The Richmond-based Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Friday that President Trump's executive orders eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives across federal agencies and contractors can proceed. The New York Post reported that the three-judge panel vacated a preliminary injunction issued by a Maryland federal judge that had kept the orders on ice — a clean win for an administration that has made dismantling the DEI apparatus a signature priority.
The ruling landed with a clarity that the legal resistance to these orders has lacked from the start. Chief Judge Albert Diaz, an Obama appointee, wrote the opinion himself.
"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."
That's not a conservative pundit talking. That's the judge who ruled against the injunction, describing the executive orders in terms that sound a lot like a president simply doing his job.
Maryland federal judge Adam B. Abelson had blocked the orders not once but twice. He first granted a nationwide injunction, which this same Fourth Circuit panel struck down back in March 2025. Abelson then issued a preliminary injunction. The Fourth Circuit has now vacated that one, too.
The pattern is worth noting. A single district court judge repeatedly attempted to freeze a sitting president's policy directives — and was repeatedly told by the appellate court above him that he overstepped.
The lawsuit behind the injunction was brought by Baltimore's mayor and city council, the American Association of University Professors, and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. They argued the orders violated the First and Fifth Amendments.
The court was unpersuaded. The panel found that Trump "may determine his policy priorities and instruct his agents to make funding decisions based on them." Diaz posed the question plainly:
"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 most revealing portion of the ruling wasn't in the body of the opinion — it was buried in a footnote. Chief Judge Diaz used a lengthy aside to take a shot at Secretary of State Marco Rubio over his directive ending the use of the Calibri font in official State Department correspondence.
Diaz acknowledged that Rubio's stated reasons were sound — that his preferred fonts offered more professional typography and that Calibri hadn't meaningfully improved reader accessibility. Then Diaz noted that Rubio didn't stop there:
"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 wrote that the "Administration's obsession over so-called 'woke' DEI programs appears to know no bounds."
It's a curious thing for a judge to do — rule in the administration's favor on the actual legal question and then use the margins of his opinion to editorialize about the administration's tone.
The footnote reads less like jurisprudence and more like a judge who wanted to make sure his friends knew he didn't enjoy ruling this way. He even consoled "those disappointed by the outcome," urging them to "keep the faith" and "depend on the Constitution, which remains a beacon."
That's an unusual amount of pastoral care from an appellate opinion. But the ruling itself is what matters — and on the merits, it wasn't close.
Trump signed his first DEI-related executive order on Day One of his presidency, directing federal departments and agencies to cut equity-related grants and contracts.
A second order followed, mandating that federal contractors certify they don't promote DEI. Together, the orders represent the most direct challenge to the DEI infrastructure that spread through federal agencies and into the private sector over the past decade.
Justice Department attorneys argued that DEI programs and initiatives ran afoul of federal civil rights legislation — a position that reframes the entire debate. For years, the DEI industry operated under the assumption that its programs were the natural fulfillment of civil rights law. The administration's legal position inverts that claim: these programs don't advance civil rights — they violate them.
The plaintiffs in this case are instructive. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education exists to promote the very positions these officers target.
Baltimore's city leadership has presided over one of the most troubled cities in America while prioritizing equity language in grant applications. The American Association of University Professors has spent years defending campus orthodoxies that treat dissent as harm.
These aren't neutral parties defending constitutional principles. They are institutions whose funding streams and professional relevance depend on the survival of DEI.
This is now the second time the Fourth Circuit has sided with the administration on these orders. The March 2025 ruling striking down the nationwide injunction sent a signal. Friday's ruling confirmed it wasn't a fluke. All three judges — Diaz, Pamela A. Harris, and Allison Jones Rushing — concurred.
The unanimity matters. When an Obama-appointed chief judge writes the opinion vacating an injunction against a Trump executive order, the legal arguments against the order start looking thin.
The constitutional claims made by the plaintiffs — that directing federal funding priorities amounts to a First or Fifth Amendment violation — never carried the weight their proponents insisted they did. A president directing how federal money gets spent is not a constitutional crisis. It is governance.
The DEI industry had grown accustomed to operating as if its existence were constitutionally mandated — as if any attempt to defund or dismantle it were inherently unlawful. Courts are now systematically dismantling that assumption.
With the preliminary injunction vacated, the executive orders take effect. Federal agencies will resume implementing the directives to cut equity-related funding. Contractors will face certification requirements. The organizations that built their business models around DEI compliance are going to discover what happens when the federal spigot turns.
Judge Abelson has now been overruled twice on this issue by the same panel. Whether the plaintiffs seek further review remains to be seen, but the legal trend line is moving in one direction. The administration's position — that the president can set policy priorities and direct funding accordingly — is a principle so basic it's remarkable it required appellate litigation to affirm.
Chief Judge Diaz closed his concurrence by telling the disappointed to keep the faith. The faith he should have pointed them toward is simpler than he made it sound: elections have consequences, presidents set priorities, and courts interpret law — not feelings. The Fourth Circuit, to its credit, did exactly that.
