The lawsuits challenging President Trump’s DEI executive orders now number more than a dozen, filed by civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, state attorneys general, cities, fired federal employees, universities, and scholarly associations. Through mid-2026, the rulings have gone in every direction: the Fourth Circuit has cleared the original January 2025 orders for enforcement, district courts in Illinois, Washington, and New York have kept injunctions in place for specific plaintiffs, the Department of Education has abandoned its threat to cut school funding, and two fresh suits over a March 2026 contractor order are waiting on preliminary injunction rulings in Maryland.
The Orders Being Challenged
Three executive orders from Trump’s first two days in office are the anchors of most of the litigation. “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” signed January 20, 2025, ordered agencies to close DEI offices within 60 days and terminate equity-related grants and contracts. “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” also signed January 20, established a two-sex federal policy and directed agencies to strip content the order labeled “gender ideology.”
The third order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” signed January 21, 2025, revoked Executive Order 11246 and required federal contractors and grant recipients to certify they do not operate DEI programs that violate anti-discrimination laws, with False Claims Act exposure for false certifications. It also told the Attorney General to develop a plan targeting private-sector “DEI practitioners,” with each agency identifying up to nine entities for civil compliance investigations from among publicly traded corporations, large nonprofits, foundations with assets over $500 million, and universities with endowments over $1 billion.
A fourth order, Executive Order 14398, “Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors,” was signed March 26, 2026. It requires a specific contract clause barring “racially discriminatory DEI activities,” gave agencies 30 days to insert the clause into new contracts, and set July 24, 2026, as the deadline to modify existing ones.
NADOHE v. Trump
The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and other academic groups sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on February 3, 2025. Judge Adam B. Abelson issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on February 21, 2025, blocking cancellation of equity-related grants, enforcement of the DEI certification requirement, and False Claims Act actions under the orders. The court found the orders likely amounted to viewpoint discrimination and were unconstitutionally vague, saying terms like “equity-related” invited “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”
The Fourth Circuit stayed that injunction on March 14, 2025, and vacated it entirely on February 6, 2026, holding the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on their facial challenges and lacked standing on some claims. The government moved to dismiss on April 30, 2026. The case is still active.
Chicago Women in Trades v. Trump
Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit funded through a federal Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grant, sued in the Northern District of Illinois over the same two January orders, raising First Amendment, Due Process, Spending Clause, and separation-of-powers claims. Judge Matthew F. Kennelly issued a temporary restraining order on March 27, 2025, followed by a preliminary injunction on April 14 that blocked the Department of Labor from canceling the group’s grant and stopped the department nationwide from enforcing the DEI certification requirement.
Judge Kennelly reaffirmed the injunction in October 2025, rejecting the government’s argument that a Supreme Court ruling required dissolving it. The government’s appeal to the Seventh Circuit was filed in July 2025, and discovery in the district court continues.
City of Seattle v. Trump
Seattle sued in the Western District of Washington, arguing the orders violated the separation of powers and jeopardized its federal grants. Judge Barbara J. Rothstein granted a preliminary injunction on October 31, 2025, blocking enforcement of the certification and funding provisions against the city. In April 2026, Cleveland, Columbus, Durham, Portland, Allegheny County, Hennepin County, Prince George’s County, and Ramsey County joined as plaintiffs. A second preliminary injunction motion covering the new plaintiffs was filed May 1, 2026, and remains pending.
The School Funding Suits
The Department of Education’s February 14, 2025, “Dear Colleague Letter” warned schools they could lose federal funding for maintaining DEI programs, setting a February 28 compliance deadline. Two suits followed.
The National Education Association and ACLU sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire on March 5, 2025. Judge Landya McCafferty issued a preliminary injunction on April 24, 2025. The American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association filed a parallel case in the District of Maryland, and Judge Stephanie Gallagher went further in August 2025, ruling the department had bypassed required Administrative Procedure Act rulemaking and threatened educators’ free speech, and declaring the guidance “legally void and unenforceable across the nation.”
The Department of Education withdrew its appeal of Judge Gallagher’s ruling on January 21, 2026, without explanation, then told the New Hampshire court it would stop withholding funds for diversity programs. The parties stipulated to dismissal on February 3, 2026, and Judge McCafferty formally dismissed the case on February 18, 2026. AFT President Randi Weingarten warned the administration retained “other ways of getting to the same result,” but the specific funding-cut mechanism was dead.
NEH Grant Cancellations and University Research
The National Endowment for the Humanities terminated more than 1,400 grants totaling over $100 million between April 1 and April 3, 2025. The American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association sued in the Southern District of New York. Discovery revealed that Department of Government Efficiency officials had driven the cancellations, running keyword searches for terms including “gay,” “BIPOC,” “indigenous,” and “equality,” and using ChatGPT to sort grants into categories such as “Craziest” and “Other Bad Grants.”
On May 7, 2026, Judge Colleen McMahon granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs and permanently enjoined NEH from terminating the grants, finding the cancellations violated the First Amendment through viewpoint discrimination, violated the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment, and were ultra vires because DOGE officials had no statutory authority over grant decisions.
In a related case brought by University of California researchers whose grants were canceled under the DEI orders, the Ninth Circuit on May 26, 2026, partially upheld a preliminary injunction in Thakur v. Trump. The court affirmed the injunction for what it called the “DEI Termination Class,” finding the researchers were likely to succeed on First Amendment viewpoint discrimination claims. It reversed the injunction for a separate class whose grants were canceled through form letters, holding those contract-based claims belonged in the Court of Federal Claims.
The Federal Employee Class Action
Fired federal employees filed a class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on December 3, 2025. Fell v. Trump, brought by the ACLU of the District of Columbia, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, and Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, was filed on behalf of workers terminated from the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Labor, the Federal Aviation Administration, and other agencies.
The complaint alleges agencies compiled lists of employees associated with DEI work as of the November 2024 election and then used reduction-in-force procedures to remove them regardless of their current duties, sweeping up workers whose only involvement had been attending trainings or joining employee resource groups. The suit raises First Amendment, Title VII, and Civil Service Reform Act claims and seeks reinstatement, back pay, and expungement of termination records. The government’s motion to dismiss was pending as of May 2026.
Challenges to the 2026 Contractor Order
Executive Order 14398 has drawn two suits, both in the District of Maryland. NADOHE, the AAUP, and the National Association of Minority Contractors sued on April 20, 2026, alleging First and Fifth Amendment violations and that the order exceeds presidential authority under the Procurement Act. They moved for a preliminary injunction on June 4, 2026.
On June 10, 2026, attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia filed a separate suit in the same court. The coalition is co-led by Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown and includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, among others. The states allege the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council and other agencies violated the Administrative Procedure Act by imposing the new contract terms without notice and comment, without adequate justification, and beyond their authority. They call the terms “vague and confusing” and estimate up to 640,000 contracts and subcontracts could be affected. Both injunction motions remain pending.
DOJ and EEOC Enforcement Against Private Employers
While defendants in the lawsuits above try to block enforcement, the Department of Justice is running its own program in the other direction. The Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, launched May 19, 2025, uses the False Claims Act against federal contractors who certify compliance with anti-discrimination laws while, in the government’s view, maintaining discriminatory DEI practices. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche described the initiative as a way to “identify and root out” civil rights violations by federal fund recipients. Reporting indicates the investigations have been policy-driven from DOJ leadership rather than whistleblower-initiated, and have targeted companies in the automotive, defense, pharmaceutical, technology, and telecommunications sectors.
The first settlement came on April 10, 2026, when IBM agreed to pay $17,077,043. DOJ alleged IBM had used a “diversity modifier” tying bonus pay to demographic goals, used “diverse interview slates” that altered hiring criteria by race or sex, set demographic goals for business units, and restricted mentoring and leadership programs by race, sex, or national origin, then sought reimbursement for those program costs under its federal contracts. IBM denied the allegations, did not admit liability, and received credit for cooperation and for voluntarily ending or modifying the programs. Single damages were roughly $8.2 million, and the total reportedly exceeded the two-times multiplier typical of False Claims Act settlements.
The EEOC, under Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, has run its own actions. In February 2026 the commission sued Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast in the District of New Hampshire, alleging a Title VII violation for a two-day networking event held at Mohegan Sun Casino in September 2024 that was open only to female employees, with paid time off and expenses provided only to those invited. The company moved to dismiss in April 2026, and the case is pending before Judge Paul J. Barbadoro.
Where Things Stand
The landscape through mid-2026 is genuinely split. The Fourth Circuit’s decision vacating the NADOHE injunction cleared the way for enforcement of the original January 2025 orders as a general matter. But program-specific and plaintiff-specific injunctions remain live in the Chicago Women in Trades case, the Seattle case, the NEH grants case, and the Thakur researcher case. The school-funding threat aimed through the Dear Colleague Letter has been formally abandoned. The federal employee class action and both suits against Executive Order 14398 are in early stages with dispositive motions pending. And DOJ and EEOC enforcement against private employers is running in parallel with the settlement docket already open.