A federal judge in Rhode Island has blocked a Trump administration push to attach new culture war-related conditions to grant funding from the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women.
Judge William E. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island issued a ruling on Friday that temporarily halts the new conditions on fiscal 2025 grants, siding with a group of coalitions who sued over the changes.
“The Court concludes that the challenged conditions run afoul of the prohibition against arbitrary and capricious agency action,” Smith wrote in the ruling.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department updated its grant announcements with an expanded list of “out-of-scope activities,” or activities that could not be funded by grant money, according to the ruling.
The updated conditions prohibited funding from going to “promoting gender ideology” and “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ programs,” according to the ruling. Another condition also stipulated that “any activity or program that unlawfully violates an Executive Order” would not be funded.
The office later started requiring that grant applicants certify that funds would not be used for “out-of-scope” activities, according to the ruling.
The coalitions filed a lawsuit against the expanded conditions, arguing that many of the funding conditions were unconstitutionally vague.
And for the parts that could be understood, many appeared to clash with requirements in the Violence Against Women Act, they argued.
“OVW grantees must certify that they will not use grant funds to promote ‘gender ideology,’ even though VAWA expressly forbids grantees from discriminating based on gender identity,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit argues that organizations would lose out on critical funding if they declined to apply for OVW grants. But if they make the certification, they would expose their organizations “to substantial legal and financial risk.”
The organizations, the suit states, were left in an “impossible position.”
“They must choose between forgoing funding essential to their ability to fulfill their missions—and in some cases to their ability to operate at all—and accepting and certifying compliance with conditions that are in tension with their statutory duties, unlawfully vague, restrictive of speech, in violation other constitutional and statutory requirements,” it stated.
OVW is responsible for funneling grant funding every year to organizations across the nation.
For example, one grant program assists domestic violence and sexual assault survivors with transitional housing. Another helps states support rape crisis centers and other groups that provide services to victims of sexual assault and their families.
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