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Gay Games trial set for July in Cleveland

Lawsuit says games run by straight ‘front group’

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A lawsuit filed last fall by a Cleveland-based foundation contesting a decision by leaders of the Gay Games to terminate its contract to operate the 2014 LGBT athletic event is scheduled to go to trial July 25.

A spokesperson for the Federation of Gay Games said the organization remains hopeful that a settlement can be reached with the Cleveland Synergy Foundation before the start of the trial.

But the spokesperson, Kelley Stevens, said plans for the quadrennial LGBT sports competition are moving forward and the group is confident the Gay Games will take place in the Cleveland-Akron area as scheduled in the summer of 2014.

“Because there’s a completely different entity running the plans for the 2014 games, they’re not spending any of their time on this,” he said, referring to the lawsuit. “So things are moving ahead as planned.”

The Cleveland Synergy Foundation charges in its lawsuit that the FGG, the City of Cleveland, a high-level city official, and the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission conspired to illegally terminate its contract to operate the 2014 games. The Sports Commission is a non-gay organization that initially pledged to help the Synergy Foundation promote the games.

The lawsuit asks a judge with the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas to force the FGG to reinstall Synergy Foundation as the operator of the games. It also calls for compensatory damages against the FGG and the city “in an amount to be proven at trial” plus interest, fees and possible punitive damages.

The FGG says it terminated the agreement because Synergy failed to fulfill its obligations under the terms of the agreement. It says it acted legally because the agreement included a provision allowing the FGG to invoke a termination provision for non-fulfillment of the contract.

In October, the FGG announced it was replacing Synergy with a newly formed non-profit organization called the Cleveland Special Events Group Corp. through an exclusive licensing agreement. The group consists of LGBT and non-LGBT organizations and individuals from the Cleveland area.

Richard Haber, the attorney representing Cleveland Synergy Foundation, said the new entity appears to be a front group for the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission, which he said has emerged as the “behind the scenes” operator of the Gay Games.

He said testimony in depositions given as part of the lawsuit shows that the Sports Commission and Cleveland city official Valerie McCall from the mayor’s office are actually running games operations.

According to Haber, this appears to violate the Gay Games’ longstanding policy of having an LGBT organization in the host city operate the games. The Sports Commission clearly is not an LGBT organization, he said.

Stevens said such a claim doesn’t merit a comment from the FGG.

“I’m not going to comment on the Cleveland Synergy Foundation’s claims,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of claims. So I’m not going to comment on what they think.”

In a competitive bidding process held in 2009, the FGG awarded the games contract to Cleveland Synergy on behalf of the City of Cleveland. The group won the contract over competing bids submitted by LGBT sports groups from D.C. and Boston.

The D.C. group, Metropolitan Washington Gaymes, Inc., has said the FGG’s subsequent decision to oust Cleveland Synergy from operating the games meant that the games should go to D.C., which had been picked as the first runner up for the games.

FGG officials dispute Washington Gaymes’ interpretation of the bidding process, saying the FGG has authority to keep the games in Cleveland even though it was forced to oust Synergy Foundation as the operator of the Gay Games.

Meanwhile, in its court filings and depositions, Cleveland Synergy says it has uncovered e-mails and accounts of private conversations among Cleveland Sports Commission officials making anti-gay remarks and jokes about gays.

Haber said the findings, uncovered during the lawsuit’s discovery process, show that a historically LGBT-run sporting event may now be in the hands of a straight organization whose leaders are, at best, insensitive, to the LGBT community.

Cyd Zeigler, editor and publisher of the blog Out Sports, said he doubts that any of this will make a difference to the overwhelming majority of the 15,000 LGBT athletes expected to turn out for the Gay Games in Cleveland. FGG officials say a combined total of more than 50,000 people are expected to either participate in or attend the 2014 Gay Games.

“Why would anyone care whether the Gay Games are organized by a bunch of gay people or a bunch of straight people?” he said. “Your average gay swimmers and gay softball players just don’t care about any of this.”

Added Ziegler, “If the event is fun, if the event breaks even financially, and the athletes and their friends have fun the event is going to be a success, just as it has in nearly all prior years,” he said.

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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

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

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.

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National

Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information

Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

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.

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U.S. Federal Courts

Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections

Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

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Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Screen capture: YouTube)

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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