Beginning the date of the inauguration on January 20, 2025, the Trump administration issued a series of anti-LGBTQIA+ executive orders, particularly restricting access to medical care, travel, identification documents, and public accommodations by trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming people. In addition to targeting LGBTQIA+ people, the executive orders impact the governmental and nongovernmental actors that serve them, including healthcare providers, researchers, and even law firms. These efforts have caused widespread fear among LGBTQIA+ people concerned about their ability to access healthcare, use restrooms and school locker rooms, obtain accurate federal identification documents, travel abroad, play on their school sports teams, serve in the military or access benefits associated with their service, or receive safe housing placements when in federal custody or federally managed social services and homelessness programs. The executive orders have also unleashed additional harms to LGBTQIA+ people of color, as well as people living with HIV/AIDS, and appear to be an expression of the administration’s animus towards LGBTQIA+ people, even though it is well-settled that pure animus against an unpopular group may never serve legitimate governmental interests.

Against this background, and concerned about the widespread deleterious impacts the implementation of these executive orders will have on an already marginalized population, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to 16 federal agencies seeking documents, correspondence, and data related to the intentions, planning, and actors behind the executive orders. CCR has historically represented LGBTQIA+ clients, particularly those seeking emergency shelter or in federal custody. We seek this information in order to better advise our clients in this moment of heightened precarity and confusion, and to prepare the LGBTQIA+ public for how the federal government plans to interpret and enforce these executive orders, and how that enforcement may impact their lives or inform their choices. We also seek this information in order to better understand the rationales and motives behind agency actions and interpretations of these executive orders, especially if those interpretations or enforcement actions are discriminatory in practice or intent. Our interests in these records are rooted in a desire for government transparency and prevention of discrimination.