A federal judge in California has barred three cabinet departments from enforcing anti-DEI conditions on billions of dollars in federal grants to eleven local governments across the West Coast, the latest courtroom obstacle to the Trump administration's effort to strip diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from the grant pipeline.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued a 68-page preliminary injunction blocking the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and the Interior from requiring the plaintiff cities and counties to certify they do not operate DEI programs as a condition of receiving congressionally approved funding. The order keeps those conditions frozen while the underlying lawsuit moves forward.
The ruling covers eight cities, Fresno, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Santa Cruz, Stockton, Beaverton, Corvallis, and Hillsboro, and three counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara. At least three of those cities sit in Oregon, raising its own jurisdictional questions the court apparently resolved in the plaintiffs' favor.
Orrick's order did not hold back. He sided squarely with the municipalities, finding that the administration's grant conditions likely run afoul of both the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act.
As the New York Post reported, Orrick wrote in his order:
"What defendants seek to do likely violates the Constitution (separation of powers and Spending Clause) and the Administrative Procedures Act."
He went further, quoting the plaintiffs' own argument and then endorsing it directly:
"Plaintiffs maintain that '[n]othing in the Constitution or federal statutes authorizes Defendants to impose the Challenged Conditions, or anything of the kind, on funds administered through congressional grant programs.' I agree."
That framing puts the dispute where the court wants it: not as a debate over whether DEI programs are good policy, but as a question of who holds the federal purse strings. Orrick's answer, Congress, not the executive branch, is a familiar one in separation-of-powers law. Whether it holds up on appeal is another matter entirely.
The challenged grant requirements went beyond DEI certifications alone. The administration also attached conditions encouraging cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and requiring compliance with executive orders related to federal grants. Orrick found that many of these new requirements "have nothing to do with or contradict the Congressional purpose" behind the grant programs they were attached to.
That finding matters. The Spending Clause has long required that conditions on federal money bear a reasonable relationship to the purpose of the grant. When an administration tacks on unrelated policy demands, whether on immigration cooperation or ideological certifications, courts have historically been skeptical. Orrick followed that pattern.
He also found that blocking the grants would cause real harm on the ground. From his order:
"The result of their imposition of the challenged conditions would irreparably injure plaintiffs and their ability to provide critical services, as well as would threaten public safety."
And he framed the public interest in blunt terms:
"So does the general public, which is interested in seeing its communities receive funding for critical infrastructure and public safety initiatives, funding that is paid for by their federal tax dollars."
Orrick's ruling does not stand alone. A separate federal court in Seattle recently issued its own decision blocking comparable anti-DEI grant conditions imposed by other federal agencies. The specific judge, case name, and date of that Seattle ruling were not detailed, but the direction is clear: West Coast federal courts are proving to be a reliable forum for progressive local governments looking to block the administration's conditions in court.
That is not an accident. Forum shopping is as old as federal litigation itself. Cities and counties that object to executive branch policy know which districts are most likely to grant relief, and they file accordingly. The result is a growing patchwork of injunctions that may eventually force the issue to an appellate court, or higher.
The Justice Department is expected to appeal, though no named official has publicly confirmed that intention. An appeal would land at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a venue that has not historically been friendly to Trump administration arguments on executive power.
What Orrick's order does not do is resolve the underlying policy question that millions of Americans care about: whether the federal government should be funding DEI programs at all. His ruling is procedural. It says the executive branch likely overstepped its authority by attaching conditions Congress never authorized. It does not say those conditions are bad policy. It does not say DEI programs deserve federal money. It says Congress gets to decide.
That distinction matters for conservatives who want the federal government to stop subsidizing race-conscious bureaucracies. The path forward is not executive fiat stapled to existing grant programs. It is legislation, or, at minimum, conditions that Congress itself writes into the appropriations process. Orrick's order, whatever one thinks of his reasoning, makes that point clearly enough.
The 11 plaintiff governments, meanwhile, get to keep collecting federal dollars without certifying anything about their DEI operations. The billions at stake continue to flow. The underlying lawsuit continues. And the administration's anti-DEI push on the West Coast sits frozen in place, waiting for the next round of briefing.
Several loose ends remain. The precise dollar amount of grants affected by the injunction has not been disclosed. The specific executive orders the administration tried to impose as grant conditions have not been publicly identified in connection with this case. And the jurisdictional basis for a California federal court issuing orders that protect Oregon cities, Beaverton, Corvallis, and Hillsboro, has not been explained in available reporting.
None of the three defendant departments, DHS, DOJ, or Interior, have made public statements responding to the ruling. That silence may not last long if an appeal is filed.
The Trump administration has faced a string of courtroom setbacks over its efforts to reshape federal grant policy through executive action. Judges across the country have questioned whether the White House can unilaterally rewrite the terms of programs that Congress funded for specific purposes. Orrick's ruling fits that pattern neatly.
For conservatives, the frustration is understandable. DEI programs have become embedded in local government operations across blue states and cities, funded in part by federal taxpayers who never voted for them. The impulse to use grant conditions as leverage against those programs is politically popular and substantively defensible. But leverage that courts keep stripping away is not leverage at all, it is a talking point.
If the administration wants to end federal subsidies for DEI, it needs Congress to do the work. Executive orders bolted onto existing grant programs have now been blocked by multiple federal judges on both constitutional and statutory grounds. The legal theory is not holding up. The policy goal deserves a vehicle that will.
Good intentions do not survive bad process. If you want to defund DEI, write the law, don't just staple a memo to someone else's appropriation and hope a judge looks the other way.
