President Donald Trump waves while boarding Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026, as he heads back to Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
A federal judge in Oregon has blocked the Trump administration from tying disaster relief money to compliance with executive orders aimed at what the White House has described as “gender ideology.”
The dispute traces back to January 2025, when President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168. The order instructed federal agencies to halt funding for programs that, in the administration’s view, promote gender ideology and to ensure grant dollars are not used for that purpose.
The Department of Homeland Security later moved to carry out the directive by revising the standard terms and conditions attached to disaster relief grant programs. At the center of the legal fight is a 2025 and 2026 provision known as the “Discrimination Condition,” which was designed to embed the Trump administration’s policy priorities into those funding rules.
Under that condition, grant recipients must certify, among other requirements, that they “do not, and will not … operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology.”
The requirement surfaced in March in a public notice of funding opportunity for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program, commonly known as BRIC, a disaster preparedness and resilience grant program.
By June, the city of Salem, Oregon, had filed a 71-page lawsuit challenging the condition as unlawful and unconstitutional. The plaintiffs argued that DHS exceeded its authority by imposing the rule on BRIC funding, violated the separation of powers, and ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act in multiple respects.
“For the first time in the history of Congress’s disaster-assistance grant programs, DHS and FEMA have sought to leverage this critical funding to advance policy objectives unrelated to the purposes for which Congress appropriated it,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint.
Now, U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane, a Barack Obama appointee, in a 29-page opinion and order, has ruled in Salem’s favor.
“Because Salem establishes a strong likelihood of success on the merits of its claims, that they risk irreparable harm absent an injunction, and that the balance of equities sharply tilts in its favor, its Motion for Preliminary Injunction, is granted,” the order reads.
Even before formally analyzing the issue, the judge remarks that “it is hard to imagine the connection between the use of preferred pronouns and the fires currently burning through central Oregon.”
At the outset, in a standing discussion, the judge strongly hints at the incoming merits victory for the plaintiffs.
“The Hobson’s Choice the policy creates—having to accept unlawful grant conditions or forego millions in critical disaster funding—is an injury sufficient to create standing even though Salem has not been awarded funds yet,” McShane writes.
After that, the court quickly asserts its own jurisdiction by rubbishing an attempt by DHS to have the case analyzed as a contract claim.
“Because the sources of the rights underlying Salem’s claims are constitutional and statutory, and Salem seeks equitable relief to restore the status quo, Salem’s claims are not contract claims subject to the Tucker Act; this Court has jurisdiction,” the order goes on.
The court notes this case is hardly the first time funding conditions have been tied to executive orders that have little to do with the underlying funds during the second Trump administration.
“Several district courts have agreed with Salem in similar matters,” the order continues. “This Court joins the chorus. Salem demonstrates a likelihood of success on its constitutional and APA claims.”
On the merits, the court first addresses the separation of powers. Here, the judge essentially accuses DHS of trying to legislate.
“DHS’ argument that the Discrimination and EO Conditions simply require compliance with Title VI and nothing more is undermined by the separate requirement in the Standard Terms that obligate compliance with Title VI,” the court observes.
McShane elaborates:
The Conditions and the Title VI compliance requirement must represent separate demands. If the Discrimination and EO Conditions are meant only to highlight the existing requirement that recipients comply with Title VI, then the Conditions would be superfluous …[D]espite what DHS may suggest, “an agency regulation cannot create statutory authority; only Congress can do that.”
The court goes on to find the discrimination condition in violation of the spending clause because “grant recipients are unable to predict how DHS will enforce” it based on “vague” and “undefined terms.”
The court’s analysis then comes full circle to its introductory suspicion about the relatedness of the funding to the executive order.
“The Discrimination and Executive Order Conditions ask more from grant recipients than compliance with existing federal law—they demand submission to the Trump Administration’s own anti-DEI and ‘gender ideology’ policy agenda,” the order continues. “And the Termination Condition is counter to the programs’ purposes of providing orderly and reliable funding to states and local governments. DHS fails to argue any link between the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI crusade and helping communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. There is simply no nexus between the Challenged Conditions and the grant programs here.”
The post Judge torches Trump admin for ‘anti-DEI crusade’ and bars DHS from conditioning disaster relief funding on ‘vague’ and ‘unrelated’ efforts to combat ‘gender ideology’ first appeared on Law & Crime.
