National
Harkin endorses executive order barring LGBT job bias
Directive seen as interim alternative to ENDA passage
The leading Senate Democrat on labor issues on Monday announced support for an executive order from President Obama mandating that the U.S. government contract only with companies that have policies barring job discrimination against their LGBT workers.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement provided to the Washington Blade that he would back such a directive as he continues to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — legislation that would bar job bias against LGBT people in most private and public workforce situations.
“Everyone deserves a fair chance to earn a good living, judged by their talent, ability and qualifications free from discrimination,” Harkin said. “Workplace discrimination based on an employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity is reprehensible, which is why I am a co-sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).”
Harkin continued, “While I remain hopeful for the passage of ENDA, I would strongly support an executive order from President Obama that makes clear government contractors cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity, just as President Roosevelt did seventy years ago when he made clear discrimination based on race, color, creed or national origin was impermissible. Every American deserves equal treatment on the job, period.”
The senator was referring to Executive Order 8802, which President Franklin Roosevelt signed in 1941 to prohibit discrimination on race, color, creed and national origin in the federal government and defense industries. In 1943, Roosevelt broadened the coverage of the directive to make it applicable to all government contractors.
Numerous presidents since Roosevelt — including President Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson — have updated the initial executive order to give it more teeth and mandate that government contractors take affirmation action to ensure workers are employed without regard to race, color, creed or national origin.
An executive order barring government contractors from job discrimination against LGBT people has been seen as an interim alternative to ENDA passage while Republicans are in control of the House and progress on the measure in the lower chamber of Congress is unlikely. The White House hasn’t said one way or the other whether Obama would be open to issuing such a directive.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said in response to the Harkin statement that he couldn’t speak to the proposed executive order while maintaining that President Obama is committed to ENDA.
“The president also continues to examine steps the federal government can take to help secure equal rights for LGBT Americans,” Inouye said. “While I can’t speak to this specific proposal, we’ve already taken steps such as extending benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees and ensuring equal access to HUD programs, and we hope to continue making progress.”
LGBT rights supporters praised Harkin, who has served in the Senate since 1985 and long been known as LGBT rights supporter, for throwing his support behind the executive order.
Michael Cole-Schwartz, a Human Rights Campaign spokesperson, said his organization welcomes the endorsement from Harkin on the directive and his continued support for an ultimate legislative solution to end LGBT workplace discrimination.
“Chairman Harkin continues to be a leader on an inclusive ENDA and we appreciate his support for an executive order that would require non-discrimination policies among federal contractors,” Cole-Schwartz said. “As we continue to build support for ENDA, an executive order is a strong step toward ending workplace discrimination.”
Tico Almeida, a civil rights litigator who handles employment discrimination cases at Sanford, Wittels & Heisler in D.C., said Harkin’s position as chair of the Senate HELP committee makes his announced support “the most important endorsement thus far for the proposed executive order for federal contractors.”
“Once the executive order is in place, it will be enforced by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who is committed to LGBT civil rights and has placed a strong priority on enforcing workplace protections,” Almeida added.
Richard Socarides, president of the LGBT rights group Equality Matters, said Harkin’s statement in support of the order shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“Tom Harkin, for whom I worked, has long been a strong supporter of LGBT employment protections, so I’m not surprised that he would support a presidential executive order in this area, especially when a divided Congress makes the legislative outlook cloudy,” Socarides said.
Socarides worked on Harkin’s 1992 presidential campaign and was his political director in the U.S. Senate in 1992 after the senator dropped his bid for the White House.
Despite support for administrative action, issuing the executive order wouldn’t have the same reach or impact as ENDA passage because the directive would only affect government contractors. Still, some companies that don’t contract with the government could be expected to follow the lead of businesses that do if the president issues such an executive order.
Harkin’s endorsement of such an order means he joins Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), a gay lawmaker on the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the sponsor of ENDA in the Senate, who have also voiced support for the directive.
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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