The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) has sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) seeking documents related to President Trump’s “Executive Order Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping,” which bans federal contractors and employees from participating in and implementing trainings that educate about race and gender bias and structural racism. The FOIA request seeks to determine on what basis the Administration concluded that such a misguided Executive Order (EO) was appropriate, and what steps have been taken to implement it.
“The President’s Executive Order continues this Administration’s dangerous practice of re-writing the nation’s history of slavery and endemic anti-Black racism and denying the generational impact of structural racism and gender discrimination that continues to this day,” said Janai Nelson, LDF’s Associate Director-Counsel. “At a time when our country is being forced to confront the systemic barriers that have profoundly impacted communities of color and women for centuries, this Administration continues to move in the opposite direction by banning federal contractors and employees from using trainings or materials that would educate them on these issues.”
The request to OMB seeks information in six areas:
The EO takes aim at federal agencies, grant programs, and contractors – forbidding them from engaging in programs and trainings that promote diversity and inclusion and conditioning federal funding on adherence to a prescribed belief system. The EO also threatens penalties against a supervisor or employee who authorizes or approves such trainings.
Read the FOIA requests here.
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.
