National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants are not required to comply with President Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology”, a Rhode Island federal court ruled on Friday, per the New York Times. The court determined that the new policy, which would have been in effect while reviewing grant applicants, was a violation of the US Constitution.
New regulations introduced in February said federal funds “shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” including “the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.” This was applied to the NEA grant application process.
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A lawsuit was filed in March by the ACLU’s Rhode Island branch on behalf of several theaters, claiming that the NEA’s new policy would limit the kind of works that can be shown—a violation of the groups’ First Amendment rights.
The complaint stated that the executive order was an “unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power that has sowed chaos in the funding of arts projects across the United States.”
Several productions were impacted by this executive order, according to the suit, with the theater groups having produced or supported transgender and nonbinary peoples and storylines.
Judge William E. Smith, a senior district judge appointed by former President George W. Bush, additionally pointed out in his ruling that the 1965 law that created the endowment detailed provisions that grants be awarded on merit alone.
In April, after the lawsuit was filed, a “final notice” was issued by the agency detailing a new procedure wherein the NEA chair would review grant applications on a “case-by-case” basis to determine “artistic excellence and merit, including whether the proposed project promotes gender ideology.”
The Rhode Island court said the procedure was still in violation of the First Amendment, however, “With the Final Notice in effect, projects deemed to promote gender ideology are less likely to be approved for N.E.A. funding.” Adding, “The Final Notice is thus a restriction on artists’ speech, and one that is viewpoint based, because it assigns negative weight to the expression of certain ideas on the issue of gender identity.”