U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted a preliminary nationwide injunction in the lawsuit filed by LGBT rights groups in November in the Northern District of California, saying the groups were likely to prevail on their First Amendment claims.
“Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success in proving violations of their constitutional rights,” Freeman wrote in a 34-page order Tuesday. “Moreover, as the government itself acknowledges, the work Plaintiffs perform is extremely important to historically underserved communities.”
The Labor Department referred USA TODAY to the Justice Department, which is handling the case. The Justice Department could not be reached for comment.
Critics say the executive order was a broadside against diversity and inclusion programs seeking to reverse patterns of discrimination and exclusion going back decades. The incoming Joe Biden administration is widely expected to scrap it.
“This is wonderful news,” attorney Avatara Smith-Carrington, the Tyron Garner Memorial Law Fellow at Lambda Legal who represented the LGBT groups, told USA TODAY. “We cannot as a nation expect to work towards and achieve equality without first acknowledging and addressing the biases that are deeply rooted in the fabric of this nation.”
Trump's executive order, which affected government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, nonprofits and any others that have federal contracts or plan to apply for them, had an almost immediate chilling effect on reinvigorated efforts to address racial disparities in the workplace after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of white officer in Minneapolis in May.
A USA TODAY investigation found that more than 55 years after the Civil Rights Act, less than 2% of the top executives at the nation’s largest companies are Black.
Last week Democrats called on the federal government to back off the order, calling it a political stunt. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and 18 other senators sent a letter opposing the implementation of the executive order, saying it stifles "much-needed efforts in our states to reduce racial and sex-based discrimination."
The executive order's stated goal was "to combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating."
The Labor Department previously told USA TODAY the elimination of "race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating in employment" was "a key civil rights priority of the Trump Administration."
Civil rights groups including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed another lawsuit in October alleging the executive order violates free speech rights in an "extraordinary and unprecedented act by the Trump administration to undermine efforts to foster diversity and inclusion in the workplace."
“We commend the court for identifying the constitutional infirmities of President Trump’s Executive Order 13950, which amounts to a ban on truth and equality, and for providing immediate relief by enjoining enforcement of the Order nationwide” Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a statement.
Nelson called on the Biden administration rescind the executive order and issue a new one "that helps to restore and, more importantly, advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace.”
A White House memo in late September suggested rooting out "ideologies that label entire groups of Americans as inherently racist or evil" in diversity training materials by searching for keywords such as "white privilege," "systemic racism," "intersectionality" and "unconscious bias."
Asked about his executive order during the first presidential debate, Trump said: "They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place, it’s a racist place. And they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not gonna allow that to happen."
Biden responded, “Nobody’s doing that.”
“The fact is that there is racial insensitivity," he told Trump.
Trump took aim at critical race theory
The target of Trump's executive order was critical race theory, which teaches that racism pervades government and other American institutions, giving white people an advantage.
Trump seized on the issue following appearances by conservative activist Christopher Rufo on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
"What I've discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people," Rufo, director of the Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth & Poverty in Seattle, said on Carlson's show.
Rufo celebrated achieving his goal – "persuading the President of the United States to abolish critical race theory in the federal government" – posting on Facebook moments after Trump issued the order.
The Trump administration also challenged corporate efforts to recruit more Black executives and executives of color into leadership ranks.
In recent months, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which oversees federal contractors for the Labor Department, has questioned whether diversity initiatives at Microsoft and Wells Fargo to double the ranks of Black managers and executives over the next five years violate federal laws barring discrimination based on race. Both corporations say they believe their initiatives comply with those laws.