National
Democratic retirements could derail LGBT advances

U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh’s retirement could make it more difficult for congressional Democrats to advance LGBT-related bills. (Photo courtesy of Bayh’s office)
The surprise retirement announcement from Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) on Monday came as a political shock in Washington and fueled the notion that 2010 will be a bad year for Democrats.
While political experts are expecting Democrats to retain control of both the House and the Senate — albeit with slimmer majorities — pundits are saying pro-LGBT legislation would require an extra push from supporters following the election to make it through Congress.
Bayh formally announced Monday his intention to vacate his seat at the end of the year. Emphasizing his continued commitment to public service, Bayh said he wanted to retire in part because his desire to serve as a U.S. senator has waned.
“For some time, I’ve had the growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should,” he said. “There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress, too much ideology and not enough practical problem solving.”
Bayh’s retirement came as a surprise to many because he was seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party and has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. The senator reportedly had $13 million in his coffers for a re-election campaign, and was the leader of a group of moderate Democrats that had pledged to work for centrist policies on Capitol Hill.
The Indiana senator hasn’t been at the forefront of LGBT causes during his tenure in Congress, but stepped up to the plate when support was necessary. Bayh voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and 2006, and voted in favor of hate crimes legislation.
Michael Mitchell, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, said Bayh’s record on LGBT issues is attributable to the fact that he comes from a state that’s somewhere between moderate and conservative in its political leanings.
“I think whoever takes his place is going to lean toward the more Blue Dog, or the more conservative side of the Democratic Party anyway,” Mitchell said. “It would be wonderful to see someone who’s pro-equality there, and we’ll see how that plays out.”
But Bayh’s retirement means an incumbent Democrat won’t be running for the seat, increasing the chances that a Republican could win the spot in November.
That’s why Sean Theriault, a gay government professor at the University of Texas, Austin, called Bayh’s decision to leave the Senate “bad news for the Democrats.”
“It takes a race that could have gone either way to a seat that the Democrats will most likely lose,” Theriault said. “More than that, though, the Senate is losing a good senator. Bayh was a legislator’s legislator. He knew how to work both sides of the aisle to get good legislation passed.”
Bayh’s retirement isn’t the only factor jeopardizing the Democratic majority in Congress this fall. Public dissatisfaction with Congress has many pundits predicting Republican wins.
In addition to the general climate turning against Democrats, issues in individual races could make for a challenging year for the party. The announced retirement of Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) leaves little hope for a win against Republican Gov. John Hoeven in the Senate race this November. In Delaware, Republican congressman Mike Castle is favored to capture the Senate seat once held by Vice President Joseph Biden.
And in Illinois, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat, Alexi Giannoulias, is being dogged by his association with Broadway Bank, which reportedly engaged in questionable practices and is on the verge of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. takeover.
Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is facing low approval ratings in his home state, making him vulnerable to a Republican challenger.
Still, while political experts are predicting Democrats will lose seats, most are saying the Republicans won’t be able to take the majority in either the House or Senate. Theriault said before the announcement of Bayh’s retirement, he would have thought the Democrats would hold 54 seats after the election.
“Now, it might be down to 53,” he said, “At every turn, the Republican primary electorate is going to have to make the right decision, catch some breaks, and conditions would have to deteriorate even more than they have for the Republicans to have a shot at gaining control of the Senate.”
Dan Pinello, a gay government professor at the City University of New York, said the growing number of Democratic incumbents who are announcing their retirement means Republicans will see more opportunities, but determining whether the Republicans will take control of Congress is difficult because other factors could emerge to influence the election.
“Both domestic as well as international events can happen at such lightning speed to change the larger political environment that the outlook can vary from month to month in terms of what’s going to be happening come November,” he said. “It’s very dicey to make predictions so far ahead of the general election.”
Still, Pinello said predicting Democrats will lose seats in Congress is a “safe” bet to make, although a GOP takeover would take “a seismic change” similar to what happened in 1994 when Democrats lost control of both chambers of Congress.
Charles Moran, spokesperson for the Log Cabin Republicans, said he doesn’t think Republicans will take control of Congress this November, although he predicted Democratic losses because the party will have to spend money on races that it thought wouldn’t be competitive.
“It’s going to give the Republicans a competitive advantage in terms of reclaiming some of these seats,” he said. “I’m certainly not sugar-coating it. We have a really big hole to fill on the Republican side, but I definitely think this puts the Democrats in a precarious position.”
With decreased majorities in Congress, advocates are saying pushing pro-LGBT legislation through to the president’s desk would be a more difficult feat.
Pinello said if the Democratic majority falls behind 55 seats in the Senate, it could cause a problem when seeking 60 votes to end any filibusters on LGBT-related legislation.
“That becomes a problem if ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ comes up for repeal or, more importantly, the Defense of Marriage Act comes up for repeal,” he said. “I think potentially that becomes an insurmountable hurdle if Republicans remain as cohesive as they have been on the health care issue.”
Even with decreased majorities, Mitchell said advocates will “keep working” with Democratic allies to push through pro-LGBT legislation.
“Our organization worked specifically for the last 10 years as an organization working in the minority,” he said. “I think Obama will continue to help push some good legislation for us and do what he can, but that said, there needs to be a pro-equality Congress that can help us do that.”
Moran said while Democratic losses would mean the party would have to “re-evaluate some of their votes and some of their stances,” he would hope Democrats and Republicans who would vote for pro-LGBT legislation would maintain their support.
“More than anything, I think it’s just another example of how we’ve got to spend a lot of time as a community working to start changing some of the hearts and minds of the key individuals who maybe are sitting on the fence,” he said.
Federal Government
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency.
Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”
The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”
At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.
But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs.
Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts.
“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees.
“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”
Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts
Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”
“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”
One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”
The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.
Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.
“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”
Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed
Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”
With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”
Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.
Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.
“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”
LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation
The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).
“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.
“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”
Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”
“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”
The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports
27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.
In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.
The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.
“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.
He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”
Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”
Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.
Federal Government
UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House
University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.
“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”
Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”
Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”
Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.
Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.
The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.
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