Chicago Women in Trades v. Donald J. Trump: Date Argued: January 30th, 2026; Docket Number: 25-2144

Case Summary:Chicago Women in Trades v. Donald J. Trump is a federal civil rights case in which Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit that trains and supports women entering skilled trades, sued President Donald J. Trump and several federal agencies in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to challenge two 2025 executive orders that seek to restrict and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and the case is now on appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, docket number 25‑2144, where it was argued on January 30, 2026.At the lower court level in Chicago, CWIT filed its complaint on February 26, 2025, against President Trump, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Justice, and their leaders, alleging that Executive Orders 14151 and 14173 unlawfully target and eliminate DEI initiatives in violation of the First Amendment (overbreadth, vagueness, and viewpoint discrimination; unconstitutional conditions on federal funds), the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (vagueness), the Spending Clause, and the Separation of Powers.CWIT alleged that, because it receives multiple federal grants to train predominately Black and Latina women for construction and related trades, the new executive orders’ “termination,” “certification,” and “enforcement threat” provisions—requiring grantees and contractors to certify they do not run programs promoting allegedly “unlawful DEI,” on pain of funding termination and False Claims Act exposure—would force CWIT either to shut down or radically change its programming and speech, chilling its advocacy and subjecting it to imminent loss of federal funds.In response to these alleged threats, CWIT moved for emergency relief; the district court first issued a temporary restraining order on March 27, 2025, temporarily barring the Department of Labor from cancelling or pausing CWIT’s grants or enforcing the challenged certification requirements under the executive orders, and on April 14–15, 2025, the court granted a preliminary injunction that prevented the government from terminating CWIT’s main grant and from requiring grantees or contractors to make the new certification, finding that CWIT was likely to succeed on the merits, faced irreparable harm, and had standing to challenge at least the termination and certification provisions.The district court declined, however, to broaden that injunction to cover all of CWIT’s federal funding streams, denying a motion to modify the injunction in May 2025 on the ground that CWIT had not shown a manifest error of law warranting expansion, while the federal defendants pursued dismissal and also noticed an appeal of the preliminary injunction to the Seventh Circuit, which opened appellate case No. 25‑2144 on July 8, 2025.In the present court, the Seventh Circuit is reviewing the district court’s preliminary injunction and related orders in Chicago Women in Trades v. Donald J. Trump, No. 25‑2144, with CWIT as plaintiff‑appellee and President Trump and federal agencies as defendants‑appellants, and oral argument on that appeal was held on January 30, 2026.