National
DynCorp urged to adopt non-discrimination policy
Military contractor settles case with man who claimed anti-gay harassment
An LGBT workplace rights advocacy group has launched an online petition to persuade a military contractor to adopt an LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination policy.
The change.org petition, created by Freedom to Work, is directed at DynCorp International LLC, a Fairfax, Va.-based company. The petition, which as of early Wednesday had 62 signatures, calls on DynCorp “to strengthen their non-discrimination policy by including sexual orientation and gender identity.
The company’s policies recently came under scrutiny in the wake of a settlement the company made with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over a case in which a straight employee, James Friso, was allegedly subjected to anti-gay harassment and called “faggot,” “queer” and “dick-sucker” by a co-worker on a daily basis.
DynCorp allegedly did nothing after Friso complained about the harassment. As a result of the EEOC settlement this month, Friso will be awarded $155,000, but the company isn’t required to change its non-discrimination policy to include protections based on sexual orientation.
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said his organization chose DynCorp as its first corporate campaign because of “explosive facts in the form of brutally ugly harassment” that were revealed after the settlement was reached.
“That kind of treatment is just plain un-American, and I think the public is going to have a visceral reaction that this company has to do better if they want to continue collecting billions of dollars in our taxpayer funds,” Almeida said.
DynCorp receives more than 96 percent of its revenue from federal contracts that amount to $2 billion each year, making it the 32nd largest federal contractor, according to Freedom to Work.
During a news conference Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney didn’t have an immediate answer when asked if the administration has a problem with companies receiving this kind of federal money while not protecting employees from anti-gay bias.
“Why don’t I take that question because I know none of the details that you just described,” Carney said. “I don’t want to make a general statement about it since I know nothing about the specifics. But I’ll take the question.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up email request to respond to the question asked during the news briefing.
Ashley Burke, a DynCorp spokesperson, said in response to the petition, “we are currently examining our policies to determine how they can be further strengthened, including in this specific area.”
Almeida said he thinks persuading DynCorp to adopt an LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination policy is a “winnable campaign” based on the statement from DynCorp and because the company “is going to realize that discrimination is bad for the bottom line.”
“Most of the other military contractors like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and General Dynamics have already adopted LGBT non-discrimination policies, and many of them have specifically said that non-discrimination rules increase efficiency and make them a stronger and more profitable company,” Almeida said.
One way to prompt DynCorp to adopt an LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination policy would be for President Obama to issue an executive order prohibiting federal dollars from going to companies that don’t have sexual orientation and gender identity included in their policies. The White House hasn’t said whether Obama would be open to issuing such an order.
But Almeida said he’s “optimistic” Obama will issue the order early this year because it would fit with the White House’s “recent theme of governance.”
“He’s taken executive actions on politically charged topics like immigration, and he’s done things that have angered the business community such as mandating overtime payments for home healthcare workers and making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board,” Almeida said. “By comparison, the ENDA Executive Order is politically very easy. ENDA polls very strongly with voters, including with a majority of Republican voters.”
The “ENDA” executive order is so named because it would be similar to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that would prohibit workplace discrimination against LGBT people.
Almeida added the executive order could also be a component of a presidential campaign against Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, who backed ENDA in 1994 but said he no longer supports the legislation in an interview in 2006.
“I think President Obama might even use his signature on the ENDA Executive Order as a wedge issue in the campaign against Mitt Romney, who has taken three or four different positions on ENDA, and to this day nobody knows what he stands for,” Almeida said.
UPDATE: The White House has responded to the Blade inquiry about companies receiving federal dollars without having LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination protections and the ENDA executive order with the following statement:
“President Obama has long supported an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity,” said White House spokesperson Shin Inouye. “Regarding your question on a potential Executive Order, I don’t have anything to report.”
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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