Stainnak v. Trump

The ACLU of DC is representing dozens of federal workers -- including a plaintfill from Maine -- who were targeted in Trump's purge of federal employees associated with DEI initiatives.

The ACLU of DC has filed a class action complaint in response to the Trump administriation's termination of federal employees who were perceived to be associated with DEI programs. The named plaintiff in the complaint, Mahri Stáinnak, is from the Portland, Maine area.

On his first day in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Orders 14151 and 14173, which instructed the Office of Personnel Management to terminate all government activities related to DEI and mandated that federal agencies compile lists of the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion ("DEI") programs and activities in existence as of November 4, 2024.

As a result of those orders, the federal government quickly unleashed a wave of adverse employment actions, up to and including termination, against employees across the entire government. The workers whom the Trump administration targeted were those employees it perceived as being associated with DEI, including those who no longer performed any DEI-related activities in their current positions and those whose only DEI-related activity was involvement in a training or employee resource group.

We represent almost a dozen employees from across the government — from the FAA, the CDC and NIH, to the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, and Labor — subjected to this purge. Together with our co-counsel, in March 2025 we filed a class action complaint before the Merit System Protection Board, challenging the targeting of DEI-associated workers as unconstitutional retaliation based on perceived (left-leaning, or anti-Trump) political beliefs in violation the First Amendment, and as employment discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 primarily based on its disparate impact on workers of color and workers who are women or non-binary. Our MSPB complaint was filed in tandem with numerous charges of discrimination filed by our clients with their Equal Employment Opportunity offices.

Our clients are asking the Board to reinstate them and their fellow class members to their jobs and to make them whole for the wages they have lost and other damages they have suffered.