National
Boehner panel appeals ruling against DOMA
House Democrats ‘decline to support’ filing in favor of anti-gay law
A panel led by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) filed a notice on Friday to appeal a district judge’s ruling against the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act to a higher court.
The three-page notice states that the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House “respectfully appeals” the ruling earlier this week against the anti-gay law to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The notice doesn’t offer a reason for the grounds for appeal.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffery White — appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush — ruled against DOMA in the case of Golinski v. United States, saying the statute “unconstitutionally discriminates against married same-sex couples.” The decision announced on Friday appeals this decision to the Ninth Circuit.
Fred Sainz, vice president of communications at the Human Rights Campaign, called the appeal “unfortunate but to be expected” from Boehner and Republican leadership.
“The Republican House leadership clearly believes that continuing to deny committed gay and lesbian married couples the rights they so richly deserve is a part of their mission as elected officials,” Sainz said. “The fact that our hard earned tax dollars is paying for this folly is both insulting and demeaning to all LGBT people.”
The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group is made up of Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). The notice of the appeals states that Pelosi and Hoyer “decline to support the filing of this notice of appeal.”
Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesperson, slammed House Republican leadership for its continued defense of DOMA in court.
“The District Court in Northern District of California flatly rejected the arguments of Speaker Boehner and his taxpayer-funded lawyers that insulted millions of Americans and their families,” Hammill said. “The court made it clear that there is no legitimate interest in denying a class of couples the rights and responsibilities guaranteed to married couples under state law.”
Hammill also took issue with the amount of money that Boehner devoted to defending the anti-gay law. Last year, the speaker bumped up the cost cap of defending DOMA to $1.5 million.
“Over the past year, the initial $500,000 in outside legal fees Speaker Boehner plans to spend has tripled to $1.5 million without any vote of the BLAG,” Hammill said. “That is a tremendous amount of taxpayer money expended, on a purely partisan basis, to defend discrimination. With progress on marriage equality coming from all corners of our country, Speaker Boehner would have been better served and saved taxpayers’ money if he had more carefully reviewed the district court’s ruling and had declined to file a notice of appeal.”
The House took up defense of DOMA after the Obama administration announced last year that it would no longer defend the anti-gay law in court. A spokesperson for Boehner deferred comment to counsel on why the appeal was necessary, but lawyers working on behalf of the panel didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment.
A White House spokesperson deferred comment to the Justice Department, which didn’t respond on short notice to comment on House leadership’s decision to appeal the decision.
Lambda Legal, along with Morrison & Foerster LLP, filed the case in 2008 on behalf of Karen Golinski, who was denied spousal health benefits by her employer, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Golinski has been partners with Amy Cunninghis for more than 20 years, and the two were legally married in 2008 under California law before Proposition 8 took away marriage rights for gay couples in the state.
Tara Borelli, a Lambda staff attorney, expressed confidence that the lower court ruling would stand up on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
“We are confident Judge White’s thorough and well-reasoned decision will stand the test of time,” Borelli said. “We do not know what the grounds of this appeal may be, but one thing we do know: DOMA is doomed, and efforts to extend this discriminatory law, while not unexpected, serve only to harm loving couples and families.”
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill that reopens the federal government.
Six Democrats — U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — voted for the funding bill that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Republicans — Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) — opposed it.
The 43-day shutdown is over after eight Democratic senators gave in to Republicans’ push to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act. According to CNBC, the average ACA recipient could see premiums more than double in 2026, and about one in 10 enrollees could lose a premium tax credit altogether.
These eight senators — U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — sided with Republicans to pass legislation reopening the government for a set number of days. They emphasized that their primary goal was to reopen the government, with discussions about ACA tax credits to continue afterward.
None of the senators who supported the deal are up for reelection.
King said on Sunday night that the Senate deal represents “a victory” because it gives Democrats “an opportunity” to extend ACA tax credits, now that Senate Republican leaders have agreed to hold a vote on the issue in December. (The House has not made any similar commitment.)
The government’s reopening also brought a win for Democrats’ other priorities: Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in after a record-breaking delay in swearing in, eventually becoming the 218th signer of a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
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