By Daniel Wiessner
Oct 14 (Reuters) – A federal judge declined on Wednesday to block an effort by President Donald Trump to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives by companies that do business with the US government.
US District Judge Adam Abelson in Baltimore, Maryland, said that groups representing university faculty and minority business owners had failed to show a March executive order by the Republican president was too broad.
Trump’s order bars “racially discriminatory DEI activities” by federal contractors and requires them to certify their compliance in writing. Businesses that do not comply could lose contracts and be investigated for violating the federal False Claims Act.
The groups in their lawsuit claim that Trump’s order wrongly presumes that all DEI amounts to illegal racial discrimination and extends to speech protected by the US Constitution. But Abelson said its definition of unlawful conduct was narrower.
“The Contractors Order only prohibits contractors from engaging in conduct that is already prohibited by federal law: intentional discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity,” wrote Abelson, an appointee of President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
The judge denied the groups’ motion to block Trump’s order pending the outcome of the lawsuit, which was filed in April.
The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, a progressive legal group. In a statement, the group said the decision would be reassuring for federal contractors because it made clear that Trump’s order does not broadly prohibit diversity programs.
“And the court confirmed that order reaches no further than the work a contractor performs for the government on the specific contract where the language appears,” the group said.
The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s order is also being challenged by 19 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC, in a lawsuit in the same court. That case seeks to block federal agencies from altering contracts to comply with Trump’s order.
Many of the largest US businesses, from defense and tech companies to food service providers and logistics firms, are federal contractors, and some companies primarily depend on the government for work.
Civil rights advocates say DEI practices help address historic inequities for marginalized groups like women, LGBTQ people and ethnic minorities.
But Trump and many conservatives cast DEI as anti-merit and discriminatory against groups like white people and men, and his administration has moved to eradicate it from government, higher education and the private sector.
Trump has banned DEI programs by federal agencies and repealed a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to hire minorities and women.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Nick Zieminski and Bill Berkrot)
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