National
Supreme Court hears anti-gay referendum case
Plaintiffs hope to keep secret names of referendum backers
U.S. Supreme Court (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
U.S. Supreme Court justices posed tough questions Wednesday to plaintiffs seeking to keep secret the names of Washington state petitioners who last year put an anti-gay referendum on the state ballot.
In the case of Doe v. Reed, plaintiffs contend a state law requiring public disclosure of petition signatures violates the First Amendment rights of signers who placed on the ballot an initiative, known as Referendum 71, to rescind the state’s recently expanded domestic partner registry.
Despite the efforts, Washington residents upheld the state’s domestic partner registry, 53-47 percent. In the aftermath, opponents of the registry have sought to keep secret the names of people who put the measure on the ballot. The state contends it has a legitimate governmental interest in public disclosure of the names because it preserves electoral integrity and provides important information to voters.
Representing plaintiffs during oral arguments was James Bopp, a conservative attorney who also serves as general counsel for Focus on the Family. He argued the public disclosure would subject people who signed the petition to possible danger.
“No person should suffer harassment from participating in the political system,” Bopp said.
But many justices expressed skepticism about Bopp’s argument during his appearance before the court. Some of the toughest questions came from justices known for holding conservative views.
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia noted openness is a component of democracy, and said petitioning the court to strike the Washington law as unconstitutional was “asking us to go into a whole new field where we’ve never gone before.”
“The fact is running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage, and the First Amendment doesn’t protect you from criticism — or even nasty phone calls,” Scalia.
Also expressing skepticism about the plaintiffs’ arguments was Chief Justice John Roberts, who noted that striking down the Washington law would also mean the court would also strike down similar public disclosure laws throughout the country.
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned whether the names on the list would remain confidential without the public disclosure law. She noted that Protect Marriage, the organization that launched the initiative, would still have access to the names and could use them for fundraising or sell them to others.
As justices challenged his assertion that petitioners could be subject to harassment, Bopp replied that the campaign manager for Protect Marriage had his entire family sleep together in one room of his home because of threats he received.
Scalia replied that such threats “should be moved against vigorously,” but said they shouldn’t necessarily stop the political process as established by Washington law.
Defending the law on behalf of Washington during oral arguments was Washington Attorney General Robert McKenna, who maintained the law as it stood provided no information about signers that was unconstitutional.
He noted that Washington has had other controversial matters on the ballot, including a question regarding assisted suicide, and said there was no evidence that petition signers for those referenda were harassed.
Associate Justice Samuel Alito directed some of the toughest questions toward McKenna. The justice questioned why it’s necessary to disclose signatures to preserve electoral integrity when the secretary of state could crosscheck the names in a voter registration database.
Additionally, Alito asked whether the attorney general would disclose the names and addresses of people working at his office so people could come to employees’ homes and have “uncomfortable conversations” with them.
McKenna replied the office wouldn’t disclose the names, noting people with concerns can come to the attorney general’s office to have these “uncomfortable conversations.”
Multiple LGBT groups, including Lambda Legal, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case on behalf of Washington state.
In a statement, Jon Davidson, Lambda’s legal director, criticized the notion that potential harassment against people who signed the petition compares to discrimination endured by the LGBT community.
“There’s no comparison between a few scattered instances of whispers and disapproving glares and the very real discrimination, harassment and even violence LGBT people experience every day all over the country,” he said. “After all, more hate crimes are reported against gay people than any other group per capita in the United States.”
Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the plaintiffs’ arguments “an outrageous attempt by anti-gay groups to use false claims of persecution to undermine laws that protect the integrity of the democratic process.”
A decision in the case is expected before the end of the current term for the Supreme Court in July.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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