A federal judge has temporarily halted the Trump administration’s attempt to condition domestic violence grants on the organizations’ promotion of gender ideology, elective abortions, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
In her Oct. 10 order, U.S. District of Rhode Island Judge Melissa DuBose said the administration’s conditions likely violated the Constitution, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act’s bar on arbitrary and capricious action.
The administration, she said, failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation for its new conditions and didn’t consider the harm that its decision would have on the organizations and the populations they serve.
DuBose also said the conditions were vague enough that they likely violated the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.
“The phrases ‘promote gender ideology’ and ‘promote elective abortion’ obscure meaning like Russian dolls stacked inside each other,” she wrote.
Her order applies to grants coming from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Without preliminary relief, the Plaintiffs will face irreparable harm that will disrupt vital services to victims of homelessness and domestic and sexual violence,” DuBose said.
Her order targeted conditions that had referenced multiple executive orders, including one focused on gender and another focused on abortion. The latter, signed by President Donald Trump in January, focused on enforcing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding for most abortions.
The other directed agencies to “take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the federal funding of gender ideology.” It said “‘gender ideology’ replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.”
The Justice Department had argued that the Constitution allowed it to condition funds and that it had adequately advised the organizations that sued.
“The First Amendment permits the Government to set spending conditions for the use of its funds,” the department said in August.
While DuBose acknowledged that the government is not required to subsidize certain activities, she suggested that the Trump administration went too far by imposing conditions beyond what Congress had set up in the law.
“The categorical and expansive nature of the challenged conditions telegraph that the defendants will deny federal funding to a whole class of programs based on viewpoint alone,” she said. “It cannot be mistaken that in this case federal funding is being employed as a carrot.”
The judge’s order was the latest development in a group of lawsuits challenging the administration’s attempts to set additional conditions on who receives grants related to domestic violence. In August, another judge in Rhode Island blocked similar conditions on grants from the Justice Department.
The administration had argued that it had discretion to impose certain conditions and that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.
More specifically, the Justice Department pointed to a law known as the Tucker Act, which gives the U.S. Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over contract and monetary disputes with the federal government.
Across the various challenges to Trump’s agenda, the administration has repeatedly invoked the Tucker Act to argue that lawsuits were brought in the wrong court. In one of those cases, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted a lower court block on the administration’s attempt to freeze grants from the Department of Education.
In August, the Justice Department suggested that DuBose should follow the Supreme Court’s lead.
DuBose said that she had jurisdiction because the case was about conditions on grants rather than lost payments. Her reasoning echoed that of the other Rhode Island judge who had ruled on the Justice Department grants.
