higher Ed. v. Trump, D. Md., No. 1:25-cv-00333, 5/1/25.