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National news in brief: May 27

Tennessee Governor signs law undoing local LGBT employment protections in that state, FDA clears new Hepatitis C treatment, New York Times hires first openly gay op-ed columnist, ESPN radio’s Jared Max comes out.

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Jared Max

Tennessee anti-gay bill signed into law

NASHVILLE — A Nashville ordinance that barred city contractors from discriminating against LGBT people in employment was reversed Monday, when Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law a bill that bans such ordinances.

HB 600, the “Equal Access to Intrastate Commerce Act,” was originally supported by the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce until LGBT advocacy groups across America issued statements pressuring Tennessee leaders to drop the bill, according to The Tennessean, a Gannett paper. Nissan, and other large Tennessee corporations attempted to push for a veto in the last days to no avail.

Also Monday, the Tennessee Senate passed a bill barring the discussion of homosexuality in elementary and middle schools, dubbed the “don’t say gay’ bill.  According to CBS 21 News, the bill’s sponsor believes the media has unfairly targeted the bill and misunderstood its intent.

“The media has hyped this up to banning a word and that’s absolutely not true,” he told the TV station. “It just says what is appropriate for real young children to be taught.”

Gay rights advocates are hoping to stop the bill from being signed by the Governor.

NBA player Joakim Noah ‘fine’ with $50,000 fine

CHICAGO — After being fined $50,000 for hurling an anti-gay slur at an abusive fan, Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah is ready to face his penalty, calling it “fair.”

Unlike L.A. Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, who last month fought his $100,000 fine by the National Basketball Association, Noah is ready to atone for his behavior and put the incident behind him, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

LGBT advocacy groups had called for swift action by the basketball league in the wake of a spate of recent outburst by high profile professional athletes. The NBA had recently teamed up with the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network to record public service announcements urging viewers to “think before they speak” featuring the Phoenix Suns’ Grant Hill and Jared Dudley.

FDA clears Vertex’s Hepatitis C Drug

SILVER SPRING, Md. — Hepatitis C patients with liver damage will soon have a powerful new treatment that promises to “double” chances of curing the disease.

The FDA has given the green light to Incivek, a twice-a-day tablet by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, after approving a similar drug called Vicrelis by Merck just weeks ago, according to CBS News. The pill will be priced at more than $1,100 a week, making it a costly course of treatment for most patients. The life-threatening disease affects about 3.2 million Americans.

Bruni tapped by Times as first openly gay op-ed columnist

NEW YORK CITY — The “Old Gray Lady,” The New York Times, has made history in hiring its first openly gay op-ed columnist, Frank Bruni, the current chief restaurant critic.

Bruni, 46, has been with the Times for more than a decade and will be penning a new anchor feature for the Sunday Op-Ed pages, according to New York Times opinions pages editor, Andrew Rosenthal.

“This column … will be a sharp, opinionated look at a big event of the last week,” wrote Rosenthal in an e-mail to the staff, on Monday, “from a different or unexpected angle, or a small event that was really important but everyone seems to have missed.”

While writing for the Detroit Free Press, Bruni was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and has penned two New York Times best sellers, after starting at the Times as a Washington correspondent.

ESPN radio’s Max comes out

Jared Max

Jared Max (Photo courtesy CBS New York)

NEW YORK CITY — Jared Max, popular sports radio personality, well known in New York for a decade, came out on his top rated morning sports talk show on Tuesday saying, “I think its time I released myself from these self-imposed shackles that have kept me living in fear for too long.”

According to blogging site Media Bistro, the announcement came as a total surprise not only to the 37-year-old host’s listeners, but to his colleagues and himself.

“I remember telling my cat Mush the night before, ‘I think something might happen tomorrow,’” he told the site in an interview.

Max’s revelation comes on the heels of several other very powerful self-outings in the media and sports world. Just prior to Max’s coming out, Rick Welts, president of the Phoenix Suns professional basketball team outed himself, as did CNN news anchor Don Lemon and former Villanova University basketball star Will Sheridan.

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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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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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