On May 19, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a new Civil Rights Fraud Initiative within the Department of Justice to “utilize the False Claims Act to investigate and, as appropriate, pursue claims against any recipient of federal funds that knowingly violates federal civil rights laws.”

The initiative will be co-led by the Fraud Section of the Civil Division, which enforces the False Claims Act (FCA), and the Civil Rights Division, which enforces federal civil rights laws; it will include lawyers from these Divisions and designees from each of the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices, who are expected to pursue the initiative “aggressively.” The initiative also calls for coordination with DOJ’s Criminal Division, other federal agencies that enforce civil rights requirements for their respective funding recipients, and state attorneys general. In addition, the announcement states that DOJ “strongly encourages” private whistleblowers to initiate their own lawsuits under the FCA’s qui tam provisions (under which whistleblowers, known as relators, share in any monetary recovery).

The announcement is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump Administration to target diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that it contends violate federal civil rights laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023). In particular, one of President Trump’s first...

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