National
Appeals court stays Prop 8 ruling
Same-sex marriages in Calif. on hold during appeal
A federal appeals court has reversed a decision last week by a lower court judge to lift the stay on his Aug. 4 ruling overturning Proposition 8, dashing the hopes of same-sex couples in California to quickly regain their right to marry.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Monday granted a request by supporters of Prop 8 to keep the stay in place until the completion of their appeal, which is expected to continue through December.
In their two-page order, the judges said only, “Appellants’ motion for a stay of the district court’s order of Aug. 4, 2010 pending appeal is granted.”
They were referring to the Aug. 4 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker declaring Prop 8’s ban on same-sex marriage null and void because it violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses.
But in an action viewed as favorable to same-sex marriage advocates, the appeals court judges also ordered that the case move forward on an expedited basis, setting strict deadlines for lawyers on both sides to file their briefs between September and November. They directed that arguments before the court would take place during the week of Dec. 6.
The action by appeals court judges Sidney Thomas, Michael Hawkins, and Edward Leavy reversed an Aug. 12 decision by Walker to lift a stay that he put in place nine days earlier.
Rather than allow same-sex marriages to resume in the state immediately upon issuing his Aug. 4 decision, Walker placed a stay on his own ruling, saying he wanted to give supporters and opponents of Prop 8 a chance to submit briefs arguing why a stay should or should not be kept in place during the appeal process.
After considering the arguments, Walker ruled Aug. 12 that a stay was not justified because allowing same-sex marriage to resume would not cause any harm to the state or its people. But he extended his stay to Aug. 18 to give the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals a chance to decide the matter.
Unlike Walker, who issued an 11-page ruling explaining why he believed the stay should be lifted, the appeals court panel gave no explanation for its action.
However, while it rejected Walker’s decision to lift the stay, the appeals court panel appears to have given credence to Walker’s assertion in his Aug. 12 ruling that Prop 8 supporters may not have legal standing to appeal the case.
Walker noted in his Aug. 12 ruling that called for lifting the stay that the State of California may have sole legal standing to appeal a case like the one involving Prop 8. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state’s attorney general, Jerry Brown, have refused to defend Prop 8, forcing private advocates backing the same-sex marriage ban law to defend it in court.
Schwarzenegger and Brown have said they also oppose an appeal of Walker’s decision overturning Prop 8 and that the state would not be a party to the appeal.
“In addition to any issues appellants wish to raise on appeal, appellants are directed to include in their opening brief a discussion of why this appeal should not be dismissed for lack of Article III standing,” the appeals court panel noted in its ruling Monday.
Officials with the California-based American Foundation for Equal Rights, which initiated the lawsuit by two same-sex couples that led to Walker’s decision to overturn Prop 8, sought to put an optimistic spin on the appeals court’s decision Monday to keep the stay in place.
“This means that although Californians who were denied equality by Proposition 8 cannot marry immediately, the Ninth Circuit, like the district court, will move swiftly to address and decide the merits of plaintiffs’ claims on their merits,” the group said in a statement.
Ted Olson, one of the two attorneys that argued for overturning Prop 8 at the district court trial earlier this year, called the expedited appeals court schedule significant.
“We are very gratified that the Ninth Circuit has recognized the importance and pressing nature of this case and the need to resolve it as quickly as possibly by issuing this extremely expedited briefing schedule,” he said.
But one of the attorneys that defended Prop 8 in court had a different assessment of Monday’s decision to keep the stay in place.
“It made no sense to impose a radical change in marriage on the people of California before all appeals on their behalf are heard,” said Jim Campbell, litigation staff counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “Refusing to stay the decision would only have created more legal confusion surrounding any same-sex unions entered while the appeal is pending. … ADF and the rest of the legal team is confident that the right of Americans to protect marriage in their state constitutions will ultimately be upheld.”
Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a same-sex marriage advocacy group, called the appeals court action “a disappointing delay for many Californians who hoped to celebrate the freedom to marry and full inclusion in society as soon as possible.”
Wolfson said that while the lawyers representing same-sex couples continue to argue the case in court, “we have more months in which to make our case in the court of public opinion.”
Rev. Anthony Evans, a D.C. minister and one of the leaders of the campaign to oppose same-sex marriage in Washington, said the appeals court’s action reflects “the will of the people and the word of God,” which he said “will prevail.”
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
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.
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