The employees were offered resignation options after Trump’s order targeting DEI.
ALEXANDRIA, Va.—A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on March 31 to keep a group of intelligence community employees on administrative leave.
“Defendants, and any of Defendants’ officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, as well as other persons who are acting in concert with them, be, and the same hereby are, ENJOINED from effectuating or implementing any decision to terminate the Plaintiffs without further Court authorization,” an order from U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga
read.
Trenga also ordered that the administration consider “any plaintiffs’ request for reassignment for open or available positions, in accordance with their qualifications and skills.”
The administration had offered certain employees multiple resignation options after President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
During a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, Trenga partially granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, stating that they faced the prospect of irreparable harm without an order.
Kevin Carroll, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the judge that Trump had defamed the employees by suggesting they engaged in unlawful behavior.
The
filing in support of a preliminary injunction points to a Jan. 21 order in which Trump stated that “illegal DEI and [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding federal civil rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
