On Dec. 22, U.S. District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman issued a nationwide preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from implementing an executive order that bars federal contractors and grantees from conducting workplace diversity trainings or engaging in grant-funded work that explicitly acknowledges and confronts the existence of structural racism and sexism in U.S. society, Lambda Legal noted in a press release.
Freeman issued her ruling after hearing oral argument November 10, 2020, on the motion for a preliminary injunction sought by Lambda Legal in its lawsuit filed earlier in November challenging the ban.
The executive order, issued Sept. 22, 2020, labels the discussion of intersectionality, critical race theory, white privilege, systemic racism, or implicit or unconscious bias in diversity training as "race and sex scapegoating" and forbids agencies from "promot[ing]" these "divisive concepts." On Nov. 2, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the ban in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of a consulting company, an individual plaintiff and six organizational plaintiffs.
"This injunction could not come at a more crucial time," said SAGE CEO Michael Adams. "We have already had trainings cancelled because of the threat of this executive order, trainings that are integral to SAGE's ability to do its work on behalf of LGBT older adults in a meaningful and impactful way that recognizes explicitly the impact of systemic racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT bias on our communities and the country writ large."
The lawsuit is The Diversity Center v. Trump. The ruling is at www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/legal-docs/diversity_ca_20201222_order-granting-part-nationwide-preliminary-injunction .