Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, AGENCY NEWS—New lawsuits challenge DEI and DEIA eliminations, transgender purges from military, and Musk and company actions, (Mar 19, 2025)

By Pamela Wolf, J.D.

Nonpartisan career civil servants at the Veterans Administration were allegedly “targeted because of their assumed beliefs about a domestic political issue which was unrelated to the performance of their duties in serving Veterans.”

In three unrelated, new lawsuits filed in March, the Trump Administration is facing challenges to its actions in seeking to eliminate “DEI” and “DEIA” programs in federal government, and prohibiting transgender people from serving in the military, as well as the controversial actions and failure to uphold certain duties by “special Government employee” Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency, and the Offices of Government Ethics and Management and Budget.

DEI firings at VA’s OEA: Doe 1-6 v. Collins. A group on “nonpartisan career civil servants,” working in the Veterans Benefits Administration’s (VBA) Office of Equity Assurance (OEA) to serve veterans, filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief against the Secretary of Veterans Affairs seeking relief under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, raising free speech, due process, and equal protection claims.

Attacking purported DEI and DEIA programs. The civil servants allege that the focus of OEA “was to ensure equity in delivery of VBA benefits and services to all Veterans.” They challenge the actions taken in the wake of President Trump’s Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which described DEI and DEIA programs as “illegal and immoral.” The complaint points to a January 21, 2025, White House statement, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, which described DEIA programs as ‘dangerous’ and causing ‘disastrous consequences,’ ‘demeaning and immoral,’ ‘illegal,’ and violative of civil rights laws, undermining of ‘national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values... in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,’ resulting in ‘disastrous consequences’ on the basis of ‘pernicious discrimination.”’

The complaint further alleges that in a January 21, 2025, Memorandum, the Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), directed “federal agencies to take prompt actions regarding the offices and agency sub-units focusing exclusively on DEIA initiatives and programs, including sending agency-wide notices to employees informing them of the closure and sending notifications to all employees of DEIA offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave immediately as the agency takes steps to close and end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs.” On January 22, the Acting Secretary of the VA sent an email to all employees at the VA as directed.

OEA office shut down. On January 22, 2025, the OEA office was closed/shut down. On January 24, OPM issued a memorandum, Guidance Regarding RIF of DEIA Offices (addressed to Heads and Acting Heads of Department and Agencies), which informed agencies to take action to terminate, to the maximum extent of the law, all DEIA offices and positions within 60 days. Agencies were also told to begin issuing RIF notices to all employees of DEIA offices immediately. The civil servants cite correspondence pursuant to which administrative action was directed, including their termination, and procedures through which they were to be able to seek other positions, that did not effectively materialize. In terminating the civil servants, the agency, among other things, failed to follow the RIF procedures and failed to complete the Standard Form 8 that allows employees to apply for unemployment benefits, according to the civil servants.

Free speech claim. In their free speech claim, the civil servants call the Trump Administration’s actions a ‘blatant and egregious form of content discrimination’ and ‘subject to strict scrutiny.’ The civil servants’ identification as “DEIA” employees are allegedly contrary to their constitutional right under the First Amendment to free speech. “They were targeted because of their assumed beliefs about a domestic political issue which was unrelated to the performance of their duties in serving Veterans,” the complaint states. “The DEIA designation of OEA as a DEIA office and the Plaintiffs as DEIA staff constitute viewpoint discrimination because it singled out and punished Plaintiffs for their perceived association with and advocacy on behalf of DEIA policies. The fact that the VA prepared a plan to reassign the Plaintiffs and presented it to senior leadership at the Agency and OPM and that plan was rejected and the Agency was told to terminate the Plaintiffs as DEIA employees confirm that Plaintiffs were terminated in retaliation for their (assumed) belief about DEIA policies, a political issue disfavored by the new Administration.”

The civil servants contend that they were damaged by the agency’s erroneous identification of them as working in a DEI/DEIA position, placing them on administrative leave and terminating them, denying them reassignment offered to other agency employees who are subjected to a reduction in force, and reinstating them but again designating them as DEIA employees.

Other counts of the complaint raise APA and Fifth Amendment due process and equal protection claims.

The civil servants filed their lawsuits in the District of Columbia; the case is No. 1:25-cv-00760.

No transgender in military: Ireland v. Hegseth. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit are two transgender men who alleged that for years they have served the United States honorably and with distinction as members of the United States Air Force. While they have built their lives around their military service and hope to stay in the Air Force until retirement, because of the Trump Administration’s directives under EO 14183 on gender ideology, their future in the Air Force is in jeopardy. “Both have been placed on administrative absence and have been informed that they only can continue to serve if they do so in their birth sex (i.e., as women),” the complaint states. “It is not possible, though, for either Plaintiff to serve as a woman because each one has medically transitioned to be and live as a man.” Further, given the implementation timeline publicized by the White House, both Plaintiffs reasonably fear that, as early as March 26, 2025, involuntary administrative separation proceedings will be initiated against them due to their transgender status.”

The Air Force members contend that Trump Administration’s singling out of transgender people, including themselves, “to brand them as inherently immoral and unfit and to restrict their ability to serve in the military violates the Equal Protection component of the Fifth Amendment.” The complaint seeks declaratory and permanent injunctive relief against the implementation of the Trump Administration’s discriminatory directives, in general and as to the plaintiffs. The Air Force members “have a constitutional right not to be separated from military service based on their transgender status, a characteristic that has nothing to do with their fitness or ability to serve,” the complaint alleges.

The Air Force members brought their lawsuit in the District of New Jersey; the case is No. 1:25-cv-01918.

Elon Musk and DOGE: Citizens Against donald Trump, Inc. v. Trump. Citizens Against donald Trump, Inc. (CAT) filed a lawsuit against President Trump; Elon Musk, Agency Head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); the DOGE; Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); OMB; Doug Collins, Acting Director of the United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE); and OGE. CAT, which represents a wide range of U.S. citizens, challenges the creation and operation of DOGE under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The complaint also challenges:

• The designation of Musk as a special Government employee of DOGE, as declared by President Trump and the White House, as Musk has worked and held himself out in public as the “Agency Head” of DOGE, as defined in Section 2(b) of EO 14210, which allegedly contradicts the definition of a special Government employee under federal law as set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 202.

• Collins, as Acting Director of OGE, and OGE for failing to establish the framework for the public financial disclosure systems for the executive branch employees of DOGE—primarily in permitting Musk to be declared as a special Government employee which allows him to avoid full financial disclosures as any other government employee and acts in conspiracy with Trump and Musk in shielding Musk’s financial disclosures from the general public, CAT, and all other U. S. citizens.

• Vought and OMB because they are a part of DOGE as ordered by Trump in his original EO concerning DOGE, EO 14158, as well as Vought’s and OMB’s participation in DOGE’s illegal actions as evidenced in Trump’s successive 2nd and 3rd EOs, No. 14210, and No. 14219.

CAT filed its lawsuit in the Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division; the case is No. 4:25-CV-311.

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