America First Legal’s Complete Track Record on LGBTQ Issues
Stephen Miller describes his organization as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU.”
Senior White House adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has played a central role in shaping policies in both Trump administrations. He had a key role in the first Muslim travel ban, the first trans military ban and various initiatives to erode the rights of trans students. In Trump 2.0, Miller has either written or edited all of the more than 160 executive orders the president has signed so far.
In 2021, Miller—who is not a lawyer—founded America First Legal (AFL), a right-wing organization designed to fight the so-called "woke agenda" in courtrooms across the U.S. AFL’s goal is to function as a legal battering ram against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights and immigration. The group has rapidly become a key player in the broader conservative movement, launching over a hundred lawsuits, complaints and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to serve as the Trump administration's legal attack dog. AFL actively “forum shops,” filing lawsuits in spaces where judges have shown conservative leanings.
Here are the key moves AFL has made on LGBTQ issues.
April 6, 2021
Miller launches AFL. In a statement, he describes his vision for the organization:
“America First Legal is the long-awaited answer to the ACLU. We are committed to an unwavering defense of true equality under law, national borders and sovereignty, freedom of speech and religion, classical values and virtues, the sanctity of life and centrality of family, and our timeless legal and constitutional heritage. Through relentless litigation and oversight we will protect America First, Last, and Always.”
Aug. 25, 2021
AFL files a lawsuit on behalf of two Texas doctors against Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra. The doctors object to an HHS notice that states that a law that bars “sex” discrimination in federally-funded health care also protects LGBTQ people from discrimination. The doctors say that this could pressure them to administer or refer patients to gender-affirming treatments they oppose. In December 2024, the case is thrown out due to lack of standing.
June 30, 2022
AFL files a formal civil rights complaint against Morgan Stanley, claiming the company’s Freshman Enhancement Program, which aimed to help minorities overcome systemic barriers of entry into the financial field, was racist and sexist against white men. Morgan Stanley would quietly shutter the program in 2024.
July 2022
A month after Roe v. Wade is overturned, AFL files civil rights complaints against Dick’s Sporting Goods and Lyft for company policies that help employees pay for travel expenses related to out-of-state abortions.
Oct. 26, 2022
In the lead up to the midterm elections, AFL sends out mailers to Spanish-speaking voters that accuse “Joe Biden and his allies on the left” of “indoctrinating your children,” and “[i]njecting young children with female hormones given to sex offenders to cause sterilization.” The mailers also include an altered photo of Dr. Rachel Levine, falsely writing that she promotes the “chemical and surgical castration of boys and girls.”
Jan. 25, 2023
AFL sues the West Shore School District of Pennsylvania, alleging their Social Emotional Learning curriculum violates parents’ rights to their children’s moral and religious education because there was no option to opt out. AFL took particular issue with the curriculum's “virtues and values.” The court would side with AFL.
April 2023
AFL files a federal civil rights complaint against Anheuser-Busch and requests that an investigation take place for their hiring, promoting and job-training employment practices. The complaint is filed in part because of a recent Bud Light marketing campaign that featured transgender actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney. AFL would file nearly identical complaints against McDonald's, BlackRock and Mars.
April 21, 2023
AFL is listed on the advisory board for Project 2025—the 920-page policy blueprint that recommends overturning a variety of LGBTQ rights. Miller later has AFL removed because of negative attention.
May-August 2023
AFL files a barrage of lawsuits, complaints and FOIA requests against a litany of companies, including Microsoft, Unilever, Nordstrom, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Kellogg’s for their DEI initiatives. In a FOIA request, they claim Microsoft purposefully laid off natural-born citizens in favor of hiring foreign workers who they can pay a lower wage. For the complaint against Unilever, they took issue with the language in their application process that says, “Where legally possible, we consider racial and ethnic diversity in our recruitment.”
Sept. 6, 2023
AFL sues the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) on behalf of a white man who alleges he was forced to report to an inexperienced Black employee as a result of AICP’s Double the Line program. AFL claims that the program, which aimed to help people of color overcome barriers of entry in the entertainment industry, is racist toward white people. In a statement, AFL wrote:
“For many decades, New York and Federal law have prohibited discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and sex. The Defendants, with their morally twisted “woke” view that racism, bigotry, and sexism actually are perfectly fine … have arrogantly declared themselves above the law. … The Defendants here, and the entertainment industry more generally, will soon find out that the cost of racialist virtue signaling has gone up.“
Oct. 5, 2023
AFL files a federal civil rights complaint against the MLB’s diversity programs, claiming these policies unlawfully favor women and Black and Brown people.
In March 2025, the MLB removes all mentions of diversity from their website and releases a statement saying: “We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward.”
While the MLB did not cite the complaint, some speculated that the league may have bowed to AFL and Trump’s demands to avoid having their antitrust legal exemption revoked.
AFL would later hit other sporting leagues with similar complaints, including the NFL and NASCAR.
Oct. 19, 2023
AFL sues New York University on behalf of a first-year law student, who baselessly claims the university discriminates against white men when selecting members and editors for the Law Review. “Law review editors take heed. Any subordination of academic merit to ‘diversity’ considerations when selecting members or articles will be met with a lawsuit,” AFL says in a statement.
Nov. 1, 2023
AFL files federal civil rights complaints against American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines for corporate DEI initiatives that aim to promote minorities so that company leadership is more representative of their customers. A year later, all three airlines would ground their DEI hiring practices.
Nov. 20, 2023
AFL sues Mesa Public Schools and their superintendent, alleging that teachers and administrators are “encouraging and assisting students to identify as members of the opposite sex without notifying parents” and helping with the “facilitation of sex transition.” Legal advisers concluded the district’s policies comply with state law, and leadership says no medical transition is involved whatsoever.
Dec. 19, 2023
Just in time for the holidays, AFL files federal civil rights complaints against Mattel and Hasbro for their DEI practices that are “promoting a radical LGBT+ agenda.” America’s biggest toy companies had sought diverse leadership through their DEI initiatives that helped gender, racial and sexual minorities overcome systemic barriers in the corporate world. But AFL sees that as unfairly tipping the scales away from white men.
Feb. 29, 2024
A script coordinator files a lawsuit with AFL against CBS/Paramount, alleging he was blocked from advancing at the company due to their DEI quotas. The lawsuit accuses the network of discriminating against straight white men. After a year, CBS and Paramount would settle by dismantling diversity hiring targets and pledging to assess future hires on merit.
April 29, 2024
AFL teams up with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue the Biden administration over its revised Title IX guidance that bars schools from discriminating against transgender students. “Biden’s new Title IX regulation is a vile obscenity: it forces women and girls to share locker rooms and restrooms with men. It forces them to call a he, a she, and to pretend in every way that a man is a woman, humiliating, degrading, and erasing women,” Miller says in a statement.
June 21, 2024
In a narrow ruling, eight employers that AFL represented in 2021 are no longer legally required to provide no-cost coverage for certain types of preventative care, including PrEP for HIV. This opens the door for larger lawsuits, which paves the way for more employers to claim that covering healthcare that disproportionately affects LGBTQ people could violate their religiously held beliefs, such as the idea that homosexuality is a sin.
Sept. 18, 2024
AFL files a lawsuit against California Governor Gavin Newsom for signing a bill into law that makes it harder for schools and educators to disclose a student’s LGBTQ identity to their parents. The law also allocates funding for services such as counseling for LGBTQ youth and the development of anti-harassment policies in schools.
December 2024
AFL files an amicus brief in support of Marlean Ames, a white, straight Ohio woman, who claims she was passed over for two promotions that were given to less qualified gay co-workers and that the bar to prove “reverse discrimination” is too high. The case was taken to the Supreme Court and—in June—ruled in Ames' favor in a unanimous decision.
Feb. 12, 2025
AFL sues the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on behalf of Jessica Featherston, a lighting technician who alleges she was removed from the orchestra after reporting a transgender woman for sexual harassment when she was in the women’s locker room.
Feb. 20, 2025
AFL and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sue Target. They allege that the retail giant’s corporate board put shareholders at unnecessary financial risk due to the loss of profits from DEI initiatives and the impact of LGBTQ activists, which they claim hurts the company's bottom line.
Feb. 24, 2025
AFL formally requests that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs begin investigating federal contractors who are disobeying Trump’s 2025 executive order that aims to end DEI initiatives.
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