A federal judge on Thursday denied a bid to block the firing of 11 employees of the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who serve in offices related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

US District Judge Anthony Trenga, at a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, opted to extend a deadline to Monday for the workers to resign under a deferred resignation program that would continue to pay them through September 30, rather than grant a preliminary injunction that would have stopped their firings while the case was argued.

The federal workers are suing the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, Tulsi Gabbard in her official capacity as director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliff in his official capacity as director of the CIA, arguing they are being fired, “because of their personal assumed beliefs about a domestic political issue—the enforcement of federal civil rights laws—and losing their property interest in their employment without due process of law,” according to the first amended complaint.

The employees argue in the complaint they were wrongly placed on administrative leave because there were no allegations of misconduct made against any of them. The 11 federal workers remain on administrative leave while the case is being argued, according to USA Today.

Other federal government workers can appeal their termination to the Merit System Protection Board. However, intelligence officers lack that recourse because of the confidential nature of their job, instead relying on their own agencies’ classified internal regulations to provide procedures for terminating officers, according to the complaint.

This comes just over a month after President Donald Trump’s first day in office, when he ordered “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,” describing the programs as “illegal and immoral.”

This is one of many lawsuits lodged against the federal government in the wake of its new push to end DEI programs in the US. Three human rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Feb. 19, claiming his recent executive orders “falsely assert” that DEI initiatives are “illegal.”