President Donald Trump speaks during a lunch with African leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The Trump administration played an illegal game of administrative whack-a-mole in order to fire certain federal workers, a lawsuit alleges.
During the first two days of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) initiatives as well as a follow-up executive order framing the break with DEI as in line with commitments to civil rights law.
Each order, and associated implementing directive, seeks to broadly limit federal government funding to states, counties, municipalities, agencies, and contractors — with clampdowns focused on programs and entities deemed to be promoting DEI initiatives. A series of related executive orders also target programs and entities that work toward LGBTQ and transgender advocacy.
Now, in a 58-page lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., several federal workers say they were specifically targeted under the auspices of a war on DEI that, in reality, was something else entirely.
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"In fulfilling their promise to purge the federal government of DEI, Defendants went far beyond ridding the government of DEI roles and initiatives," the lawsuit reads. Instead, they targeted individual employees for termination on the basis of (1) their perceived political beliefs or affiliation with former President Biden and the Democratic Party; (2) their actual or perceived race, gender, or gender identity; and (3) their actual or perceived advocacy for protected racial or gender groups (i.e., people of color, women, and/or LGBTQ people)."
In other words, the plaintiffs allege the Trump administration used the executive orders to justify firing federal workers for their DEI-related work, their past affiliations with such work, their political beliefs, and due to their innate – and legally protected – characteristics.
Such firings violate numerous laws, the plaintiffs say.
"The results were sweeping," the lawsuit goes on. "Pursuant to the anti-DEI EOs and their implementing directives, scores of federal employees were removed from the federal government on these unlawful bases."
The lawsuit alleges the firings violated the First Amendment's prohibition against retaliation over protected speech, in addition to several sections of federal law related to gender, race, civil rights advocacy, and various forms of discrimination.
Moreover, the plaintiffs say the government shored up these illegal moves by simultaneously violating internal protections for federal workers contained in the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA).
When the government initiates a reduction in force (RIF), the federal bureaucracy is essentially eliminating several positions due to "reorganization, including lack of work, shortage of funds," or similar, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Or as the Congressional Research Service explains: "A RIF action cannot be used to separate or demote any employee for an individual reason, such as employee performance or conduct."
Under the CSRA, federal workers are granted several levels of redress for when they are caught up in a RIF action — including notice, severance, and appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which adjudicates claims of unlawful firing.
Yet another CSRA benefit relevant to the litigation is the idea of priority placement elsewhere in the government.
The plaintiffs, for their part, reject the legality of the RIFs that occurred in the first year of the second Trump administration outright.
"First, while neutral on their face, these policies had an unlawful disparate impact on women and non-binary employees, and/or people of color," the lawsuit continues. "Second, Defendants initiated these policies with the intent to discriminate against, or maintained them with the knowledge of their impact on, protected groups of: (i) women and non-binary workers, and/or people of color and/or (ii) workers who advocated or were perceived to have advocated for Americans who are members of protected gender or racial groups."
They also say the pro-Trump bureaucracy that developed in the wake of the president's executive orders worked to further frustrate CSRA protections against RIFs — specifically the right to priority placement.
"The anti-DEI EOs and implementing directives also violate the CSRA," the lawsuit goes on. "Separating federal workers from federal service through a government-wide RIF that targets employees rather than positions disregards the safeguards inherent in federal RIF regulations and violates merit system principles."
And, the plaintiffs allege, the government went to great lengths to make sure the plaintiffs – and several others like them – were rooted out of their careers in order to implement the executive orders.
"[A] RIF is a last resort; agencies must make every effort to retain federal workers," the lawsuit continues. "To do so, agencies are advised to reassign them to other positions, even positions in other agencies, or retrain workers for needed positions, rather than allow workers to be separated from federal service."
The filing explains how this worked in practice, at length:
By contrast, the Administration affirmatively sought to fire [DEI]-associated individuals, even if those workers had previously moved on to other federal roles. Whereas a lawful RIF targets positions, not individual employees, Defendants unlawfully targeted individual employees for elimination by abusing the RIF process and ignoring the procedural safeguards attached to it. Federal employees who had transferred from, or were reassigned from, positions performing DEI work to other positions before January 20, 2025, found their transfers or reassignments cancelled. Some were involuntarily returned to their previous positions in DEI offices, only so that they could be separated through a RIF.
Such efforts, effectively tracking down workers deemed influenced by, supportive of, or otherwise related to DEI, violated several internal OPM regulations, according to the lawsuit.
"Agencies manipulated RIF procedures and regulations in various ways to ensure the removal of targeted workers," the filing goes on. "On OPM's orders, agencies issued RIF notices without any of the preparation OPM's own Handbook requires…Finally, agencies denied these federal workers their right to be considered for reassignment as required."
The lawsuit is seeking class certification for other workers beyond the four named plaintiffs – asking for reinstatement and damages.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee.