This past Monday, Public Citizen filed two more lawsuits in federal court to stop
illegal actions by the Trump regime.

These are our 20th and 21st lawsuits against the administration since Trump
returned to power.

LAWSUIT #20

We are suing to stop a new rule from Trump’s Department of Transportation that
prohibits asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients — immigrants who are
here legally and who are authorized to work — from getting, renewing, or even keeping existing commercial driver’s
licenses.

The rule was put in place just a few weeks ago, and is based on nothing other
than the fact that these workers are immigrants. It directly threatens the
livelihoods of nearly 200,000 truck drivers, bus drivers, and delivery drivers.
It will also hurt countless businesses, both large and small — as well as
schools and potentially millions of American consumers — that depend on these
drivers.

As we’ve seen in many other instances, this rule exposes the outright racism of
the Trump regime’s immigration policies. Far too many people have bought into
the lie — whether coming from Donald Trump himself, henchmen like Stephen
Miller, or propaganda outlets like Fox “News” — that the regime’s frenzied
pursuit of immigrants is focused on undocumented or “illegal” immigrants, or on
immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

But — again — this arbitrary, racist, and economically idiotic rule applies to
immigrants who are here legally and are authorized to work . As Wendy Liu, Public Citizen’s lead attorney on the case, noted to the
national media: “This unlawful rule seems intended to put people authorized to
work in the United States out of work, solely because of the prejudices of the
Trump administration.”

Public Citizen is representing two individual drivers as well as the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT), who are co-counsel in this case.

LAWSUIT #21

We are suing to block the Trump regime’s recent directive to a key civil rights
office not to investigate an entire category of civil rights violations.

For decades, it has been settled law that when a seemingly neutral employment
practice has a negative effect on one group of people more than another —
because of traits like race, sex, age, religion, national origin, sexual
orientation, or disability — it is a form of discrimination. Even if an employer
had no intent to discriminate, the practice may be unlawful. The legal term for
this type of discrimination is “disparate impact.”

For example, if a company required applicants to be at least six feet tall for a
job that could be done by someone of any height, that requirement would have a
disparate impact on women, who are, on average, shorter than men.

Well, last month the Trump administration just decided “never mind all that.”
Although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is required by law
to investigate all charges filed with it, the administration ordered EEOC staff
to stop investigating disparate impact claims.

This is yet another instance of the Trump regime’s Orwellian, up-is-down
fixation on cultural grievance. It would be absurd if it weren’t so alarming,
and we have to fight it with everything we’ve got.

Public Citizen — in partnership with Public Justice, FarmSTAND, and Towards
Justice — is representing a former Amazon delivery driver in this case. She
filed a charge with the EEOC alleging that Amazon’s denial of bathroom breaks
had a disparate impact on drivers with female anatomy. But the EEOC closed her
case without investigating.

MORE ABOUT TAKING THE TRUMP REGIME TO COURT

The Trump administration is unilaterally, unconstitutionally, and unlawfully
dismantling the federal government — our government — from Cabinet-level departments that have their own stately
buildings here in Washington, D.C., to smaller agencies that go largely
unnoticed as they do the routine, unheralded work that makes for a functioning
country.

Public Citizen is doing everything we can — within our modest means — to fight
back at every turn. It’s David and Goliath for sure, but we will never back
down. Even where we haven’t (yet) notched definitive victories in court, we are
slowing down the regime and making it work a lot harder in pursuit of its desire
for absolute power.

These latest cases are just two of the 21 lawsuits we have filed (so far)
against the administration since Trump returned to power. Are these lawsuits
alone enough to fully defeat Trump and MAGA? Of course not. But are they a
meaningful part of the pushback needed to collectively save our country? No
doubt about it.

What you and Public Citizen are doing together matters. What hundreds of other
organizations, big and small, are doing matters. What millions upon millions of
our fellow Americans are doing matters. We believe that to our core. We take
solace in that. And we draw inspiration from that. We hope you do, too.

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For progress,

- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen


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