Baltimore and its Democratic mayor have teamed up with progressive groups to file a lawsuit aimed at stopping President Donald Trump’s executive orders that dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion “programs and preferencing” as the president described in one of his directives.
Baltimore’s Mayor Brandon Scott – along with the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, American Association of University Professors, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United – filed suit in Maryland federal court this week against Trump and several cabinet heads.
Scott did not respond to a request for comment but said in a statement that Trump’s order goes beyond attacking DEI but “aims to establish the legal framework to attack anyone or any place who dares to celebrate our diversity.”
“Baltimore citizens risk losing vital federal funding due to this executive order, putting jobs and livelihoods at stake,” the mayor added. The city council is also listed as a plaintiff.
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Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) (Getty/iStock)
Baltimore, the nation’s 30th largest city, is 60% Black, 27% White, 8% Hispanic and 2% Asian, according to the Census Bureau.
Trump’s order seeks to erase roles within the bureaucracy that include diversity officers as well as “equity”-related endeavors.
Paulette Granberry Russell, the CEO of the diversity officers’ association, said in a statement that Trump’s orders will undermine the ability for higher education to open “opportunity, innovation and progress for people across the nation.”
“As the nation’s leading association for diversity officers and professionals in higher education, we will use all tools available, including the legal process, to block these harmful orders,” Granberry Russell said.
An official for the restaurant industry group said that eateries rely on workers of all ethnic backgrounds and that diversity is what sets the food service sector apart from others.
“President Trump wishes to see the end of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs of any kind whatsoever – and we will not stand for it,” its interim president, Teofilo Reyes, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the White House disagreed with Baltimore’s assertions.
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“Minorities in America have recognized the Democrat Party’s empty promises and failed policies. That’s why President Trump earned historic support from Black, Latino, Asian, and Arab Americans by prioritizing secure borders, economic opportunity, and an America First foreign policy,” Trump’s Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told Fox News Digital.
Fields said the left’s “divisive focus” on DEI has undermined decades of progress toward true equality and that Trump and his administration reject such “backward thinking.”
“[The White House] will pursue an agenda that lifts everyone up with the chance to achieve the American Dream,” Fields said.
Fox News Digital also reached out to Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., who represents most of Baltimore City in Congress. Mfume did not ultimately offer a response to the inquiry.
The legal filing opens with a quotation from West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett – a 1943 Supreme Court case brought by a Jehovah’s Witness family that ruled students cannot be compelled to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation it is that no official … can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matter of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” Justice Robert Jackson, an FDR appointee, wrote in his ruling.
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The filing itself alleges that if “lawful DEI programs are suddenly deemed unlawful by presidential fiat, plaintiffs must either risk prosecution for making a false claim or censor promotion of their values.”
“Our Constitution does not tolerate that result.”
It goes on to allege that Trump’s “goal is to punish those who recognize or choose to speak out about this country’s history on issues of enslavement, racial exclusion, health disparities, gender inequality, treatment of individuals with disabilities, and discrimination.”
The lawsuit was reportedly assisted or organized in part by Democracy Forward, a nonprofit organization founded during the first Trump administration that claimed to have identified a number of severe “threats to democracy, social progress and rule of law” that Trump represented after his 2016 win.
Democracy Forward boasted on its website that it has sued the Trump administration more than 100 times thus far.
The group’s president, Skye Perryman, said in a statement on the Baltimore lawsuit that the Constitution protects all Americans regardless of occupation and that Trump’s anti-DEI orders “offend these protections and others.”
“The coalition bringing this suit represents people of diverse professions and backgrounds who are all harmed by these unlawful orders, which have chilled their activities and provision of essential services,” Perryman said.
