Left to right, Emilya Cachapero of Theatre Communications Group, Jess Ducey of National Queer Theater, and Giselle Byrd of The Theater Offensive react to a question at a March 6, 2025, press conference about challenges facing queer and LGBTQ+ performing arts groups under new federal grant requirements. All three are plaintiffs in a suit against the National Endowment for the Arts filed with the help of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The fourth plaintiff is Rhode Island Latino Arts. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
The arts community would look a lot different without the input of people of color and queer people, Giselle Byrd told a crowd of reporters gathered in a Providence conference room Thursday.
“It would be void of truth,” Byrd, the executive director of Boston’s queer and trans POC-focused The Theater Offensive, said Thursday. “Our community has created cultural movements that have defined our history, our American history.”
The Theater Offensive is one of the four plaintiffs named in a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island against the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The case is jointly filed by the national and Rhode Island chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and is seeking a court order blocking changes by the Trump administration impacting how the NEA might dispense funds.
The plaintiffs are concerned about an executive order by President Donald Trump that dubs the promotion of “gender ideology” as sufficient to deny federal funds. A recently updated NEA policy page aligning the agency with the executive order instructs grant applicants to affirm that their potential project’s “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”
The lawsuit argues that the NEA’s updated policy violates the First Amendment by singling out a particular viewpoint for a ban on federal arts funding. Plaintiffs also say the NEA did not even define what it means to “promote gender ideology.”
The three other named plaintiffs include Rhode Island Latino Arts, National Queer Theater, and Theatre Communications Group. The four nonprofits are seeking a temporary restraining order and/or a preliminary or permanent injunction stopping the new policy before March 24, the deadline for the next round of grant applications. Grants for Arts Projects, the NEA’s most popular program, range from $10,000 to $100,000.
“We have asked that our motion be heard on an expedited basis,” said Lynette Labinger, the ACLU’s cooperating attorney on the case. “People need to apply without fear that they’re subjecting themselves to criminal, civil, administrative penalties on the basis that they don’t meet this test of gender ideology, orthodoxy, whatever that means.”
A representative for Rhode Island Latino Arts, the only in-state plaintiff in the case, could not attend Thursday morning’s press conference, said Steven Brown, executive director of ACLU Rhode Island. But an ACLU press release noted that the organization has already redirected course on its plans to cast a nonbinary actor in an upcoming production of “Faust,” a project for which the group intended to apply to NEA funding.
The Rhode Island Women’s Choreography Project is not named in the lawsuit because it only learned of it “late in the game,” said its executive director, Kristy DuBois. But she joined her performance art colleagues at the press conference, saying, “If you don’t have audiences coming in, it’s not going to create that groundswell of economic activity in the area. People tend to go to the theater and then go to dinner before or after.”
A flood of executive orders since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term have indicated profound, if nebulous, changes in store for a shrinking federal government. Much controversy, confusion and litigation has orbited the wide slate of initiatives designed to cut spending, with diversity and LGBTQ+ initiatives apparently located squarely in the administration’s crosshairs. But New York plaintiff National Queer Theater feels much more certain they will be affected by new federal laws.
Jess Ducey, who co-chairs the theater’s board of directors, said the organization has received NEA grants in the last two years to fund its Criminal Queerness Festival. But this year’s offer is “currently in limbo.” Ducey said the theater is aware the lawsuit may jeopardize this funding, but that the organization cannot “tick that loyalty pledge box” on NEA applications confirming an absence of queer-oriented material.
“It’s in our name,” Ducey said. “We’re applying anyway, with caveats that we can’t do this, we can’t not promote gender ideology.”
Byrd warned that the Trump administration’s singling out of transgender and queer-oriented theater companies could only be the start.
“It starts permeating and moving through spheres. So some of your most beloved pieces, such as ‘Kinky Boots’ or ‘La Cage aux Folles’ will no longer be allowed to be seen or shared,” Byrd said, referencing two popular musicals with drag elements.
Culture wars anew
The ACLU argues that Trump’s mandate aims to demolish the bedrock of the NEA’s grant process, which is supposed to rest upon artistic merit.
“We want the NEA to be the best version of itself, a champion of theaters engaging deeply with their communities without interference,” said Emilya Cachapero, co-executive director of National and Global Programming at the national group Theatre Communications Group. “NEA funds have supported meaningful projects that may not have otherwise happened in communities from Honolulu to Juneau to Tucson to Montgomery to here in Providence, and access to this core support must continue.”
It’s not the first time the NEA has been caught in culture wars crossfire, particularly when it comes to federal funding for LGBTQ+ art. In 1989, a traveling retrospective exhibit of photographs by American artist Robert Mapplethorpe aroused national controversy because it had been funded with NEA money. The exhibit, titled “The Perfect Moment,” included more mainstream fare from Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre, like celebrity portraits and floral still-lives of orchids and calla lilies.
Less palatable to certain audiences were photographs of gay male sadomasochism and sex — content considered offensive enough that the now-defunct Corcoran Gallery of Art decided to cancel its iteration of the show after pushback from the American Family Association. The scandal, along with the exhibition the same year of artist Andres Serranos’ photo of a crucifix in urine called “Piss Christ,” was a major factor in Congress’ decision the following year to add an anti-obscenity clause into the NEA’s funding rules.
In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled in Finley vs. NEA that while the concept of “decency” could inform the agency’s awarding of grants and did not conflict with first amendment rights, a potential grantee’s viewpoint could not be used as the lone justification for denial of funds. That case also had four plaintiffs who challenged the NEA’s denial of their grants, including the lead plaintiff, performance artist Karen Finley.
Even in the provision of subsidies, the Government may not aim at the suppression of dangerous ideas,” the 1998 ruling reads, citing an earlier free speech Supreme Court Case.
Labinger believes the Finley case underscores the ACLU position, in that it maintains “artistic merit and excellence” as the criteria for awarding grants.
“The legislative history makes clear that this was not the creation of a government program, but rather to support the arts externally and not say what is orthodox in the arts and what’s prohibited,” Labinger said.
When asked by reporters as to his confidence level in the lawsuit, Brown avoided peering into a crystal ball.
“I don’t predict, but I will say I think we have a very strong case,” Brown said. “The NEA statute is very clear that the criteria to be used are artistic merit and excellence, and this type of additional ideological restriction has absolutely no place in the law.”
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