Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Files Lawsuit Against Recent Discriminatory Executive Orders on Behalf of Chicago Women in Trades
Today, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights filed a lawsuit challenging executive orders 14151 (Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferences) and 14137 (Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity) on behalf of Chicago Women in Trades. These executive orders seek to eliminate efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion across federal agencies, with federal grantees, and throughout the private sector and call for the rollback of civil rights protections that have been critical to advancing opportunity for all Americans.
Chicago Lawyers’ Committee is co-counsel on this case alongside National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Crowell Moring LLP, Latino Justice PRLDEF, and the National Women’s Law Center.
With these executive orders, the federal government is attempting to erase decades of progress in addressing systemic discrimination and hard-fought civil rights protections for marginalized communities. Targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and revoking other critical programs that have expanded opportunity and advanced workplace diversity is a direct assault on the civil rights of people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other historically marginalized groups.
Chicago Women in Trades (“CWIT”) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting opportunity and equity within the skilled trades industry. CWIT prepares women across the country to enter and remain in high-wage skilled construction trades, including carpentry, electrical work, welding, plumbing, and others.
Women continue to experience significant discriminatory barriers to full and fair access in the skilled trades with Black and Latinx women being the most disproportionately underrepresented group in the industry, especially in the higher paid and higher skilled trades. These executive orders directly threaten CWIT’s ability to advance its mission through programs that work to eliminate occupational segregation and other harms reflecting a long history of discrimination in the skilled trades.
Our lawsuit seeks an order from the Court declaring these executive orders unlawful and unconstitutional and to prevent their enforcement against CWIT and other organizations exercising their right to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion and fight the harms of historic discrimination.
Our federal government should be celebrating the diversity that makes our country strong, rather than attempt to roll back civil rights progress. These executive orders are a direct attack on the civil rights of historically marginalized communities and would enable discrimination rather than end it.
We stand firm in our mission to secure racial equity and economic opportunity for all. As these harmful policies continue to roll out, we are ready to meet the moment and remain committed to protecting our multiracial democracy and the civil rights of all individuals.
Thank you for standing with us.
Aneel Chablani
Vice President and Legal Director
Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights