“Targeting hard-working civil servants because they are associated with an idea the government dislikes violates the First Amendment,” said a rep for the ACLU-D.C.
A group of federal workers say that massive layoffs tied to President Trump’s DEI ban targeted workers of color and women—even if their jobs had nothing to do with DEI.
These workers have now filed a class action lawsuit against Trump’s administration and are being represented by the ACLU of D.C., according to NBC News.
The legal argument workers are making is that their First Amendment rights were violated when they were fired over the perception that they had pro-DEI stances. They also argue that Trump’s DEI executive order targeted mostly non-white men for firing and assessment, which violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.”
Their complaint is being sent to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal entity, which reviews appeals of terminations or disciplinary actions. According to USA Today, the Trump administration responded to the lawsuit saying:
“Protecting the civil rights and expanding opportunities for all Americans is a key priority of the Trump Administration, which is why he took decisive actions to terminate unlawful DEI preferences in the federal government.”
Scott Michelman, ACLU-D.C.’s legal director, sees the Trump administration’s actions differently.
“Targeting hard-working civil servants because they are associated with an idea the government dislikes violates the First Amendment. President Trump can’t drag us back to a dark chapter in history where the government targeted people simply for their views or values,” he said via a press release. “The decision to go after people for DEI work they are no longer doing shows the administration’s true motive: to punish employees who they think hold values that clash with the president’s extremist agenda.”
In a recent interview with theGrio, Sheria Smith, a former civil rights attorney who was terminated by the Department of Education in a massive 1,300-person layoff, attested to seeing signs of bias in the layoffs.
“Earlier in the year in January they started putting people on leave for suspected DEI activity. 77 of our members were placed on leave and none of those people actually worked in diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Smith told theGrio.
“They were loan officers, they were IT professionals, they were civil rights attorneys, but of the 77, 70 of them were women, and of the 77, 30 of them were Black,” she continued. “I believe…50 were people of color. And they were placed on leave as early as January 31st. To this day, the agency has not explained to us why they were placed on leave, what suspected DEI activity they actually had.”
One of the lawyers arguing the case, Kelly Dermody of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, suggested all Americans are hurt by discriminatory layoffs because the jobs these workers did were broad in nature and not focused on DEI.
“It is an outrage that their ability to serve the American people has been compromised through a misguided assault on such American values as inclusion and fairness.”
DEI has a deep history that traces back to post-Reconstruction, with President John F. Kennedy being the first to ask for the affirmative hiring of people of all races in the context of work, also known as affirmative action.
Despite multiple lawsuits, an appeals court recently ruled that President Trump is allowed to put his anti-DEI policies in place—for now.
Natasha S. Alford is the Senior Vice President of TheGrio. A recognized journalist, filmmaker and TV personality, Alford is also author of the award-winning book, “American Negra.” (HarperCollins, 2024) Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @natashasalford.
!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-featured-video”,”true”)})}(); ( () => { ( ( cb ) => { window.tpd = window.tpd || {}; if ( true === tpd.cmpReady ) { console.log( ‘[TPD][Brid] CMP was already ready, running player.’ ); cb(); return; } let tpdCmpReadyListener = () => { console.log( ‘[TPD][Brid] CMP ready event fired, running player.’ ); window.removeEventListener( ‘tpd:cmpCb’, tpdCmpReadyListener ); cb(); }; window.addEventListener( ‘tpd:cmpCb’, tpdCmpReadyListener ); } )( () => { let s = document.createElement( ‘script’ ); s.src = ‘https://player.target-video.com/player/build/targetvideo.min.js’; s.async = true; let target = document.getElementById( ‘Brid_2045231’ ); target.parentElement.insertBefore( s, target ); window._bp = window._bp || []; window._bp.push( {“div”:”Brid_2045231″,”obj”:{“id”:”41122″,”width”:”1280″,”height”:”720″,”stickyDirection”:”below”,”video”:”2045231″}} ); } ); } )();
