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Lawsuit is Diversity Center v Trump
ALLENTOWN, PA – Last night, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s recent executive order that prohibits federal contractors and grantees from conducting workplace diversity trainings or engaging in grant-funded work that explicitly acknowledges and confronts the existence of structural racism and sexism in our society. The order describes trainings that cover topics such as implicit bias or critical race theory as divisive and un-American, and directs agencies to suspend or deny funding to contractors and grantees whose trainings or grant-funded activities cover these topics.
Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center is a Plaintiff in the case along with The Los Angeles LGBT Center, The Diversity Center in Santa Cruz, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Crescent Care in New Orleans, SAGE: Services and Advocates for GLBT Elders, B. Brown Consulting, and Dr. Ward Carpenter. Plaintiffs are represented pro-bono by Lambda Legal and Ropes & Gray.
Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of six organizational plaintiffs, a consulting company, and an individual plaintiff. The organizational plaintiffs include LGBT Centers, an advocacy and service organization for LGBT seniors, and HIV/AIDS health and advocacy organizations from across the country.
“The Trump Administration’s vague and nonsensical executive order causes direct harm to organizations like Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center that frequently provide training to government contractors,” said Adrian Shanker, executive director, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. “In the midst of a global pandemic, we need to continue to train healthcare professionals, but the chilling effects of this Executive Order call our ability to do so into question. That’s why Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center is standing up to the Trump administration and seeking injunctive relief from this harmful executive order.”
“We are fighting three epidemics—COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, and an epidemic of violence perpetrated against Black people by law enforcement,” said Camilla Taylor, Director of Constitutional Litigation, Lambda Legal. “Communities of color face shocking health disparities with respect to both COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. Black and Brown people are more likely to get sick, and more likely to die as a result of systemic racism and sexism, structural inequities, and the role of explicit and implicit bias on the part of health care providers.
The Executive Order, issued September 22, 2020, and later Trump administration guidance labels the discussion of intersectionality, critical race theory, white privilege, systemic racism, or implicit or unconscious bias in diversity training as “race and sex scapegoating” and forbids agencies from “promot[ing]” these “divisive concepts.” It directs agency heads to audit internal training curricula and discontinue these trainings, and to conduct a similar audit of federal contractors, putting those contracts at risk.
The lawsuit is The Diversity Center v. Trump. Read the complaint here: https://www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/legal-docs/diversity_ca_20201103_complaint
More about the Plaintiffs is available here: https://www.lambdalegal.org/the-diversity-center-v-trump_plaintiffs
Lambda Legal lawyers working on the case include: Camilla Taylor; Karen Loewy; Scott Schoettes; Currey Cook; Omar Gonzalez-Pagan; and, Avatara A. Smith-Carrington. They are joined by pro-bono co-counsel from Ropes & Gray, including: Douglas Hallward-Driemeier; Kirsten Mayer; Nathalia Sosa; Jessica Soto; Thanithia Billing; Annie Monjar; Jennifer Cullinane; and Ethan Weinberg.
About Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center: (www.bradburysullivancenter.org)
Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center provides arts, health, youth, and pride programs to strengthen and support the LGBT community across the Greater Lehigh Valley.
Information Provided By:
Adrian Shanker
Executive Director
Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center
