National
New Jersey Assembly passes marriage bill, 42-33
Gov. Christie promises to veto


While marriage advocates are optimistic, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has vowed to veto the bill. (Photo by Walter Burns via Wikimedia Commons)
The New Jersey state Assembly passed a bill extending marriage rights to same-sex couples on Thursday, after the Senate approved the measure earlier in the week.
At 4:45 p.m. the Assembly voted to pass the bill by a narrow 42-33, giving it just enough votes to pass out of the 80 member chamber, but not enough to overcome a promised veto by Gov. Chris Christie. The tally was initially announced as a 41-33 vote with one abstention, but shortly after the vote, the tally was updated, with the error blamed on a “stuck button,” according to one source who was in the State House at the time.
“I think it’s a giant step forward,” said Marc Solomon, Freedom to Marry’s national campaign director. “The Senate in New Jersey voted two years ago and defeated a marriage bill pretty overwhelmingly, and now today passed in the Senate and the Assembly… and that is a significant step forward.”
In what was expected to be a close vote on Monday, the New Jersey Senate handily passed the Marriage Equality and Religious Exemption Act — known as S1 — by a 24-16 margin.
In order to overcome a veto, the Senate will need to find an additional three votes in favor, as a two-thirds majority of the 40-member chamber is 27. In the 80-member New Jersey General Assembly, 54 votes in favor would be needed to overcome a governor’s veto, which leaves marriage supporters with the job of flipping or finding 12 additional votes in that chamber in 23 months.
The legislature would have until the end of this legislative session on Jan. 18, 2014 to override Christie’s veto. Advocates are cautiously optimistic that this is possible.
Sources at the vote report only Democrats voted in favor of the bill in New Jersey, after heavy campaigning from the governor.
“It still passed with not just the aversion of the governor, but with the active arm twisting of the governor to get Republicans to vote against the bill,” Solomon told the Blade minutes after the Thursday afternoon vote. “There are Republicans who support the freedom to marry in the Assembly, but unfortunately the governor really twisted arms.”
Cristie has advocated in favor of taking the question to voters through a ballot measure, something that has angered LGBT advocates and civil rights veterans alike. Last month Georgia Congressman John Lewis lashed out at Christie for a statement he made implying that civil rights leaders would have rather had civil rights issues sent to popular vote rather than making advances through legislation and litigation.
ThinkProgress reports that after she signed a bill legalizing gender neutral marriage in Washington, Gov. Christine Gregoire sent a letter to Christie encouraging him to do the same.
“If two men want to fall in love and get married, or two women, it’s their business,” said Lewis, according to the Advocate. “It’s not the role of the federal government or the state government to intervene. It’s a question of human dignity, a question of human rights. I think the day will come in New Jersey and all across our country when we will look back on this period and say, ‘We were just silly. We were just foolish.'”
Same-sex marriage activists, including Solomon, believe there is time to move lawmakers to their side by presenting them with compelling stories from real couples affected by legal discrimination.
“We will sit down immediately and look at the lists and see who the persuadable lawmakers are,” Solomon said. “My own experience is as we put forward the really smart field effort to mobilize married couples who deserve to get married and share their stories with lawmakers, we’re going to get those lawmakers.”
“People only move one way on this issue, and it’s our way.”
University of California Los Angeles-based LGBT think tank, the Williams Institute, estimates that 16,875 same-sex couples live in New Jersey, with nearly 3,000 of those couples raising an estimated 6,650 total children. New Jersey is likely to generate $48 to $119 million for the state economy in same-sex wedding-related business if the bill passes, according to the think tank. It said that 4,447 of the nearly 17,000 same-sex couples in the Garden State already identify one another as “spouses.”
On Jan. 7, 2010, a bill calling for the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples failed in the New Jersey Senate on a vote of 14-20. Senate leadership has since become much more involved in pressuring the chamber in favor of the bill, with a greater emphasis on lobbying the 24 Democrats and 16 Republicans than ever before.
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.