LGBTQ+ and HIV Advocates File New Lawsuit Challenging Trump’s Orders Seeking to Erase Transgender People and Defund LGBTQ+ and HIV Services
This is Lambda Legal’s fourth lawsuit challenging lawless and outrageous executive orders issued by the Trump administration. This lawsuit was filed on behalf of multiple non-profits that serve the LGBTQ+ community, work to end the HIV epidemic, and record the history of LGBTQ+ people.
Lambda Legal today (Thursday, Feb. 20) filed suit on behalf of nine nonprofit organizations in six states challenging three of Donald Trump’s 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,” according to a Lambda Legal press release.
This new lawsuit — Lambda Legals’ fourth suit addressing executive orders Trump has issued since his Jan. 20 inauguration — 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 press release notes.
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 (The NYC LGBT Community Center); one in Pennsylvania (Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center); one in Maryland (Baltimore Safe Haven); and one in Wisconsin (FORGE).
The Lambda Legal press release notes that the lawsuit comes in response to federal agencies sending 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.
Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project director and lead lawyer on the lawsuit, said, “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.”
The press release aid the executive 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 is San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, and it was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. The suit argues that 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 second lawsuit against these three executive orders. Lambda Legal filed a similar lawsuit opn Wednesday, Feb. 19, alongside LDF challenging the same three executive orders and representing nonprofits AIDS Foundation Chicago, the National Urban League and the National Fair Housing Alliance.
— Tammye Nash