National
Obama administration seeks stay on ‘Don’t Ask’ case
Congressional votes are cause for pause, brief says
President Barack Obama’s administration is asking a federal court to halt proceedings on a legal challenge to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ (Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of White House)
The Obama administration is asking a federal court to hold off on advancing a legal challenge to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until Congress completes legislative action on the issue this year.
In a reply brief issued June 9 in Log Cabin v. United States, the Justice Department argues the U.S. District Court of Central California should defer adjudicating the case in light of recent votes in the House and Senate on measures that would lead to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The pending case, initially filed by Log Cabin Republicans in 2004, seeks to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on the grounds that it violates the freedom of speech rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.
The Justice Department brief that was made public last week comes after U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled late last month to deny the government’s call for summary judgment in the case based on plaintiffs’ lack of standing.
The deadline for the plaintiffs’ response to the brief is June 23.
In the brief, the Obama administration contends that “principles of constitutional avoidance and respect for the coequal branches of government” necessitate that the court should support a stay in proceedings until “completion of the process already undertaken by the political branches.”
“Accordingly, the court should await the outcome of the process in which the political branches are now engaged before deciding the constitutional question presented,” the brief says.
Late last month, the House and the Senate Armed Services Committee voted in favor of attaching “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language to the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill. The Justice Department argues proceedings on the case should stop until Congress completes this action because, among other reasons, courts “should not decide constitutional issues if they can reasonably avoid doing so.”
Further, the government argues that holding off on adjudication is in the best interest of all parties involved because it would save the court from “expending considerable time and resources on pretrial motions, trial preparation, trial, and any potential post-trial briefing concerning the constitutionality of a statute that may be repealed.”
Doug NeJaime, a gay law professor at Loyola Law School, said he disagrees with the Justice Department’s argument to hold off on proceedings because the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal measure under consideration in Congress is a compromise that “still leaves some uncertainty.”
The measure that lawmakers have put forward wouldn’t take effect until after the Defense Department completes its study on the issue at the end of the year and the president, defense secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that the U.S. military is ready for repeal.
“And given the way in which the [‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell]’ repeal has crawled up to this point, I don’t think it makes sense for a court to stay the case pending legislative action,” NeJaime said. “The constitutional questions are ripe for consideration.”
The reply brief also responds to a request from the court to address the potential application of a heightened standard of review set forth in the 2008 Ninth Circuit of Appeals ruling in Witt v. Air Force, which was tied to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The Witt decision, which was construed to only apply to the plaintiff, determined the Pentagon needed to prove lesbian Maj. Margaret Witt’s sexual orientation was a detriment to unit cohesion in order to discharge her from the Air Force.
The Justice Department argues that the Witt standard doesn’t apply in the Log Cabin case because Witt was an as-applied challenge while Log Cabin is a facial challenge.
In a facial challenge, the plaintiff alleges that a statute is always and under all circumstances unconstitutional and therefore void. But in an as-applied challenge, a plaintiff contends that a statute may in part be unconstitutional in redress of a specific injury.
The Justice Department argues that the U.S. District Court of Central California already determined last year that the Witt standard — as an as-applied case — doesn’t apply to the Log Cabin litigation.
“There is no basis to reconsider that ruling, which was and remains correct,” the brief says.
However, should the court decide to evaluate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” under a more heightened review, the Justice Department says the court already rejected a legal challenge with this standard of scrutiny against the policy for gays in the military in the 1980 case Beller v. Middendorf.
“Because Witt does not disturb the analysis employed in Beller with respect to facial challenges, the Beller standard, not the as-applied Witt standard, is binding,” the brief says.
The Justice Department further contends it’s entitled to summary judgment in its favor because Log Cabin’s challenge “would fail under the Beller analysis.”
But NeJaime said he disagrees with the Justice Department’s determination that the Beller case applies to Log Cabin’s litigation and not Witt.
Although Witt is an as-applied challenge, NeJaime said that doesn’t mean “the court’s analysis in Witt, and its application of a heightened standard of review, is irrelevant to the pending facial challenge.”
NeJaime said the Witt court drew on protections afforded to LGBT people in the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case of Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws throughout the country.
He said the application of Lawrence in the Witt case is “certainly relevant” in Log Cabin’s facial challenge and “counsels against applying rational basis review, as the government urges the court to do.”
“And, furthermore, I think it casts doubt on the government’s argument that Beller, and not Witt, should govern this case,” NeJaime said. “The pre-Lawrence Beller decision must certainly be re-evaluated in light of the Lawrence decision.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
National
Human Rights Watch sharply criticizes US in annual report
Trump-Vance administration ‘working to undermine … very idea of human rights’
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Philippe Bolopion on Wednesday sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration over its foreign policy that includes opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“The U.S. used to actually be a government that was advancing the rights of LGBT people around the world and making sure that it was finding its way into resolutions, into U.N. documents,” he said in response to a question the Washington Blade asked during a press conference at Human Rights Watch’s D.C. offices. “Now we see the opposite movement.”
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday released its annual human rights report that is highly critical of the U.S., among other countries.
“Under relentless pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms,” said Bolopion in its introductory paragraph. “To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back.”
The report, among other things, specifically notes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Skrmetti decision that uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
The Trump-Vance administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights, and the U.N. Human Rights Council. Bolopion in response to the Blade’s question during Wednesday’s press conference noted the U.S. has also voted against LGBTQ-inclusive U.N. resolutions.
Maria Sjödin, executive director of Outright International, a global LGBTQ and intersex advocacy group, in an op-ed the Blade published on Jan. 28 wrote the movement around the world since the Trump-Vance administration took office has lost more than $125 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded myriad LGBTQ and intersex organizations around the world, officially shut down on July 1, 2025. The Trump-Vance administration last month announced it will expand the global gag rule, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services, to include organizations that promote “gender ideology.”
“LGBTQ rights are not just a casualty of the Trump foreign policy,” said Human Rights Watch Washington Director Sarah Yager during the press conference. “It is the intent of the Trump foreign policy.”
The report specifically notes Ugandan authorities since the enactment of the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023, which punishes “‘carnal knowledge’ between people of the same gender” with up to life in prison, “have perpetrated widespread discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, their families, and their supporters.” It also highlights Russian authorities “continued to widely use the ‘gay propaganda’ ban” and prosecuted at least two people in 2025 for their alleged role in “‘involving’ people in the ‘international LGBT movement’” that the country’s Supreme Court has deemed an extremist organization.
The report indicates the Hungarian government “continued its attacks on and scapegoating of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people” in 2025, specifically noting its efforts to ban Budapest Pride that more than 100,000 people defied. The report also notes new provisions of Indonesia’s penal code that took effect on Jan. 2 “violate the rights of women, religious minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and undermine the rights to freedom of speech and association.”
“This includes the criminalization of all sex outside of marriage, effectively rendering adult consensual same-sex conduct a crime in Indonesia for the first time in the country’s history,” it states.
Bolopion at Wednesday’s press conference said women, people with disabilities, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups lose rights “when democracy is retreating.”
“It’s actually a really good example of how the global retreat from the U.S. as an actor that used to be very imperfectly — you know, with a lot of double standards — but used to be part of this global effort to advance rights and norms for everyone,” he said. “Now, not only has it retreated, which many people expected, but in fact, is now working against it, is working to undermine the system, is working to undermine, at times, the very idea of human rights.”
“That’s definitely something we are acutely aware of, and that we are pushing back,” he added.
Maryland
4th Circuit dismisses lawsuit against Montgomery County schools’ pronoun policy
Substitute teacher Kimberly Polk challenged regulation in 2024
A federal appeals court has ruled Montgomery County Public Schools did not violate a substitute teacher’s constitutional rights when it required her to use students’ preferred pronouns in the classroom.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision it released on Jan. 28 ruled against Kimberly Polk.
The policy states that “all students have the right to be referred to by their identified name and/or pronoun.”
“School staff members should address students by the name and pronoun corresponding to the gender identity that is consistently asserted at school,” it reads. “Students are not required to change their permanent student records as described in the next section (e.g., obtain a court-ordered name and/or new birth certificate) as a prerequisite to being addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds to their identified name. To the extent possible, and consistent with these guidelines, school personnel will make efforts to maintain the confidentiality of the student’s transgender status.”
The Washington Post reported Polk, who became a substitute teacher in Montgomery County in 2021, in November 2022 requested a “religious accommodation, claiming that the policy went against her ‘sincerely held religious beliefs,’ which are ‘based on her understanding of her Christian religion and the Holy Bible.’”
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in January 2025 dismissed Polk’s lawsuit that she filed in federal court in Beltsville. Polk appealed the decision to the 4th Circuit.
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