A unanimous three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a preliminary injunction that had blocked President Trump's executive orders targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs across federal agencies and contractors. The ruling, handed down Friday from the Richmond-based court, found that a Maryland federal judge erred in granting the injunction—and vacated it entirely.
The orders can now go into effect.
This marks the second time this same panel has overruled Judge Adam B. Abelson, who first issued a nationwide injunction that the Fourth Circuit batted down in March 2025, and then granted a preliminary injunction that met the same fate Friday. The pattern is hard to miss: a lower court judge attempting to freeze executive action, and an appellate panel—unanimously—telling him he got it wrong.
Chief Judge Albert Diaz, an Obama appointee, authored the opinion. That detail matters. This wasn't a panel of Trump-appointed judges running interference for the administration. Diaz wrote that the president possesses the authority to set policy priorities and direct funding accordingly. Diaz went further, framing the legal question with a clarity that should embarrass the coalition of plaintiffs who brought this challenge:
"President Trump has decided that equity isn't a priority in his administration and so has directed his subordinates to terminate funding that supports equity-related projects to the maximum extent allowed by law."
"Whether that's sound policy or not isn't our call. We ask only whether the policy is unconstitutionally vague for funding recipients."
The answer, evidently, was no. The orders stand. A president directed his administration to stop spending money on programs he considers counterproductive, and the judiciary acknowledged—correctly—that this falls squarely within executive authority.
Baltimore's mayor and city council, the American Association of University Professors, and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education sued the Trump administration, claiming the executive orders violated provisions of the First and Fifth Amendments, according to The NY Post. Justice Department attorneys countered that the DEI programs and initiatives ran afoul of federal civil rights legislation.
Consider the plaintiff roster for a moment. A city government, a professors' association, and an organization whose entire existence depends on DEI hiring. These are not disinterested parties seeking constitutional clarity. They are institutional beneficiaries of the exact funding stream the executive orders target. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education doesn't survive a world without DEI mandates. Their lawsuit wasn't about the Constitution. It was about the payroll.
And twice now, a federal appeals court has told them they don't have the legal ground they thought they did.
President Trump signed the first DEI-related executive order on Day One, directing federal departments and agents to cut equity-related grants and contracts. A subsequent order mandated that federal contractors certify they don't promote DEI. Together, the orders represent a comprehensive unwinding of the equity infrastructure that had metastasized across the federal government—embedded in grant requirements, contractor certifications, and agency mission statements.
The premise is straightforward: taxpayer dollars shouldn't fund programs that sort Americans by race. Federal civil rights law was written to prevent discrimination, not to institutionalize a new version of it under friendlier branding. The Justice Department made exactly this argument, and the Fourth Circuit let the orders proceed.
Judge Abelson has now been reversed twice on the same set of executive orders by the same appellate panel. First, his nationwide injunction was struck down in March. Then his preliminary injunction was vacated Friday. At a certain point, the record speaks for itself. Lower court judges who fashion themselves as a one-man veto on presidential policy will find the appellate courts less sympathetic than the press.
This is the broader problem with judicial resistance to executive action on DEI. Judges who block these orders aren't applying neutral constitutional principles—they're substituting their policy preferences for those of the elected president. The Fourth Circuit, to its credit, drew the line clearly.
Chief Judge Diaz, while ruling in the administration's favor, couldn't resist some editorial commentary of his own. In a concurring opinion, he wrote a lengthy footnote criticizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio for issuing instructions to end the use of Calibri font in official State Department documents. Diaz noted that Rubio had offered practical reasons for the change—that an alternative font presented a more professional typography for diplomatic correspondence and that Calibri had not meaningfully improved reader accessibility. So far, so reasonable. As Diaz himself acknowledged:
"Had the Secretary left it there, I would applaud him, particularly since our court favors his font choice." "But leave it there, he couldn't. Instead, the Secretary lashed out at his predecessor for imposing yet another 'illegal, immoral, radical [and] wasteful [diversity initiative]' before ordering Calibri's demise."
Diaz also characterized the administration's broader posture with some flair:
"The Administration's obsession over so-called 'woke' DEI programs appears to know no bounds."
It's a colorful aside. But note what happened in the actual ruling: Diaz ruled for the administration anyway. Whatever personal reservations he harbors about the tone of the anti-DEI push, he recognized the law doesn't hinge on whether judges find the president's rhetoric tasteful. The footnote is a judge venting. The opinion is a judge doing his job.
With the preliminary injunction vacated, the executive orders directing federal agencies to terminate equity-related funding are fully operational. Federal contractors face the certification requirement. The DEI apparatus that had woven itself into the federal bureaucracy—grant by grant, contract by contract, office by office—no longer has a judicial shield.
The institutional left will search for another venue, another judge, another theory. That's the playbook: litigate, delay, forum-shop, repeat. But the Fourth Circuit has now ruled twice, unanimously, with an Obama-appointed chief judge writing both times. The legal terrain is narrowing for those who want to keep DEI entrenched in federal spending.
In his concurring opinion, Diaz addressed those on the losing side of the ruling directly:
"keep the faith" and "depend on the Constitution, which remains a beacon."
Sound advice—though perhaps not in the way Diaz intended. The Constitution doesn't guarantee federal funding for programs that classify Americans by skin color. It doesn't enshrine DEI as a protected government function. And it doesn't empower district court judges to override a president's spending priorities because they disagree with his worldview.
The Fourth Circuit understood that. The plaintiffs—Baltimore's politicians, the professors' lobby, the diversity officers fighting for their own relevance—did not. Two injunctions attempted. Two injunctions vacated. The executive orders stand, and the DEI industry just lost its last line of legal defense in the Fourth Circuit.
The Constitution held. It just didn't hold what they wanted it to.
```