The LGBTQ+ community is continuing to challenge the Trump administration’s latest executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ rights in court. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, and several other California advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint, brought in partnership withLambda Legal, argues that the orders violate the First and Fifth Amendments and unlawfully threaten the existence of programs that provide life-saving services to marginalized communities.
“These executive orders aren’t just policy shifts; they are existential threats to our mission,” said Dr. Tyler TerMeer, CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, a lead plaintiff in the case, in an interview with The Advocate on Friday. “They dismantle decades of progress, undermine public trust, and directly endanger the lives of the communities we serve.”
At issue are orders signed by President Donald Trump that erase federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, gut diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and strip funding from organizations that serve LGBTQ+ communities and people of color. The administration has instructed federal agencies to defund organizations that “promote gender ideology” and to rescind DEI-based grants, moves that civil rights groups say amount to censorship and discrimination.
Related: What can trans people do about Trump’s executive orders? Be plaintiffs, says Lambda Legal
“These orders are not about fairness or efficiency,” Lambda Legal lead counsel Jose Abrigo told The Advocate. “They are calculated attempts to erase trans people from public life and to gut civil rights protections. The government is attempting to dictate what can and cannot be said, punishing organizations that refuse to comply.”
TerMeer described the immediate fallout of these orders on SFAF’s clients. “We’ve had transgender and nonbinary folks terrified about losing access to health care through our clinics. People are asking if their housing vouchers will disappear if their hormone replacement therapy is safe if they should refill their prescriptions now in case services are cut off,” he said. “We had to ask ourselves—do we comply and risk endangering lives, or do we fight? And for us, the only option was to fight.”
TerMeer emphasized that the organization had been preparing for the impact of these policies since before the inauguration. “Almost immediately after the inauguration, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation started to get really worried. All of these executive orders started coming out, and we realized immediately that these were an existential threat to our mission,” he said. “They weren’t just going to be administrative obstacles, but orders that threatened to dismantle decades of progress and the trust we had built with the communities most impacted by HIV.”
The lawsuit contends that the administration’s actions violate free speech protections by barring discussions of systemic discrimination, effectively forcing organizations to abandon their missions or risk losing critical funding. It also alleges that the policies violate the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by targeting transgender people and communities of color. Other plaintiffs in the case include GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality, the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, and the LGBTQ+ Bar Association, all arguing that the orders create unconstitutional barriers to their work advocating for marginalized communities.
This case is part of Lambda Legal’s broader legal strategy to challenge Trump’s escalating attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. Earlier this month, the organization filed lawsuits against the administration’s ban on transgender military service and its rollback of health care protections for trans youth. Speaking to The Advocate in a recent interview, Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings called the executive orders “a blatant power grab” and urged affected people to come forward as plaintiffs. “We can’t just say these policies are bad—we need people who are harmed to step up and fight back,” Jennings said. “That’s how we win.”
Related: Civil rights groups sue Trump over executive orders targeting DEI & transgender people
The lawsuit also follows a similar legal challenge filed in Washington, D.C., this week by the National Urban League, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and AIDS Foundation Chicago. That case, also backed by Lambda Legal, argues that the administration’s DEI ban and trans-erasure policies disproportionately harm Black and LGBTQ+ communities, restricting free speech and violating constitutional protections.
As part of the administration’s sweeping policy changes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun removing HIV-related resources from government websites, citing the executive order’s prohibition on references to “gender ideology.” An internal directive to eliminate references to gender identity called for the removal of critical HIV information, even when it did not explicitly mention transgender people. The decision has drawn fierce condemnation from public health experts and LGBTQ+ advocates, who warn of severe consequences for communities already disproportionately affected by the HIV epidemic. The move follows earlier removals of LGBTQ+ content from federal websites, including resources on HIV prevention, treatment, and equity initiatives, sparking concerns that the administration is prioritizing ideology over science.
Related: Trump’s anti-transgender executive orders force CDC to remove HIV resources
Abrigo emphasized that these legal battles are about more than just policy—they are about survival. “The administration is trying to make trans people disappear by pretending they don’t exist. They’re erasing data, eliminating protections, and now they’re targeting the organizations that provide life-saving services,” he said. “This is not just a legal fight. This is a fight for people’s lives.”
TerMeer pointed to the fear and confusion sown by these policies as clients of the SFAF scrambled to understand how the executive orders would impact them. “We saw people asking if their social support groups would be shut down if their housing assistance would disappear overnight,” he said. “There was an immediate sense of instability and anxiety about what would happen next.”
Abrigo stressed the long-term dangers of the administration’s efforts to erase data on marginalized communities. “Public policy is built on data. If the data doesn’t reflect the reality of trans people and people of color, then the policies won’t either,” he said. “That’s exactly what this administration wants—to pretend these communities don’t exist so they don’t have to serve them.”
With courts now the primary battleground for LGBTQ+ rights under the Trump administration, advocates are urging the community to stay engaged. TerMeer had a direct message for concerned community members: “We will not stop fighting until every person—no matter their identity—can live with dignity, safety, and respect.”
