Trump administration’s new policies for HUD, Health and Human Services grants cause ‘immediate harm,’ lawyer argues
This story was originally published in Rhode Island Current, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
PROVIDENCE — It took a little over an hour on Thursday for U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose to side with a coalition of housing and domestic violence prevention groups challenging federal grant restrictions under President Donald Trump’s administration.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this week after both the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) tweaked their grantmaking policies in recent months to potentially deny funding for programs that support DEI initiatives or serve LGBTQ+ individuals. Grant applicants would also need to certify that their funds would not be used to support projects that conflict with the administrative viewpoint.
But what DuBose called the “offending language” barring any funds for DEI-related efforts was stripped from the Health and Human Services’ grant policy around 1:30 p.m., right before the hearing started, according to Department of Justice Attorney Kevin Love Hubbard, who represented the federal government. HUD, he said, had not changed the language in its policy.
Kristin Bateman, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys and a senior counsel with Democracy Forward, argued that the court still needed to provide immediate relief as a grant deadline approaches on July 30.
DuBose granted a temporary restraining order for the coalition of 22 organizations, including six based in Rhode Island, against the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development. The motion for an injunction will work its way through a lengthier court process. Both the temporary order and the injunction were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Rhode Island in U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island in Providence on Monday. The Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, Democracy Forward, Jacobson Lawyers Group, and the National Women’s Law Center also represent the plaintiffs.
“The immediate harm is that [grantees] have to make this choice by Wednesday,” Bateman said. “For many of them, they have to either decide to accept these unlawful conditions…that are going to force them to change their programs that are going to be inconsistent with their values and their mission, or they have to turn down the the program funding, which would mean they don’t have the money anymore to support shelter and housing for victims of domestic violence.”
Bateman argued that the agencies’ new grant conditions “have nothing to do with the purposes of the grant programs that Congress established” and instead uplift “wholly unrelated ideological and policy goals of the administration.”
DuBose asked Bateman for clarity: “It’s just the virtue of even having to make this choice is what you’re arguing is the harm?”
Bateman agreed with DuBose’s summary of her argument, and DuBose agreed with the plaintiffs. But DuBose asked the plaintiffs’ legal team to “narrowly tailor” the requested relief so that it would affect only those whose funds were most immediately threatened. DuBose requested the revised order be submitted by Monday.
“We’re living in a time where there are rapidly changing circumstances,” DuBose said before she offered her ruling from the bench. “Even as we’re sitting here, things are changing.”
DuBose asked Bateman to consider the last-minute changes made by HHS before court, and whether they “changed the calculus” of what the plaintiffs were requesting, but the attorney said she didn’t think so.
“We all know what’s going on here,” Bateman offered. “It’s the same thing. We have an administration that wants to eradicate DEI, DEIA, from the government.”
The government’s viewpoint
Hubbard, who was filling in for a DOJ colleague, previously worked in private law on behalf of marginalized clients, including people of color and transgender people. He was appointed to the role of Civil Division Chief in the DOJ’s Rhode Island Office in January 2024, the same month that DuBose was nominated to her seat on the District Court.
In his arguments, Hubbard referenced DuBose’s July 1 ruling in favor of a multistate coalition against HHS.
“I don’t want to present you with any arguments you’ve already rejected, but I do think this case is a lot different than that one,” he said.
Hubbard pointed to plaintiffs who had not found the choice as impossible to make as their attorneys had described, like a Virginia-based grantee that accepted the DEI provisions, and the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness, which submitted its applications with the contested language struck out.
“The choice that they’re saying is impossible to make, some people have already made,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard also disputed Bateman’s argument that asking grantees to confirm their adherence with an administration’s ideology was a violation of the First Amendment.
“It essentially forces the grantees to adopt the administration’s view of gender,” Bateman said, referencing one of Trump’s executive orders on gender. “It basically takes the position that gender identity is not a thing. ‘We only do biological sex.’’”
Hubbard’s counterpoint: “As the plaintiff suggested, that the government’s viewpoint is quite different now than it was six months ago, but that in itself does not create a First Amendment violation.”
Later in the hearing, DuBose asked Hubbard how agencies should administer programs in light of new mandates which she paraphrased as, “You have to be anti-DEI or anti-woke.”
“So what happens in those instances?” DuBose continued. “There are some programs here that do not follow that straight line, where there actually is a tie in the congressional enabling statute that speaks to targeting and reaching out to minority groups or historically marginalized groups. Do you draw a line there in your analysis?”
“Respectfully, your honor, I’m not going to try and draw that line,” Hubbard said.
