On Tuesday, April 15, 2025, Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted a motion for preliminary injunction barring the U.S. Department of Labor from enforcing the certification provision described in President Donald Trump’s January 21, 2025 executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which requires government contractors and grant recipients to (i) certify that they do not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws and (ii) agree that their compliance in all respects with all applicable federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions.
The ruling was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by Chicago Women in Trades (CWIT), a nonprofit organization “dedicated to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion within the skilled trades industry,” which receives grants from the Department of Labor.
Kennelly had already issued a temporary restraining order against the Department of Labor back in March, but the order was shorter in duration.
In the order and opinion issued on Tuesday, the court found that CWIT was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the certification provision unconstitutionally infringes on its (and other certifying entities’) First Amendment rights because it effectively regulates CWIT’s conduct outside of the contours of the federal grants, noting that “[a]lthough the government may use conditions to ‘define the federal program,’ it may not ‘reach outside’ the program to influence speech.”
The court also rejected the government’s contention that the certification provision is permissible, as it simply requires certification that the grantee is not breaking the law, noting that the certification provision “does not define the term ‘DEI’ itself, and it does not refer to any source indicating what the terms means as used in the Order – let alone what might make any given ‘DEI’ program violate the Federal anti-discrimination laws … [leaving the meaning of this] entirely to the grantee’s imagination.”
CWIT also challenged the legality of the termination provisions of the January 20 and January 21, 2025, executive orders (which call for the termination of all “equity-related” grants by the federal government) under the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, the separation of powers, and the Spending Clause of the Constitution. The court, however, found that CWIT was unlikely to succeed on the merits of these claims, except with respect to one of the five government-funded grants at issue, the termination of which the court found would violate the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as Congress specifically intended for this grant to fund exclusively “equity related projects.”
The preliminary injunction is limited to the Department of Labor, but extends to all grantees and government contractors (not just CWIT).
The lawsuit is one of several challenging the executive orders targeting illegal DEI programs. On March 14, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit lifted a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking certain challenged provisions of the DEI executive orders.
The government is expected to also appeal this ruling.
