WA counties sue feds over DEI ban tied to homeless, transit grants

(The Center Square) – Recently-added conditions to grant funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Transit Administration – an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation – have led to King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties participating in a lawsuit to prevent the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for public transit and homelessness assistance.

Eight total jurisdictions filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against the two departments on Friday. A temporary restraining order was filed on Monday to block HUD and FTA from enforcing the grant conditions.

King County is targeting both HUD's Continuum of Care Program and the FTA. Pierce and Snohomish counties are only targeting HUD funding.

At the center of the lawsuit is President Donald Trump’s Jan. 21 executive order that directs federal agency heads to ensure that any federal grant recipient does not run DEI programs.

In a Friday press release, acting King County Executive Shannon Braddock said the county is joining the lawsuit to ensure the Trump administration can’t “bully local governments to comply with their political agenda at the expense of being able to deliver critical services.”

The DEI order follows a pattern of executive actions taken by Trump so far this year that tie federal funds to local compliance on hot-button issues like immigration enforcement, including a separate order targeting sanctuary cities that don’t comply with federal immigration enforcement.

Following Trump’s slew of executive orders, HUD attached new conditions to Continuum of Care funding establishing that any recipient’s projects assisted with grant funding have to be governed by all current executive orders and cannot use grant funding to promote illegal immigration policies that seek to shield illegal immigrants from deportation.

The lawsuit claims that the new executive order conditions are vague and “unintelligible as applied to grant recipients,” because they fail to provide a fair notice of what is prohibited.

According to the lawsuit, King County relies on nearly $67 million in HUD Continuum of Care grant funding, Pierce County uses approximately $4.9 million, and Snohomish County receives nearly $16.7 million. These funds could jeopardize the number of supportive housing slots, shelter beds, and services these counties provide to its homeless population.

As for FTA funding, King County currently has over $446 million in grant funding. Losing access to this funding impacts transit services and improvements that the grant dollars go toward.

In the 2024 fiscal year, HUD awarded all eight plaintiffs a total of over $280 million in Continuum of Care grants. That total could now be jeopardized under the administration’s new conditions.

Braddock’s office added that if the county were to agree to the administration’s demands to eliminate DEI practices, any violation of the federal terms could make the county liable to the federal government for three times the amount of the grant.