Four LGBTQ+-inclusive arts organizations have sued the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) over its implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive orders blocking federal funds for anything that promotes “gender ideology.” The lawsuit, filed by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), represents the first time a legal challenge against Trump’s order has been filed by artists.

The groups’ lawsuit points out that NEA grants used to be awarded for projects showing “artistic excellence and artistic merit,” The Hill reported. However, since these organizations want to produce artworks that “affirm transgender and nonbinary identities and experiences,” Trump’s order requires the NEA to preemptively deny them funds, violating the artists’ constitutional rights to free speech, due process and equal treatment under the law.

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“This lawsuit seeks to enjoin an unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power that has sowed chaos in the funding of arts projects across the United States, causing grievous irreparable harm to Plaintiffs and other organizations,” wrote ACLU lawyer Lynette Labinger.

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“The vagueness of the prohibition requires them to guess as to what if anything they can create, produce, or promote that addresses themes of gender, or that affirms the identities of all people regardless of their gender identity,” Labinger added.

The artist organizations represented by the ACLU include Rhode Island Latino Arts; the National Queer Theater in Brooklyn, New York, which supports queer artists; the Theater Offensive of Boston, Massachusetts, which produces queer stage works; and the nonprofit Theatre Communications Group.

Other artists have recently spoken out against Trump’s attempts to censor and control artistic expression.

In February, Trump appointed MAGA loyalists to the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. who quickly elected Trump as the board chairman. Trump then immediately declared a new “golden age of arts and culture” free of drag shows and “anti-American propaganda.”

In response, musician Ben Folds announced his resignation as artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra. Black LGBTQ+ ally Issa Rae cancelled her upcoming performances at the center. Fellow ally Shonda Rhimes, the accomplished Hollywood writer, producer and television executive, also resigned from the Kennedy Center board in response.

Trump then cancelled a concert with the National Symphony Orchestra associated with WorldPride, the biennial LGBTQ+ gathering scheduled for May. The show, titled “A Peacock Among Pigeons,” was scrubbed from the Kennedy Center’s website and ticketing system. In its place, the center scheduled a chorus made up of people arrested for participating in the January 6, 2001 U.S. Capitol riots. Rioters injured over 100 police officers while trying to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. Trump pardoned all arrestees serving sentences for their participation.

Recently, producers with the Black hip-hop historical musical Hamilton announced their cancellation of a planned 2026 engagement at the center.

In late February, the Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue run by the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington D.C., canceled two upcoming shows featuring Black and LGBTQ+ artists. According to the participants, the exhibitions were canceled to comply with Trump’s executive order rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts from the federal government.

In late February, a federal judge temporarily blocked elements of Trump’s DEI executive orders affecting federal contractors, grantees, publicly traded corporations and large universities, calling them “textbook viewpoint-based discrimination.”

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