National
DOJ asks Supreme Court to hear two additional DOMA cases
Obama administration has now asked for consideration of four such cases
U.S. Supreme Court (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed legal briefs with the Supreme Court asking justices to take up two additional cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act upon their return from summer recess.
The Obama administration asked the high court to hear Windsor v. United States, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management, which was filed by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. Both cases are currently pending before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
News of the Justice Department filing the two separate legal briefs was first reported by Reuters. Read the petition in the Pedersen brief here and the petition in the Windsor brief here.
The Justice Department asks the Supreme Court to take up the cases as sort of a backup plan in case justices decline to hear two other DOMA cases they have been asked to review: the consolidated case of Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Department of Health & Human Services and Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management.
“The Court should hold this petition pending its consideration and disposition of the petitions in Massachusetts and Golinski,” the Pedersen petition states. “Should the Court grant review in either of those cases, it need not grant review in this case. If the Court concludes that neither Massachusetts nor Golinski provides an appropriate vehicle for resolving the question presented, it should grant this petition to ensure a timely and definitive ruling on Section 3’s constitutionality.”
The Justice Department maintains the order in which the Supreme Court should consider the cases is Massachusetts and Golinski, then Pedersen, then the Windsor case. According to the Justice Department, the question of whether the Supreme Court can take up the latter two cases rests on whether plaintiffs “have appellate standing to seek certiorari before judgment.” But the Justice Department says justices must resolve the additional question in the Windsor case of whether New York law recognized the Canadian marriage of the plaintiff, New York lesbian Edith Windsor, at the time of her spouse’s death.
Among the petition’s signers are U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery, who’s gay and has been litigating against DOMA on behalf of the Obama administration in court.
Both petitions call on the Supreme Court to answer a question that was previously asked by other parties calling on the Supreme Court to review the anti-gay law: Does Section 3 of DOMA violate the Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws as applied to persons of the same sex who are legally married under the laws of their state?
The request from the Justice Department follows earlier requests from the Supreme Court to consider these cases from ACLU and GLAD in the wake of district court rulings in favor of plaintiffs against DOMA in the lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones ruled against DOMA in the Windsor case in June. U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant ruled against the anti-gay law in the Pedersen case in July. Following those rulings, ACLU and GLAD both asked the Supreme Court to take their respective cases in lieu of waiting for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals to make a decision.
The Justice Department had previously called on the Supreme Court to take up the consolidated Massachusetts case and the Golinski case. The filings on Tuesday mean the Justice Department now has matched all other requests from groups calling on the Supreme Court to take up different DOMA cases.
Mary Bonauto, the lead counsel for the GLAD in the DOMA cases, said the filings by the Justice Department are “procedural” because petitions requesting that the Supreme Court take up these cases were already awaiting justices.
“So now, DOJ is simply adding it’s voice, saying, ‘Yes, these cases — if some reason you don’t take up some other case — these cases are also appropriate for deciding the issue of DOMA’s constitutionality,” Bonauto said. “It is really is procedural as opposed to substantive, simply trying to essentially provide a menu of cases to the Supreme Court from which to choose.”
In February 2011, the Obama administration announced it would no longer defend DOMA against legal challenges in court and that laws related to sexual orientation should be subjected to heightened scrutiny. Previously, the Justice Department had only Golinski to draw upon because courts in the Massachusetts case ruled DOMA was unconstitutional using a rational basis standard. But after the court ruling in the Pedersen case, the Justice Department had another vehicle to express its viewpoint that heightened scrutiny should apply to laws related to sexual orientation.
“Essentially, they opened up this sample because they want a case that applies heightened scrutiny because that fits with their position and Pedersen is the only other case,” Bonauto said. “Pedersen actually does an extremely thorough job of addressing the factors at enormous length. I mean, it’s over 50 pages in the opinion. In the end, the court doesn’t apply heightened scrutiny because it doesn’t need to, but it sets forth a case for heightened scrutiny.”
The ACLU declined to comment on the Justice Department filings.
Now that the Justice Department has sent these petitions, other parties in the cases have until October 12 to respond. The Supreme Court may make its decision on whether to hear the DOMA cases in the week of September 24, but the cases may be held until a later time.
The House Republican-led Bipartisan Legal Advisory Council, under the leadership of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), has taken up defense of DOMA in the administration’s stead. Legal counsel representing BLAG didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
National
213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric
Letter cites ‘demonizing and dehumanizing’ language
The Congressional Equality Caucus has sent a letter urging Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to condemn the surge in anti-trans rhetoric coming from members of Congress.
The letter, signed by 213 members, criticizes Johnson for permitting some lawmakers to use “demonizing and dehumanizing” language directed at the transgender community.
The first signature on the letter is Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the only transgender member of Congress.
It also includes signatures from Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (MA-05), House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA-33), every member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and members of every major House Democratic ideological caucus.
Some House Republicans have used slurs to address members of the transgender community during official business, including in committee hearings and on the House floor.
The House has strict rules governing proper language—rules the letter directly cites—while noting that no corrective action was taken by the Chair or Speaker Pro Tempore when these violations occurred.
The letter also calls out members of Congress—though none by name—for inappropriate comments, including calls to institutionalize all transgender people, references to transgender people as mentally ill, and false claims portraying them as inherently violent or as a national security threat.
Citing FBI data, the letter notes that 463 hate crime incidents were reported due to gender identity bias. It also references a 2023 Williams Institute report showing that transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, despite making up less than 2% of the U.S. population.
The letter ends with a renewed plea for Speaker Johnson to take appropriate measures to protect not only the trans member of Congress from harassment, but also transgender people across the country.
“We urge you to condemn the rise in dehumanizing rhetoric targeting the transgender community and to ensure members of your conference are abiding by rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat the transgender community, including by ensuring members are not using slurs to refer to the transgender community.”
The full letter, including the complete list of signatories, can be found at equality.house.gov. (https://equality.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/equality.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-speaker-johnson-on-anti-transgender-rhetoric-enforcing-rules-of-decorum.pdf)
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
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