In a major legal test concerning freedom of speech in the arts, more than a dozen organizations have joined in “friend of the court” briefs in support of the ACLU and ACLU of Rhode Island’s legal challenge to a certification requirement that the National Endowment for the Arts imposed last year on grant applicants. The NEA grant guidelines required applicants to attest that they would not “promote gender ideology,” and blocked any projects that did so from getting an award. The briefs were filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in the government’s appeal of the case, Rhode Island Latino Arts [RILA] v. National Endowment for the Arts [NEA].
Agreeing with the ACLU’s legal arguments, U.S. District Court Judge William Smith ruled last September that the federal agency’s new grant application requirements violated the First Amendment. The judge held that the guidelines imposed an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on free speech, choosing what type of art and artists could receive funding based on their identities and their beliefs, instead of their merit and artistic excellence.
The four “friend of the court” briefs filed in support of RILA’s position were submitted by a range of impacted parties.
The National Coalition Against Censorship filed a brief alongside four other arts organizations and a theater director, outlining how the NEA’s grant guidelines harmed them. The brief states:
The NEA’s Final Notice turns all of its own history and purpose on its head by asserting the power of the Chairperson to make one final, viewpoint-based pass at all funded programs to make sure that the transphobia of the current President is echoed in the artistic output of the United States. Few notions could be so repugnant to the free speech rights embodied in our Constitution.
The American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, joined by five other professional organizations that support the LGBTQ+ community in healthcare, research, social services, and other areas, filed a brief connecting how each profession could tangibly be affected by the “gender ideology” requirement:
Federal grantmaking has been an indispensable engine of LGBTQ+ health research, public-health and social services, historical preservation, violence-prevention programming, and housing assistance. The [NEA order] … would convert that engine into an instrument of viewpoint suppression: defunding HIV and cardiovascular research because it acknowledges transgender patients; terminating victim-services grants because they serve transgender survivors; line-editing words like “transgender” and “LGBT” out of training materials; erasing LGBTQ+ history from federally supported archives; and chilling the next generation of LGBTQ+ scientists, clinicians, artists, and historians from even applying.
A third brief was filed on behalf of seven scholars who specialize in the First Amendment. Their brief notes that a number of them “served on the Legal Task Force that the 1990 Independent Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts convened to advise on the constitutional questions presented by federal arts funding,” and raises concerns for the future:
The NEA’s position here is not only legally incorrect, but also short-sighted and dangerous. If the government could classify subsidized private expression—or its choice of whether to subsidize that expression—as its own speech, it could eliminate First Amendment scrutiny from the control it exercises over recipients of public funding. The state would be free to reward allies, sideline dissenters, and use the subsidy power as a tool of ideological control.
Finally, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a brief that noted:
Congress did not create the NEA to transmit the President’s views about gender or anything else. It did so to support private artistic expression. A condition that pressures artists to rewrite plays, organizations to reshape festivals, or storytelling programs to excise a government-proscribed idea is unconstitutional because it distorts the very function of federal arts support.
The suit, one of the first in Rhode Island to challenge actions of the second Trump administration, was filed in March 2025 by the ACLU and the ACLU of Rhode Island on behalf of Rhode Island Latino Arts and three other arts organizations — National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive, and the Theatre Communications Group — shortly after the NEA adopted the grant requirements.
The briefs and other case documents can be viewed here. Oral argument in the case is expected sometime in the fall.
