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      Judge demands answers from White House on deportation flights to El Salvador

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      A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Thursday to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order in a growing showdown between the judicial and executive branches.James Boasberg, the US district judge, demanded answers after flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants alleged by the Trump administration to be gang members landed in El Salvador after the judge temporarily blocked deportations conducted under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg had directed the administration to return planes that were already in the air to the US when he ordered the halt.Boasberg had given the administration until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that they must be withheld because they would harm “state secrets”. The administration resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition.In a written order, Boasberg called Trump officials’ latest response “woefully insufficient”. The judge said the administration “again evaded its obligations” by merely repeating “the same general information about the flights”. He ordered the administration to “show cause” as to why it didn’t follow his court order to turn around the planes, increasing the prospect that he may consider holding administration officials in contempt of court.The justice department has said the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the US. A DoJ spokesperson said Thursday that it “continues to believe that the court’s superfluous questioning of sensitive national security information is inappropriate judicial overreach”.A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told the judge Thursday the administration needed more time to decide whether it would invoke the state secrets privilege in an effort to block the information’s release.Boasberg then ordered Trump officials to submit a sworn declaration by Friday by a person “with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” about the state secrets privilege and to tell the court by next Tuesday whether the administration will invoke it.In a deepening conflict between the judicial and executive branches, the US president and many of his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama. In a rare statement earlier this week, John Roberts, the supreme court chief justice, rejected such calls, saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Thursday urged the supreme court to limit federal judges’ ability to issue orders blocking the actions of his administration nationwide, writing on social media: “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” More

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      Judge blocks Elon Musk’s Doge from accessing social security records

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      A federal judge on Thursday blocked Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing social security records as part of its hunt under Donald Trump for fraud and waste, calling the effort a “fishing expedition”.Judge Ellen Hollander granted a temporary restraining order that prevents Social Security Administration (SSA) workers from allowing Doge to have access to records that contain personally identifiable information.Musk, the world’s richest man and a huge political backer of Trump, has been tasked by the US president with slashing costs and employees at the federal government: a mission that has caused chaos and disruption across the US amid mass firings and huge numbers of government projects and contracts being canceled.The Trump administration says Doge has a 10-person team of federal employees at the SSA, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information.The lawsuit challenging Doge’s access to sensitive records was brought in February by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Alliance for Retired Americans and the American Federation of Teachers.Attorneys for the government argued the Doge access did not deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees are routinely allowed to search its databases. But attorneys for the plaintiffs called the access unprecedented.In her ruling Hollander also instructed Doge to “disgorge and delete” any non-anonymized data it has obtained from the SSA since Trump took office, and said the agency cannot install or access any software in social security systems.Social security payments are a lifeline for millions of elderly Americans across the country and any effort to cut back the system is widely seen as a political minefield. However, Musk has claimed the system – without providing much convincing evidence – is rife with fraud. More

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      White House calls judge challenging Trump deportation order a ‘Democrat activist’

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      The White House on Wednesday labeled the federal judge challenging the Trump administration on whether it defied his court order to halt flights deporting migrants without a hearing “a Democrat activist”.The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, singled out by name at a White House press briefing federal judge James Boasberg, who weighed the legality of Donald Trump’s deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, and is now evaluating the government’s compliance.Boasberg had attempted over the weekend to prevent planes carrying the migrants from leaving, and has since demanded from the government details of the aircrafts’ exact itineraries to determine if they complied with his order. That argument is continuing in court, with the administration saying all flights took off before Boasberg’s order, while that is disputed and the judge has demanded a detailed itinerary. On Wednesday he threatened consequences if his order was violated, while giving the administration more time to present evidence.Leavitt said: “The judge in this case is essentially trying to say that the president doesn’t have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our American soil. That is an egregious abuse of the bench. This judge cannot, does not have that authority.”She added: “And it’s very, very clear that this is an activist judge who is trying to usurp the president’s authority under the Alien Enemies Act. The president has this power, and that’s why this deportation campaign has continued, and this judge, Judge Boasberg is a Democrat activist.”Republican president George W Bush appointed Boasberg to the district of Columbia’s superior court, then Democratic president Barack Obama elevated him to the federal court.Boasberg is considered a centrist Democrat and was a roommate of US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, while both were studying at Yale University, the New York Times reported, as an aside.Meanwhile, Trump has repeated his declaration that he would not defy a court ruling, even as controversy swirls about whether his administration has already ignored several of them following a spate of negative judgments that threaten to block his governing agenda.Asked by Fox News on Tuesday night if he would ever defy a court ruling, Trump said he would not – but launched an attack on Boasberg, though without naming him.“I never did defy and I wouldn’t in the future, no. You can’t do that,” he said. “However, we have very bad judges, and these are judges that shouldn’t be allowed. I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.“The judge that we’re talking about is you look at his other rulings … He’s a lunatic.”Trump renewed his assault in a later post on his Truth Social platform: “If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our country because a radical left lunatic judge wants to assume the role of president, then our country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!”The comments followed a rare rebuke from John Roberts, the conservative-leaning chief justice of the US supreme court, who criticised demands by Trump and his supporters, including his wealthiest backer, Elon Musk, that Boasberg be impeached.Fears over the administration’s readiness to defy the courts – widely seen as the only obstacle to Trump’s rampant agenda in the absence of meaningful resistance from a Republican-ruled Congress – seemed likely to intensify after high-profile negative rulings on Tuesday.In one, a US district court judge, Theodore Chuang, ruled that Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit had violated the constitution in “multiple ways” in attempting to dismantle USAid.A separate ruling barred the Pentagon from enforcing Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military, saying it was “soaked in animus”.Another order on Wednesday by Judge Jesse Furman rebuffed the administration’s effort to dismiss an attempt by Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist, to fight a deportation order and said the case must be heard in New Jersey, rather than Louisiana, where he is now detained.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn yet another case, the government has been forced to rehire more than 7,000 workers at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who had not finished their probationary period after they were sent unsigned letters telling them they were being fired for poor work performances.The letters were sent despite an IRS lawyer warning officials that they contained “false statements” that amounted to “fraud”, ProPublica reported.Trump’s insistence that he would obey the courts is at odds with previous statements from the vice-president, JD Vance, who has suggested he should defy them.In a 2021 interview with Politico, Vance said Trump – if he were re-elected – should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”The statement attributed to Jackson, president from 1829 to 1837, is widely believed to be apocryphal.Vance reiterated the sentiment in a social media post in February of this year following an earlier injunction against Doge.“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”Legal commentators have warned that a president openly ignoring court orders could portend a slide into dictatorship.Michael Luttig, a former federal judge, told NBC that Trump had already “declared war on the rule of law”.“In the past few weeks, the president himself has led a full frontal assault on the constitutional rule of law, the federal judiciary, the American justice system and the nation’s legal profession,” Luttig said. “America is in a constitutional crisis.” More

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      US judge blocks Trump’s ban on trans people serving in the military

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      A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service on Tuesday.US district judge Ana Reyes in Washington DC ruled that the president’s order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.She delayed her order by three days to give the administration time to appeal.“The court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes,” Reyes wrote. “We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.”The White House didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.Army reserves 2nd Lt Nicolas Talbott, one of 14 transgender active-duty service members named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he was holding his breath as he waited to find out if he would be separated from the military next week.“This is such a sigh of relief,” he said. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. This is my dream job, and I finally have it. And I was so terrified that I was about to lose it.”The judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys for six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military.On 27 January, Trump signed an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.In response to the order, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies people with gender dysphoria from military service. Gender dysphoria is the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Trump’s order violates transgender people’s rights to equal protection under the fifth amendment.Government lawyers argue that military officials have broad discretion to decide how to assign and deploy service members without judicial interference.Reyes said she did not take lightly her decision to issue an injunction blocking Trump’s order, noting: “Judicial overreach is no less pernicious than executive overreach.” But, she said, it was also the responsibility of each branch of government to provide checks and balances for the others, and the court “therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day”.Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.In 2016, a defense department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members. The supreme court allowed the ban to take effect. Former president Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.Hegseth’s 26 February policy says service members or applicants for military service who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service”.The plaintiffs who sued to block Trump’s order include an army reserves platoon leader from Pennsylvania, an army major who was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan, and a Sailor of the Year award winner serving in the navy.“The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the military ban seeks to deny them,” Reyes wrote.Their attorneys, from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law, said transgender troops “seek nothing more than the opportunity to continue dedicating their lives to defending the Nation”.“Yet these accomplished servicemembers are now subject to an order that says they must be separated from the military based on a characteristic that has no bearing on their proven ability to do the job,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “This is a stark and reckless reversal of policy that denigrates honorable transgender servicemembers, disrupts unit cohesion, and weakens our military.” More

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      Musk and Doge’s USAid shutdown likely violated US constitution, judge rules

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      A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) likely violated the US constitution by shutting down USAid, ordering the Trump administration to reverse some of the actions it took to dismantle the agency.The decision by US district judge Theodore Chuang was sweeping in its scope and marked a major setback for the administration’s signature takedown in its effort to bulldoze through the federal government.As part of an injunction that directed the Trump administration to reverse course, the judge halted efforts to terminate USAid officials and contractors, and reinstate former employees’ access to their government email, security and payment systems.The judge also compelled the administration to allow USAid to return to its currently shuttered headquarters at the Ronald Regan building in the event that the underlying case challenging the closure of the agency was successful. The administration is expected to appeal the ruling.At issue in the lawsuit, brought by more than two dozen unnamed former USAid employees in federal district court in Maryland, was Musk’s role in overseeing the deletion of the USAid website and the shut down of its headquarters.Chuang wrote in his 68-page opinion that Musk had likely violated the appointments clause of the constitution by effectively acting with the far-reaching powers of an “officer of the United States”, a designation that requires Senate confirmation.“If a president could escape appointments clause scrutiny by having advisers go beyond the traditional role of White House advisors who communicate the president’s priority to agency heads,” Chuang wrote, “the appointments clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality.”The Trump administration has said for weeks that the moves to dismantle USAid were carried out by the agency’s leaders – currently secretary of state Marco Rubio and acting administrator Pete Marocco – who were implementing recommendations from Musk.But Chuang rejected that contention with respect to the closure of USAid headquarters and the erasure of its website, saying that the administration provided no evidence that they were formally authorized by a USAid official.“Under these circumstances, the evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to defendants’ sweeping claim that Musk acted only as an advisor, Musk made the decisions to shutdown USAID’s headquarters and website even though he ‘lacked the authority to make that decision,’” Chuang wrote.The injunction follows six weeks of unprecedented turmoil at USAid, where 5,200 of 6,200 global programs were abruptly terminated, staff were locked out of facilities and systems, and employees reportedly received directives to destroy classified documents using shredders and “burn bags”.The agency’s workforce has been decimated from over 10,000 to just 611 employees, with Rubio characterizing the remaining programs as “set for absorption” by the state department – what he recently praised as “overdue and historic reform”.USAid’s headquarters became central to the controversy when multiple staffers told the Guardian in February that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials had been conducting extensive “walkthrough” tours to potentially take over the facility while agency employees remained barred entry.Politico later reported that CBP had officially taken over the office space and signed a lease agreement, according to a CBP spokesperson. The court order’s 14-day deadline for the administration to confirm USAid could return to its building suggested the space may have already been reallocated.The injunction also prohibits Doge from publishing unredacted personal information of USAid contractors and halts further dismantling actions, including terminations, contract cancellations, and permanent deletion of electronic records.That may already be a serious exposure problem for Musk and the rest of Doge, as an internal email obtained by the Guardian revealed how staff had been instructed to spend the day destroying classified “SECRET” documents – potentially breaking compliance with the Federal Records Act, which prohibits destroying government records before their designated retention period, which is typically two years. More

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      Chief justice rebukes Trump for call to impeach judge hearing deportation case

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      John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, delivered a rare rebuke on Tuesday of Donald Trump after the US president demanded the impeachment of a federal judge who had issued an adverse ruling against the administration blocking the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members.“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement. “The normal appellate process exists for that purpose.”The statement came hours after Trump assailed the chief US district judge in Washington DC, James Boasberg, for issuing a temporary restraining order halting deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that gives the president the power to conduct removals without due process.“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote about Boasberg, labelling him a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge” and a “troublemaker”.View image in fullscreenTrump’s personal attack against Boasberg reflected his broader resentment at being increasingly constrained in recent weeks by court orders he believes are wrong, and his frustration at having his signature deportation policy be halted while subject to legal scrutiny.It also followed the administration’s attempt to have Boasberg thrown off the case, complaining in a letter to the clerk of the US court of appeals for the DC circuit – a bizarre way to force a recusal – on grounds that he had overreached by improperly turning the matter into a class-action lawsuit.According to the statute, the Alien Enemies Act can be invoked in the event of war, which only Congress can declare under the US constitution, or in the event of “predatory incursions” by state actors that amount to an invasion.The Trump administration’s use of the law rests on the second clause concerning incursions. In court filings, the administration has said Trump determined that the US was being invaded by members of the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela, which acted as a proxy for the Venezuelan government.Trump has the power as president to declare an incursion under the Alien Enemies Act, the filing said, and his decision was unreviewable by the courts following the US supreme court’s 1948 decision in Ludecke v Watkins, which said that whether someone was an enemy alien was up to the president.But Trump and his political allies appeared to have conflated two issues; federal courts can still review whether Trump satisfied the conditions to declare an incursion under the Alien Enemies Act in the first instance.The problem for the Trump administration is that in deciding Boasberg’s injunction blocking the deportation flights was unlawful, they ignored a verbal order from the judge at an emergency hearing on Saturday to turn around any deportation flights that had already departed.That opened a second legal battle for the administration where the justice department was left to argue at a hearing on Monday that the orders had been unclear and that, in any event, Boasberg’s authority to compel the planes to return vanished the moment they left US airspace.The extraordinary defenses by the administration suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account government officials set on circumventing adverse rulings.At the hearing, the administration claimed it did not follow Boasberg’s verbal instruction to turn around planes that had already departed, because it had not been repeated in the written injunction he issued at 7.25pm ET on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Oral statements are not injunctions and the written orders always supersede whatever may have been stated in the record,” Abhishek Kambli, the deputy assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil division, argued for the administration.The judge appeared unimpressed by that contention. “You felt that you could disregard it because it wasn’t in the written order. That’s your first argument? The idea that because my written order was pithier so it could be disregarded – that’s one heck of a stretch,” Boasberg said.Kambli also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written injunction, by the time he issued the temporary restraining order the deportation flights had been outside the judge’s jurisdiction.Boasberg expressed incredulity at that argument, too, explaining that federal judges still have authority over US government officials who make the decisions about the planes and that he had had the authority to order their return, even if the planes had been outside US airspace.The Trump administration opened a third legal front in the Alien Enemies Act case, after it asked Boasberg in a late-night 35-page filing on Monday to dissolve the injunctions and dismiss the case.The administration is currently subject to two injunctions: one order preventing the deportation of five Venezuelans who filed the initial suit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act, and a second order from Boasberg that expanded the initial order to cover anyone being removed under the Alien Enemies Act.Administration lawyers affirmed in a separate filing on Tuesday that no deportation flights had departed the US after Boasberg’s written injunction had been issued on Saturday evening. Two flights took off before his 7.25pm ET order. One flight took off after, but that plane carried immigrants who were being deported under a different authority from the Alien Enemies Act. More

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      White House’s defense for not recalling deportations ‘one heck of a stretch’, says judge

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      The Trump administration claimed to a federal judge on Monday that it did not recall deportation flights of hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend despite his specific instructions because that was not expressly included in the formal written order issued afterwards.The administration also said that even if James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, had included that instruction in his formal order, his authority to compel the planes to return disappeared the moment the planes entered international airspace.The extraordinary arguments suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty with a federal court order to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account an administration set on circumventing adverse rulings.An incredulous Boasberg at one stage asked the administration: “Isn’t then the better course to return the planes to the United States and figure out what to do, than say: ‘We don’t care; we’ll do what we want’?”The showdown between the administration and the judge reached a crescendo over the weekend after the US president secretly invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport, without normal due process, Venezuelans over age 14 who the government says belong to the Tren de Aragua gang.The underlying basis for Trump to invoke the statute is unclear because it historically requires the president to identify a state adversary, and Boasberg on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportations of five Venezuelans who had filed suit against the government.At an emergency hearing on Saturday evening, Boasberg extended his injunction to block the deportation of all Venezuelan migrants using Alien Enemies Act authority, and told the administration that any deportation flights already in the air needed to be recalled.By the time of the hearing, two flights had already taken off and a third flight left after Boasberg issued his ruling. All three flights landed in El Salvador, where the deportees were taken to a special maximum security prison, after Boasberg issued his written order.The Trump administration claimed at a hearing on Monday that it believed it had complied with the written order issued by Boasberg, which did not include his verbal instructions for any flights already departed to return to the US.“Oral statements are not injunctions and the written orders always supersede whatever may have been stated in the record,” Abhishek Kambli, the deputy assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil division, argued for the administration.The judge appeared unimpressed by that contention. “You felt that you could disregard it because it wasn’t in the written order. That’s your first argument? The idea that because my written order was pithier so it could be disregarded, that’s one heck of a stretch,” Boasberg said.The administration also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written order, by the time he had granted the temporary restraining order, the deportation flights were outside of the judge’s jurisdiction.The judge expressed similar skepticism at the second argument, noting that federal judges still have authority over US government officials who make the decisions about the planes, even if the planes themselves were outside of US airspace.“The problem is the equitable power of United States courts is not so limited,” Boasberg said. “It’s not a question that the plane was or was not in US airspace.” Boasberg added. “My equitable powers are pretty clear that they do not lapse at the airspace’s edge.”At times, the Trump administration appeared to touch on a separate but related position that the judge’s authority to block the deportations clashed with Trump’s authority to direct US military forces and foreign relations without review by the courts.Boasberg expressed doubt at the strength of that argument, as well as Kambli’s separate claim that he could not provide more details about when the deportation flights took off and how many flights left the US on Saturday, before and possibly after his order.Kambli said he was not authorized to provide those details on account of national security concerns, even in private, to the judge himself. Asked whether the information was classified, Kambli demurred. Boasberg ordered the government to provide him with more information by noon on Tuesday.The statements offered by the administration in federal district court in Washington offered a more legally refined version of public statements from White House officials about the possibility that they had defied a court order.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted on Monday that the administration acted within “the bounds of immigration law in this country” and said the Trump team did not believe a verbal order carried the same legal weight as a written order.But the White House’s “border czar” Tom Homan offered greater defiance at the court order and told Fox News in an interview that the court order came too late for Boasberg to have jurisdiction over the matter, saying: “I don’t care what the judges think.” More

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      Court lifts block on Trump order to end federal support for DEI programs

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      An appeals court on Friday lifted a block on executive orders seeking to end government support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, handing the Trump administration a win after a string of setbacks from dozens of lawsuits.The decision from a three-judge panel allows the orders to be enforced as a lawsuit challenging them plays out. The appeals court judges halted a nationwide injunction from US district judge Adam Abelson in Baltimore.Two of the judges on the fourth US circuit court of appeals wrote that Trump’s anti-DEI push could eventually raise concerns about first amendment rights but said the judge’s sweeping block went too far.“My vote should not be understood as agreement with the orders’ attack on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Judge Pamela Harris wrote. Two of the panel’s members were appointed by Barack Obama, while the third was appointed by Trump.Abelson had found the orders likely violated free speech rights and were unconstitutionally vague since they didn’t have a specific definition of DEI.Trump signed an order his first day in office directing federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants or contracts. He signed a follow-up order requiring federal contractors to certify that they don’t promote DEI.The city of Baltimore and other groups sued the Trump administration, arguing the executive orders are an unconstitutional overreach of presidential authority.The justice department has argued that the president was targeting only DEI programs that violate federal civil rights laws. Government attorneys said the administration should be able to align federal spending with the president’s priorities.Abelson, who was nominated by Joe Biden, agreed with the plaintiffs that the executive orders discourage businesses, organizations and public entities from openly supporting diversity, equity and inclusion.Efforts to increase diversity long have been under attack by Republicans, who contend the measures threaten merit-based hiring, promotion and educational opportunities for white people. Supporters say the programs help institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations while addressing the lasting impacts of systemic racism.Their purpose was to foster equitable environments in businesses and schools, especially for historically marginalized communities. Researchers say DEI initiatives date back to the 1960s but were expanded in 2020 during increased calls for racial justice.In addition to the mayor and the Baltimore city council, the plaintiffs include the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which represents restaurant workers across the country. More