National
N.Y. protesters see importance of LGBT economic issues
As demonstrations spread, so does gay visibility in movement
Jonathan "J.C." Lopez of Brooklyn, N.Y. has been 'camping' in Zuccotti Park with his boyfriend for nearly two weeks with the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests. (Washington Blade photo by Phil Reese)
NEW YORK — The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City on Sept. 17 as an outpouring of frustration over the economy has captured the attention of the nation and spread to Washington and other cities.
Many protesters have decried government bailouts for financial institutions whose leaders escaped accountability for the recession. Others have focused on local issues and many LGBT advocates have joined the demonstrations. In New York, there is frustration among LGBT youth over cuts to programs like homeless youth shelters and HIV/AIDS care and prevention programs.
Jonathan “J.C.” Lopez of Brooklyn has, like many of these “campers,” been sleeping on the ground in Zuccotti Park in a sleeping bag with his boyfriend for nearly two weeks.
“I experienced a lot of messed up things, and a lot of good things that come along here, like how the cops were,” Lopez said about clashes with police that triggered widespread criticism. “They messed up and I’m glad that what they did is on camera.”
He hopes that the protests bring change to the New York Police Department.
“The good thing is that everybody works together for one thing and one thing only: Stand up,” Lopez said about the actions in New York’s financial district. “Everybody is tired of not speaking. The protest here is mainly for helping everybody. You know, the homeless, the justice, everything to make a change.”
Lopez sees unique economic challenges for LGBT youth and sees the protests as a catalyst to fix those problems.
“Certain people are just stranded in the street because of what they are,” he told the Blade as the sun was setting over his campsite. “Changing the whole economic system, changing people that are homeless, putting the programs back on, like the shelters and so on and so on, so people can get a job, people can get a home. I hope that will change.”
“Queer economic justice can mean several things,” Jake Goodman of New York activist group Queer Rising told the Blade. “On a very literal level, corporations — to my knowledge of which most have changed their employment policies to be favorable to at least gays and lesbian people — still donate a majority of their donations to candidates and to political parties that actively pursue policies that take away our rights or block us from our rights. So queer economic justice is to stop funding those people.”
“Also queer economic justice is to remember that gay people are not the only queer people — there are transgender people that need help with housing [and employment protections] and we need to remember our other brothers and sisters and ensure economic justice for them,” Goodman said, as a crowd gathered below the red “Joie de Vivre” statue towering over Zuccotti Park. “Economic justice for them is providing protection for [homeless queer youth] while they’re on the streets because families kick them out,” Goodman continued. “[Queer Rising is advocating] for additional $3 million per year in the budget every year, which would provide 100 additional beds per year until everybody has beds and protection.”
The Blade spent Monday and Tuesday in New York and LGBT protesters were found at every turn.
Diego Angarita of Massachusetts sees LGBT issues wrapped up with many of the other issues being addressed.
“As you saw in the declaration for Occupy Wall Street, there is still discrimination based on your sexual orientation and gender,” said Angarita, who was the sole marcher carrying a rainbow flag in a procession around the park. “Transgender people are discriminated against all the time. Imagine if there was a transgender stock trader. Are you kidding me that would never happen.”
“There are gay people who were immigrants, gay people who are undocumented, gay people who are on welfare, I mean gay people who are environmentalists, gay indigenous folks,” Angarita continued. “Being gay is so integrated into every form of identity that is out there and being the particular gay angle I guess is just discrimination for gender inequity and forms and in the sense of identity in general.”
Sunlight Foundation organizer Bridget Todd has been marching with the Occupy Washington protests in Lafayette Park since the start of the demonstrations and said the D.C. branch of the movement is only getting started.
“I don’t think that cops are going to force them to get out and they’re going to see if it peeters out on its own; but I actually don’t think it will, I think it’s only getting stronger,” Todd said of the D.C. demonstrations. “We were there just the other day on Sunday doing a teaching and trying to find ways to help them strengthen their movements and strengthen their ideas and really engage them.”
“I got laid off in April and we’re all suffering,” said Kristin Ridley, who traveled from Occupy L.A. to join the New York protest. “We’re all suffering and this is a basically becoming a plutocracy in this country, being ruled by the wealthy, and it hurts all of us.
“We need to go out and show support for a populist movement,” she continued. “And wrapped up into that are also a lot of the individual things that help people, for example, advancing equal rights based on things like sexual orientation, it just fits right into it.”
Though many members of the swelling group repeated that all were welcome, and that LGBT issues were not specifically being singled out because the economic policies being advocated would help all, some gay participants said they saw opportunities to educate passersby and others on unique LGBT economic issues. Paula Cambronero had an exchange with a man who approached her near the food trucks where interviews with protesters were being conducted.
“He was interested in what was going on … and he didn’t feel he understood what people were here for, so he started asking me a few questions,” Cambronero said. “He asked me what ‘real’ democracy meant, whether we thought we had a fake democracy now, where we were going, and he also asked me what we thought social justice meant. I said I thought it meant that everyone should have the same opportunities and the same rights, and he said that everybody already did.”
Cambronero used the inability of same-sex couples to marry as an example of inequality, which led him to proclaim all gay people can marry, as long as they marry the opposite sex.
“We had an interesting discussion where he shared his viewpoints of why he thought the law should not change, and I shared my opinion of why it should,” she told the Blade. “I hope I got him thinking.”
Rev. Magora Kennedy — whose hat was decorated with a rainbow flag — was in the Stonewall Inn the night that the police raid on the gay bar sparked three nights of unrest in New York City, leading to the dawn of the modern LGBT rights struggle.
“We were in the streets from that Friday until that Monday,” Kennedy said. “That weekend, there was very little ‘salt in the pepper.’ Most of us that were out there were people of color. The thing that happened with Stonewall, as the movement went on, it got whiter and whiter. Most of us that were involved with Stonewall, there’s not many of us that are alive today.”
Kennedy, a lesbian, was married to a gay man in the military. The two married to prevent Kennedy’s husband from being kicked out of the military. They had four sons. Kennedy now has 14 grandchildren and nine great grandchildren and calls herself the “gayest great-grandmother out of the closet.”
“I’m so sorry that he’s not alive today to know that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was repealed and that gay people can openly join the services now.”
Kennedy sees the LGBT rights movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests as extensions of the civil rights movement.
“This whole thing is something that we’ve all been going through from the time of the civil rights movement,” she said above a chorus of protesters and drums rising from the center of Zuccotti Park, just steps from the site of the World Trade Center. “When they were putting together Wall Street … it was very, very white; no women and no people of color.”
She continued, “today … the people of color — the blacks, the Puerto Ricans, and just people of color in general — they gave them good salaries so they’d shut up. These people are making millions of dollars and as long as they stay quiet it’s a brand of new slavery and it’s economic slavery.”
“The state is a central organized power of violence, and that’s what forces violence against queers and everything else,” Vita told the Blade. “Queers in particular face violence and pressure from the state. For example, the issue of marriage. I’m not necessarily pro-marriage, I’m for getting the government out of marriage so there’s no bias either way for straight, gay or anybody.”
A local nanny who wished to remain anonymous came to the rally on Sept. 18, initially to support “the vague sentiments being expressed at the beginning, the sense of dissatisfaction with injustice.”
She decided to stay and has taken on the role of medic for the community of occupiers because she enjoys the community developing at Zuccotti Park.
“I think that what’s being built here is a revitalization of progressive politics and the labor movement and a lot of other things that I feel really needed some new energy.”
“The energy’s definitely gone up,” she said among the clamour of a call-and answer chant making its way across the park. “When it started it was maybe a couple hundred people, and it was a pretty consistent group of people, so we all knew each other. That’s changed.”
“One of the best things about this community is that everybody here is listening all the time,” the New York nanny-turned medic said. “so when we do things like, for example, saying ‘let’s go around the circle and say our names and our preferred gender pronoun,’ and somebody says ‘why should I need to say my preferred gender pronoun,’ we can explain, ‘not everybody here is going to prefer the pronoun that you may assume based on their body.’ And they sort of listen and go ‘oh, OK. I didn’t know that, and now I do, and now I have a new way to think about gender, and a new way to think about how people present themselves,’ that they can not only take into their interactions with people here, but hopefully take back home with them into their communities.”
“One of the reason that I’ve always opposed people like the Log Cabin Republicans, its not just that I’m a progressive, but I don’t believe that a conservative outlook — even a conservative economic outlook — can be consistent with gay rights,” the anonymous medic said. “I believe that the conservative political mindset is founded on elitism, its founded on special privileges, so it will never create a society in which LGBT people can live as equals to straight people and cisgender people. So if LGBT people want a society where they can be treated as the legal and cultural equal of the majority, they need to be part of a community that is working toward change and working toward more a equal rather than less equal community.”
Kat Adams, a queer minimum wage worker from Staten Island works with the medics at Zuccotti Park. He is eager to have a family some day, but as his salary barely pays his rent, he is reticent to start his family.
“Not by a long shot,” he said about whether or not minimum wage is a living wage. “I will not bring a child into a situation where I can’t even provide shoes.”
“Most of us have full time jobs,” he said of criticism of the protesters.
“What brought me here was just medical. I came down here with no interest in the politics, very little knowledge of what was going on, and honestly I didn’t think it would work, I didn’t think it mattered, and thought it would all fall apart within a couple weeks.”
“After seeing what happened Wednesday with the police confrontations and all the chaos, I consider myself part of it now,” Adams said, recalling an ugly injury he helped treat, of a camper who was hit so hard by a police baton he required EMT attention.
“You’ll see the rainbow flag out, you’ll see a lot of people, but its such a diverse group, but everyone looks so ‘weird,’ that you’re not going to find us.”
Many protesters believe that mainstream media outlets have been resistant to fairly portraying the actions in New York’s financial district.
“You haven’t seen nearly as much coverage [of the protests] as you would think there would be of something like this big and loud and widespread, say, compared to the Tea Party where fifty people show up and it’s and it’s backed by a political party and they get a lot of attention,” said Kristin Ridley. “But when its this big, widespread, truly grassroots movement it doesn’t get nearly the same amount of attention.”
Though their goals are intentionally abstract, according to the back page of the protester’s daily newspaper, ‘The Occupied Wall Street Journal,’ many of those that spoke with the Blade feel that progress will spark from the colorful demonstrations.
Kat Adams notes that many groups from across the political and economic spectrum, from libertarian Ron Paul supporters to communists to anarchists have assembled at the park to exchange ideas and express frustration with a political process that has made them feel left behind.
“You see arguments that spring up, but I think that’s good,” Adams continued. “A lot of people talk about how aimless this is, but that really is expressive of the idea here. Its all these different groups who would never talk to each other, let alone hang out like this, have come together because they all see the same problem.”
“I think they’re actually constructive arguments, people are trying to understand one another, and help others understand them.”
“What we want to happen here is a change to the way the process works, is a change to the way society is ordered,” The anonymous medic summarized the goals of the occupation. “So that it is not the richest part of society that has all the political power, so its not the richest part of society that has all of the economic power, so that wealth is more fairly distributed, and so that things like education, food, health care, housing are recognized as basic human rights are treated as basic human rights by the government and by society.”
Ethan Lee Vita agrees that the Occupy Wall Street protests and the dozens more that have began to appear all over the nation, are a good opportunity for a wide-range of like-minded individuals to network and exchange ideas.
“I’m not entirely sure if the occupation itself will forge anything, but the bonds that are built within it, and the ideas exchanged will be very helpful down the line,” Vita concluded.
Bridget Todd supports the Wall Street group, but thinks that the Washington contingency will be even more successful at initiating change.
“I think Wall Street is important but I think K Street is arguably more important; that’s where a lot of the money goes and that’s where a lot of it happens so I think it’s very important and I’m glad to see that this is a sort of countrywide movement but especially DC and New York.”
Stonewall veteran Reverend Magora Kennedy believes uniting different movements against injustice is vital.
“We’re all in this together. Whether you’re gay or straight, white, black, blue, green, whatever; we’re all in this together because if we don’t come together and unite and do something about this we will perish.”
National
New LGBTQ+ Archive to save scrubbed federal resources
Trump’s anti-DEI crusade seeks to erase entire communities
Generally, when someone says, “The internet is forever,” it is not a positive statement.
But for Shae Gardner, policy director at LGBT Tech, it has become a lifeline as she and her team have spent the last couple of months tracking down documents removed from government websites.
After a series of anti-DEI and LGBTQ executive orders, thousands of pages across the federal government have been removed or altered—with LGBTQ topics taking a big hit.
The LGBTQ+ Archive, launched by LGBT Tech last month, aims to restore lost resources about the LGBTQ community into a centralized hub. They have tracked down approximately 1,000 documents—all available as downloadable PDFs and sorted by agency—but know that more are missing. Users can submit missing documents or requests for missing documents.
Archived resources range from the 2023 Equity Action Plans mandated under Biden to HIV resource sheets.
Sid Gazula, LGBT Tech’s Google Policy Fellow said reviewing the documents scrubbed from the Department of Health and Human Services was striking. “You have these important documents related to people’s health. Health isn’t subjective,” he said, “The fact that an executive order could take away all this information was very eye-opening.”
For Gazula it made an already urgent project more urgent. “We, as a community, need access to these resources,” he said, “The archive presents a mechanism to get that access out there.”
The LGBT community has a long history of engaging in archival work, explained K.J. Rawson, professor at Northeastern University and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, in an email. He described archives as “key avenues for preserving and making accessible queer and trans history.”
Since mainstream archives often erase or misrepresent the LGBTQ community, Rawson pointed out that LGBTQ archives “fight against this trend and wrest control back into LGBTQ+ hands,” citing Cait McKinney’s phrase “information activism.”
Gardner feels appreciative of the history of LGBTQ preservation, which guided their work: “I want to make it abundantly clear that we are the first or only organization doing this sort of preservation work.” She also mentions the Internet Archive, a non-profit library of web pages, which was invaluable during their research.
When the Blade asked about the LGBT Archive, Rawson described it as “crucial!” He elaborated that, “the overt erasure of LGBTQ+ people––but especially trans people––from federal websites has been a hostile move that’s one part of larger efforts to strip us of our humanity and our history.”
Beyond creating a record for the future, the archive is also useful in fighting for LGBTQ representation today. Gardner explained that numerous journalists and advocacy groups have already been using it. Gazula, who is a student, shared that some of their professors said it was an important resource for academic work.
To access it, users have to create an account. Gardner said this is not for marketing. Instead, they want to “put a stop gap between us and malicious actors and attacks on the site” and have a basic understanding of who is using the site. She assures users that the data is backed up on servers globally, but encourages folks to download freely from the archive.
“We decided that we wanted every document and resource on it to be a PDF that they would be able to save it themselves,” said Gardner, “This is not only meant to be very user-friendly, but is also meant to help with those resources being dispersed and being kept.”
“It is the history of our community,” Gardner continued, “we deserve to have continued access to it.”
U.S. Federal Courts
Meeting the moment: Democracy Forward takes prominent role in fighting Trump regime
Group is involved in cases including some before the Supreme Court that concern LGBTQ rights
Just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide a handful of cases with potentially huge implications for LGBTQ rights in America, the Washington Blade spoke with the president of a group that is involved in several of those legal battles and others that have taken center stage in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Since 2021, Skye Perryman has served as president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal services and impact litigation group distinguished in part by its focus, “in our organizational hiring, and in our growth, and in our organizational culture,” on “having as many highly talented lawyers full-time, on our staff, as we possibly can.”
The moment requires it. Since the start of the new administration, demand for legal representation has skyrocketed as people and communities, from government workers to university administrators and LGBTQ populations, have been targeted.
Additionally, following his return to the White House Trump has launched an unprecedented assault against lawyers and law firms, which has discouraged attorneys from representing clients and causes that might put them at odds with the administration or with the president himself.
As queer Russian-American journalist and author M. Gessen said recently, “the judiciary is the hardest thing to restore once it has been destroyed. It’s a very, very complicated universe — of courts and lawyers and cultural norms and educational institutions and law firms as institutions that are distinct from individual lawyers — and he’s attacking every one of those elements.”
“We’ve grown substantially in order to be able to meet this moment, which is why we’re able to be in court,” Perryman told the Blade, “because we have lawyers on our staff,” about 50 full-time attorneys right now, which means “we’re not as dependent on pro bono legal services.”
Trump’s attacks on the rule of law have been complicated by the surrender of firms that have struck deals with the president to spare themselves from executive orders that present existential threats to their survival but which others have chosen to fight in court.
Perryman said that as a result of these settlements, “there are less legal services available at a time when the major tool that the American people have right now to defend their rights against their government is the ability to initiate litigation.”
In back-to-back rulings in late March followed by a decision early last month, Judges John Bates, Richard Leon, and Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down Trump’s executive orders against the firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Perkins Coie, ruling them unconstitutional. (Perryman is an alum of WilmerHale and of Covington & Burling, another top firm that is fighting an order targeting them.)
Nevertheless, “there has been an exponential increase in demand for our work as an organization, for our lawyers, because there has been a reduction in legal services provided by many firms in the private bar,” Perryman said.
She hedged that many firms have continued “doing pro-democracy work” since the start of Trump’s second term, but added there still “has been an overall significant gap in the legal services the private bar has been providing.”
Asked whether she has seen evidence that this has impacted litigation against Trump’s anti-trans executive orders and policies, Perryman declined to address specifics. “What we’ve seen more broadly is just firms not wanting to take on causes that would put them in the crosshairs of the administration,” she said, but noted that “of course, this is an administration that’s already shown that it’s very focused on rolling back the rights of the LGBTQ community.”
Pushing back against attacks on the rule of law
“There’s not a question in these courts’ minds about the constitutionality of what the administration is doing,” Perryman said. “You see very strong language that unequivocally makes it clear that a variety of our constitutional amendments and provisions are threatened and violated with respect to a president that is seeking to retaliate and to engage in these direct attacks on lawyers and law firms.”
Moreover, “These judges have all spent time in their opinions talking about the corrosive effects [of] law firms that have settled their matters, the fact that the administration appears to be have been able to resolve its concerns about a law firm merely if they’re willing to settle,” she said. “They really call that out as a pretext.”
Perryman added that the judges who have ruled in favor of plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration represent a variety of ideological backgrounds, or were nominated for their positions by presidents from both parties, which “really shows that these attacks and the response and our Constitution’s response to these attacks is something that transcends politics and transcends the general way that we look at politics in this country.”
“In the United States, the president cannot retaliate against people just because he doesn’t like who their clients were, and he can’t deprive people of legal representation,” Perryman said. “And I think that you see those themes come through very clearly in the opinions.”
Major victories and what’s on the docket now
“In many instances, we’ve co counseled and developed cases alongside Lambda and other groups specifically and exclusively focused on LGBTQ rights,” Perryman said, referring to Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ focused organization that does a lot of impact litigation.
“Democracy Forward’s expertise is very broad, and we do a lot of work with respect to the federal government and federal agencies and how those agencies work for people,” she added.
Perryman pointed to the successful legal challenge led by Democracy Forward against the Office of Management and Budget’s Jan. 28 memo ordering a nationwide hold on disbursements of federal grants and loans. The order came pursuant to Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI and the trans community, so LGBTQ nonprofits were disproportionately impacted among the groups receiving public funds.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Democracy Forward’s plaintiffs including SAGE, which provides a variety of critical services for LGBTQ elders, resulted in a preliminary injunction issued by Judge Loren AliKhan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which remains in place, protecting organizations that she noted would otherwise have faced “economically catastrophic—and in some circumstances, fatal” consequences.
“That litigation is helping the whole country, not just LGBTQ communities,” Perryman said, noting that in this case as in other cases, LGBTQ people and communities are often disproportionately impacted by litigation that, facially or at first blush, may not seem to directly concern their rights or welfare.
Perryman credited SAGE for suing the administration during its early days when the executive orders targeting lawyers and law firms were new and there was not much appetite for challenging the new Trump regime in court. “Everyone was very scared,” she said “and we’re just so proud of our clients.”
Another example, she noted, is Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which is pending a decision by the Supreme Court. The case is “sort of around an executive order that the governor of South Carolina put in place that removes facilities that provide abortion from the Medicaid provider list,” Perryman said.
She continued, “What that effectively does is it cuts off access, for patients that are using Medicaid, to critical services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, services that go far beyond just abortion care. Planned Parenthood, of course, provides so many sexual and reproductive health services, including to the LGBTQ community. And so I think that is a case that is also worth mentioning. We filed a brief there on behalf of current and former senior HHS administrators and others.”
Also before the Supreme Court as the June term nears its conclusion are cases like Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc., which could imperil coverage under the Affordable Care Act for a broad swath of preventative health services and medications beyond PrEP, which is used to reduce the risk of transmitting HIV through sex.
Plaintiffs brought the case to challenge a requirement that insurers and group health plans cover the drug regimen, arguing that the mandate “encourage[s] homosexual behavior, intravenous drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”
The case has been broadened, however, such that cancer screenings, heart disease medications, medications for infants, and several other preventive care services are in jeopardy, LGBTQ and civil rights organizations have argued.
“In the Braidwood case, we filed a brief representing medical groups that outlines the real harms that could result if the court adopts what is, we believe, quite a baseless position,” Perryman said, “and how those harms could extend to all communities, frankly.”
There are others, Perryman noted. “The administration weaponizing the government against the rights of the American people and against LGBTQ people,” which has led Democracy Forward to challenge the firing of federal employees responsible for DEI, and the termination of Jocelyn Samuels from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where she served as a commissioner and as such enforced anti-discrimination laws in the workplace including rules protecting LGBTQ people.
The organization is also in court fighting the administration’s effort to “prevent federal workers at National Guard facilities from being able to access bathrooms that correspond with their gender and their needs,” Perryman noted.
“Those types of matters that really involve the mechanics of the federal government and how it’s being weaponized against the American people, those are areas where Democracy Forward has had particular expertise and has been a core player,” she said.
The organization is active at the state and local level, too, including on matters that have “significant overlay with the LGBTQ community,” Perryman said. She pointed to lawsuits where, “We’ve sued on the decimation of the library sciences,” on behalf of the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, important litigation given how state-level censorship has disproportionately targeted LGBTQ books, curricula, and speech.
Stronger together
“What I’m looking forward to as we move forward, I mean, this is a hard time, and it’s a hard time for the country,” Perryman said. “We know there’s a lot of fear.”
Reflecting on the resilience of LGBTQ people and communities specifically during Pride month, Perryman said, “what I’m looking forward to at our work at Democracy Forward is how we get to be alongside the people and communities in this country that even though they are afraid, and even though they are scared, they are making the choice to choose courage and to step forward and say, we can build some community together.”
“We see that happening in our work every day with all of these amazing plaintiffs and groups that we are representing,” she added. “While big, storied institutions are not standing up the way they need to, in this time, the American people really are and at Democracy Forward, we get a front row seat to that, which is a real honor.”
“As I think about the months ahead, which will be challenging, I’m just really looking forward to continuing to have a team that’s able to be there for people that in this time are choosing courage,” Perryman said.
U.S. Federal Courts
Judge temporarily blocks executive orders targeting LGBTQ, HIV groups
Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in federal court
A federal judge on Monday blocked the enforcement of three of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that would have threatened to defund nonprofit organizations providing health care and services for LGBTQ people and those living with HIV.
The preliminary injunction was awarded by Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a case, San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, filed by Lambda Legal and eight other organizations.
Implementation of the executive orders — two aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion along with one targeting the transgender community — will be halted pending the outcome of the litigation challenging them.
“This is a critical win — not only for the nine organizations we represent, but for LGBTQ communities and people living with HIV across the country,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project director and senior counsel on the case.
“The court blocked anti-equity and anti-LGBTQ executive orders that seek to erase transgender people from public life, dismantle DEI efforts, and silence nonprofits delivering life-saving services,” Abrigo said. “Today’s ruling acknowledges the immense harm these policies inflict on these organizations and the people they serve and stops Trump’s orders in their tracks.”
Tigar wrote, in his 52-page decision, “While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the constitution.”
“And even in the context of federal subsidies, it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous,” he said.
Without the preliminary injunction, the judge wrote, “Plaintiffs face the imminent loss of federal funding critical to their ability to provide lifesaving healthcare and support services to marginalized LGBTQ populations,” a loss that “not only threatens the survival of critical programs but also forces plaintiffs to choose between their constitutional rights and their continued existence.”
The organizations in the lawsuit are located in California (San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Los Angeles LGBT Center, GLBT Historical Society, and San Francisco Community Health Center), Arizona (Prisma Community Care), New York (The NYC LGBT Community Center), Pennsylvania (Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center), Maryland (Baltimore Safe Haven), and Wisconsin (FORGE).
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