US appeals court rejects challenge to Trump’s efforts to ban DEI

By Nate Raymond

Feb 6 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a challenge to a move by President Donald Trump’s administration to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs at federal agencies and businesses with government contracts.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an injunction that would have blocked Trump’s administration from implementing executive orders he signed shortly after taking office last year aimed at eliminating DEI programming in the government and private sector. 

The court in March 2025 at the administration’s urging put on hold that preliminary injunction, which had been issued by Baltimore-based U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson, while it weighed the government’s appeal.

Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group that represented the plaintiffs, said it is reviewing the ruling. The White House had no immediate comment.

Abelson’s ruling came in a lawsuit by the city of Baltimore, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and the American Association of University Professors.

They challenged provisions of Trump’s executive orders that directed federal agencies to eliminate DEI programs, certify government contractors and grant recipients do not operate them, and work with the Justice Department to take measures to deter DEI programs and investigate companies with such policies.

Abelson had concluded Trump’s directives likely violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment free speech protections and impose vague standards that fail to comply with the Fifth Amendment’s due process requirements.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, writing for Friday’s panel, said Trump’s directives could not be challenged head-on, saying they could instead be challenged based on how agencies apply them to specific grant recipients.

“President Trump has decided that equity isn’t a priority in his administration and so has directed his subordinates to terminate funding that supports equity-related projects to the maximum extent allowed by law,” Diaz wrote. “Whether that’s sound policy or not isn’t our call.”

Diaz, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, in a separate concurring opinion said he had reached his conclusion “reluctantly,” saying the evidence suggested a “sinister story” that resulted in important programs being terminated by keyword.

“For those disappointed by the outcome, I say this: Follow the law,” Diaz wrote. “Continue your critical work. Keep the faith. And depend on the Constitution, which remains a beacon amid the tumult.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell)