By April 4, Rhode Island District Judge William Smith plans to rule on the constitutionality of the National Endowment for the Arts’ recent amendment stating that projects deemed in support of “gender ideology” would not receive grant funding.
The NEA is a federal agency that provides grant funding for the arts and art education. The amendment to its legal funding requirements followed Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order stating that federal agencies “shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the federal funding of gender ideology.”
In early March, the American Civil Liberties Union, its R.I. chapter and two other attorneys filed a lawsuit against the NEA on behalf of four arts nonprofits, alleging that the organization’s restrictions on grant funding violate the First and Fifth Amendments, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.
After the lawsuit was filed, the NEA temporarily withdrew the amendment until the agency could determine how to implement Trump’s executive order. They plan to release an updated policy by April 30.
“If the NEA’s policy is allowed to stand, it will force hundreds of arts organizations across the country to censor themselves and apply for grants that do not necessarily represent the programs or projects they would like to engage in,” wrote Steven Brown, the executive director of the ACLU R.I., in an email to The Herald. “This would be a tremendous blow to the vitality and diversity of the arts community.”
With the grant application deadline on April 7, some artists have been left without guidance and are unsure whether they should apply for funding for projects that may contain themes of gender ideology.
Rhode Island Latino Arts, a leading plaintiff in the case, hopes to apply for a grant that may run counter to the NEA’s ban on “promoting gender ideology,” according to a press release from the ACLU.
But “because the NEA has now declared that they will not let applicants know whether they are going to impose this condition until after the grant application deadline has passed, RILA has been placed in an impossible position in applying for funds,” Steven Brown said in the press release.
“Without a court order clearly barring the NEA’s use of this unconstitutional criterion,” Steven Brown continued, “Rhode Island arts groups — and arts organizations across the country — will be left in an intolerable state of limbo.”
The NEA did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment.
