The Trump administration is actively dismantling civil rights protections through executive orders and regulatory changes, significantly impacting nonprofits that advocate for marginalized groups, including racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. This shift diverts the core purpose of laws such as the Civil Rights Act from promoting equity to restraining it. As civil rights laws are manipulated, advocates must navigate a hostile legal environment. Notably, the administration has distorted the interpretation of the law, leading to policies that treat inclusion as discrimination, particularly against LGBTQ+ individuals, further marginalizing already vulnerable communities.
"It's incredibly Orwellian," Khadijah Silver, supervising attorney for civil rights at Lawyers for Good Government, told NPQ. "The way that they have twisted the language around the Civil Rights Act...to mean blind application of the law, with no analysis of circumstance and historical harms, which is a willfully inaccurate analysis."
For example, while the courts-including the Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County-have affirmed LGBTQ+ protections under Title VII, the Trump administration has undermined this ruling through executive order (EO) 14173, framing inclusive practices toward transgender individuals as violations of the very laws designed to protect them.
Scott Skinner-Thompson, a professor at University of Colorado Boulder Law School, told NPQ that, in effect, Trump has redefined "inclusion" as discrimination, rejecting Bostock and treating inclusive policies themselves as violations.
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