On March 6, the American Civil Liberties Union, alongside its Rhode Island chapter and two other attorneys, filed a lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts after the agency placed gender ideology-based restrictions on federal funds. The ACLU is representing the lead plaintiff in the case, Rhode Island Latino Arts, and several other theater groups and arts organizations based in the northeast.
The NEA — a federal agency which provides grant funding for the arts and art education — recently amended its legal requirements for grant recipients, to state that projects deemed in support of “gender ideology” will not be funded. If grant recipients fail to comply with these new guidelines, the agency “may suspend or terminate” their award.
The amended regulations also initially stipulated that grant applicants were required to certify that they would not use federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” But on March 7, a day after the lawsuit was filed, the NEA lifted this restriction. But any projects that are construed as promoting gender ideology will not be awarded a grant.
The NEA’s restrictions come in the wake of President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order decrees that “agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the federal funding of gender ideology.”
The ACLU’s lawsuit alleges that the NEA’s implementation of the executive order violates the First Amendment and other federal statutes, as the order singles out a particular viewpoint — the promotion of “gender ideology” — and bans those that express this view from receiving federal funding.
The suit also argues that the NEA has violated the Fifth Amendment, as the agency’s requirement for compliance is “unconstitutionally vague” and fails to properly define what it means to promote gender ideology.
The NEA did not respond to a request for comment.
“The agency is only supposed to review applications based on artistic merit and excellence,” ACLU Spokesperson Zoe Chakoian wrote in an email to The Herald.
According to the NEA website, “artistic excellence and artistic merit are the two primary criteria specified by Congress” that the agency uses when selecting grant recipients.
Executive Director and Founder of the Rhode Island Latino Arts Marta Martínez said that she is filing the lawsuit “to support the arts community as a whole” and expressed her disapproval of the NEA’s restrictions.
“All our projects are designed to welcome all Latinx identities and experiences, especially those of recent immigrants and the diverse voices within Latinx and LGBTQ+ communities,” Martínez wrote in an email to The Herald. “If we take those away, we erase who we are.”
Members of the Theater Communications Group, a co-plaintiff represented in the lawsuit, have felt like their work has been affected by the NEA’s funding restrictions.
“Many mission-driven theaters supporting trans artists, artists of color and the LGBTQ+ community expressed that these restrictions directly conflicted with their values,” TCG Spokesperson Joshua Jenkins wrote in an email to The Herald.
“I would never ask any of our artists to be someone who they are not, to create artwork that does not reflect their lives and who they are,” Martínez added.