Center for Constitutional Rights Sues Trump Admin for Records on Implementation of Anti-Trans Executive Orders

Raft of orders targets the LGBTQIA+ community more broadly; transparency needed to tally harm, assess legality

March 5, 2026, New York - The Center for Constitutional Rights today filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the federal government to release records related to multiple executive orders issued by President Trump last year that target the LGBTQIA+ community - particularly those who are trans, gender nonconforming, two-spirit, and nonbinary or intersex - for systematic erasure and exclusion from public life. The suit stems from the failure of thirty government agencies to comply with a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It aims to shed light on this administration's implementation of these orders and their impact.

In January and February 2025, President Trump signed eight executive orders so sweeping in breadth and scope that they prompted the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention to issue a warning that the United States was in the "early to mid stages" of a genocide against trans and intersex people.

The executive orders and their implementation have caused widespread harm, ranging from the termination of all federally funded research on trans and intersex people, to the defunding of hospitals and medical centers serving members of the trans community and other rollbacks to healthcare, to the removal of protections against discrimination in housing, healthcare, education, and employment, to eliminating access by trans and intersex people to public facilities and activities including bathrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, and the military. The orders seek to eliminate recognition of intersex identity and normalize nonconsensual surgeries on intersex infants and children. The Trump administration has also sought to remove all references to trans people from government websites, state educational curricula, and even the National Stonewall Monument.

The orders are a centerpiece of the administration's systematic assault on the rights and well-being of trans people in particular, directly lifted from the pages of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's governing playbook for overturning the fundamental pillars of democracy and American life. The harm posed by the executive orders extends well beyond members of the trans and intersex communities: anyone may be subjected to invasive testing or asked to "prove" their gender in order to gain access to public facilities or activities like school sports.

The executive orders have already faced constitutional challenges on an array of grounds, including freedom of speech, equal protection, and separation of powers. Provisions of some orders have already been struck down as unconstitutional, while other provisions, ruled likely unconstitutional, have been preliminarily enjoined. The release of the records at the heart of this lawsuit will help advocates, journalists, and the public assess their legality. They will also aid members of the public who are LGBTQIA+ themselves - estimated at nearly ten percent of the population - in understanding the level of threat they face as a result of the Trump administration's animus-driven attacks.

"These executive orders are a modern-day rollback of civil rights before our eyes," said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney and Justice Fellow Celine Zhu. "Moreover, it is also erasure-of LGBTQIA+ people and their contributions throughout this country's history and our society today. It has to be documented, for both the public and history's sake."

This lawsuit seeks records regarding the implementation of the following anti-LGBTQIA+ executive orders:

• Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
• Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation
• Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness

• Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports
• Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
• Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities
• Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias
• Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling

The lawsuit also seeks records regarding the drafting and peer review process of a medically inaccurate report published by the Department of Health and Human Services regarding healthcare for trans youth.

Despite the vast number of government documents responsive to the FOIA requests, most federal agencies have produced no records at all. The small number of documents produced to date - 309 pages out of what it suggested were 50,000 pages of relevant records - have been irrelevant or heavily redacted.

For more information, please see the case page.

The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn more at ccrjustice.org. Follow the Center for Constitutional Rights on social media: Center for Constitutional Rights on Facebook, @theCCR on Twitter, ccrjustice on Instagram, and @ccrjustice.org on Bluesky.