National
Boehner panel directs counsel to defend DOMA
Panel votes 3-2 to defend anti-gay statute
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (Blade photo by Michael Key).
A U.S. House panel on Wednesday voted along party lines to direct general counsel to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court following President Obama’s announcement that his administration would no longer defend the statute against litigation.
In a statement, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which he convened last week after the president’s announcement, had come to the conclusion to direct the House General Counsel to defend DOMA after the Wednesday meeting.
“Today, after consultation with the Bipartisan Leadership Advisory Group, the House General Counsel has been directed to initiate a legal defense of this law,” Boehner said. “This action by the House will ensure that this law’s constitutionality is decided by the courts, rather than by the President unilaterally.”
The five-member Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group consists of the speaker, the majority leader, the majority whip, the minority leader, and minority whip.
Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesperson, said the panel voted 3-2 to direct the House General Counsel to take up defend of DOMA, but had no information on any discussion that took place beforehand.
Boehner as well as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) voted in favor of directing counsel to defend the statute, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) voted against such action.
Passed by Congress in 1996 and signed into law by then-President Clinton, DOMA prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and providing married gay couples with the federal benefits of marriage.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would no longer defend DOMA in court and sent a letter to Congress informing lawmakers of the Justice Department’s decision. The move left the decision of whether to continue defense of DOMA in court to Congress.
Litigation filed against the statute in the Second Circuit — where there’s no precedent for laws related to sexual orientation — allowed the administration to conclude that DOMA is unconstitutional and to call on the court to examine the law with heightened scrutiny.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Blade photo by Michael Key)
In a statement, Pelosi denounced the panel’s decision to take up defense of DOMA in court and called the statute “discriminatory” as well as “unfair and indefensible.”
“Since its proposal and passage, this legislation has raised constitutional questions and has been viewed as a violation of the equal protection clause,” Pelosi said. “The House should not be in the business of defending an unconstitutional statute that is neither rational nor serves any governmental interest. DOMA actually discriminates against American families.”
Pelosi said the defense of DOMA would sap the U.S. government of “hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, if not more” at a time when fiscal resources are limited.
“Pursuing this legal challenge distracts from our core challenges: creating jobs, strengthening the middle class, and responsibly reducing the deficit,” she said. “And that is why I voted against this action today.”
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, also criticized the panel for voting to take action to defend DOMA.
“Apparently, the Republicans’ jobs plan is a full employment project for right-wing lawyers bent on defending discrimination,” Solmonese said. “With today’s vote, Speaker Boehner has made clear that an anti-equality agenda trumps helping American families in tough economic times, including loving and committed couples who are legally married in their states.”
But Casey Pick, programs director for Log Cabin Republicans, said Boehner’s decision to defend DOMA after consulting with the panel is “entirely appropriate.”
“While Log Cabin Republicans firmly believe that DOMA is an unconstitutional intrusion on states’ rights and a violation of individual liberty, we agree with the speaker that the constitutionality of this law should be determined by the courts and not by the president unilaterally,” she said.
Pick said “nobody should be surprised that Congress has decided to exercise its legal right, and some would say duty” to defend DOMA given how controversial same-sex marriage is at this time.
“We are confident that this law will ultimately be overturned despite any defense presented by House Counsel, and will continue to work with our allies in Congress to advocate for legislative repeal,” she said. “With that decided, it is critical that Congress not waste anymore time on the president’s efforts to distract Republicans with divisive social issues, and instead return to working on the issues that matter most: jobs and the economy.”
A Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Democrats on the panel pushed back on the decision to intervene on behalf of DOMA before the vote took place.
The aide said Boehner’s statement is misleading becaues it implies the panel held a bipartisan vote in favor of defending DOMA when in fact Pelosi and Hoyer “forcefully argued against the House intervening in these cases.”
According to the aide, Pelosi and Hoyer pressed General Counsel Kerry Kirchner on how much intervening to defend the statute in court would cost the U.S. government.
“General Counsel Kerry Kirchner would only say it would ‘not be inexpensive,'” the aide said. “Mr. Kirchner noted that there are currently at least 10 cases and he does not have the in-house resources to deal with that many cases as he has a staff of five with one lawyer currently on maternity leave.”
The aide said Kirchner told the panel he believed the House intervention in the DOMA case would take a minimum of 18 months because litigation could continue for years before the U.S. Supreme Court hears one of these cases.
“Mr. Kirchner also laid out that the Reagan Administration chose to no longer defend 5 laws in the 1980s,” the aide said. “Clearly, the Republicans were fine with a Republican President choosing not to defend statutes passed by the Congress.”
According to the aide, Pelosi repeatedly pushed back on assertions that the administration was deciding the constitutionality of DOMA by declining to defend the law in court.
“She noted that judicial review was continuing and that a number of groups were filing pro-DOMA briefs in the cases so there was no need for the House to intervene,” the aide said. “And that the administration was still enforcing the law.”
In response, a Republican aide, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, called the Democratic aide’s account of the discussion that took place “silly.”
The GOP aide took issue with the Democratic aide’s assertion that Republicans were fine when President Reagan declined to defend laws in court against litigation.
“Republicans didn’t have the majority in the House during the Reagan administration,” the GOP aide said. “That comparison doesn’t even make sense.”
Additionally, the Republican aide also said decisions haven’t yet been made on the cost and duration of any potential DOMA cases.
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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