National
Supreme Court won’t hear NOM disclosure case
Anti-gay group has no further avenue for appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday it won’t hear a case brought by the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage challenging a Maine law requiring the organization to reveal its donors.
The high court posted a notice on its websiteĀ indicating it wouldn’t hear the case, known as National Organization for Marriage v. McKee, without providing comment. The decision means NOM no longer has any avenue of appeal in the case.
NOM, among the most high-profile organizations opposing same-sex marriage,Ā asked the Supreme Court to take the case after the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the Maine disclosure laws.
In 2009, NOM contributed a total of $1.8 million toĀ Stand for Marriage Maine and was one of the top fundraisers for the political action committee, which funded efforts for a Maine referendum that nullified the same-sex marriage law in the state.
According to Maine law, any organization that makes expenditures of more than $5,000 to influence a ballot question must register and file reports with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices.
The anti-gay group contested this law on the basis that NOM shouldn’t be defined as a political action committee and because the statutory scheme of the law was unconstitutionally vague, but the First Circuit denied these arguments. The high court decision on Monday not to take up the case means the appellate court ruling will stand.
NOM didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request to comment on the Supreme Court decision or a sense of timing for when they would disclose their donors.
LGBT advocates praised the decision by the Supreme Court and said it’ll keep NOM more transparent in its efforts to stop the advancement of same-sex marriage.
Fred Sainz, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president of communications, said the Supreme Court’s decision means the court has “once again allowed state disclosure laws to stand.”
“Even conservative judges have rejected NOMās pleas for secrecy and misguided attempts to thumb its nose at donor disclosure laws,” Sainz said. “At some point, this fringe anti-LGBT group has to realize that it canāt just pick and choose which laws it follows and which laws it ignores.”
Fred Karger, who’s running as an openly gay candidate for the Republican nomination for president, helped bring NOM’s practices to the attention of the Maine Ethics Commission in 2009. He said he’s “thrilled” with the Supreme Court decision.
“They finally will be forced to reveal their donor names,” Karger said. “That is one of my goal in life, to keep them transparent, which is a very tough assignment because that is the opposite approach they take.”
NOM’s has a history of questionable practices with disclosure of its donors.Ā The group has raised more than $284,000 on behalf of Minnesotaās anti-gay marriage amendment, butĀ listed zero donorsĀ as the source of the cash. The organization has said that the contributions came from āmembership dues,ā which allows it to avoid disclosing donors under a loophole in Minnesota law.
However, according to Think Progress, NOM doesn’t have a membership structure by which it can collect dues, at least not publicly, and didn’t list membership dues as a source of revenue in its 2010 tax returns.
Jennifer Pizer, legal director of the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the Supreme Court decision isn’t surprising because it takes up few petitions and the Maine disclosure law isn’t uncommon.
Pizer said NOM failed to advance their case because it couldn’t substantiate that donors would face threats if their names were public, nor could it successfully make the argument that the Citizens United ruling, which allows for unlimited political contributions from corporations and unions, allowsĀ campaign donors to give anonymously.
“It long has been believed that public sunshine on the identities of large donors to campaigns is important for voters assessing both candidates and ballot measures, and that our constitutionally protected rights to participate in the political process are not rights to do so secretly,” Pizer said.
Pizer added future litigation against disclosure laws may occur in the future, but groups like NOMĀ “would want to find different legal theories than the arguments rejected in this case.”
“Todayās ruling probably means that everyone, including NOM, will need to abide by the same campaign finance disclosure rules during the upcoming campaigns as Maineās voters this fall most likely will be deciding again on marriage for same-sex couples,” Pizer said.
[h/t] SCOTUSblog
State Department
Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order
State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

Seven transgender and nonbinary people on Feb. 7 filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.
Ashton Orr, Zaya Perysian, Sawyer Soe, Chastain Anderson, Drew Hall, Bella Boe, and Reid Solomon-Lane are the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the private law firm Covington & Burling LPP filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit names Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as defendants.
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June 2021 announced the State Department would begin to issue gender-neutral passports and documents for American citizens who were born overseas.
Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as nonbinary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an āXā gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.
The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.
Trump signed the executive order that overturned it shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. Rubio later directed State Department personnel to āsuspend any application requesting an āXā sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.ā
āThis guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an āXā sex marker will come via other channels.ā
The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order is an “abrupt, discriminatory, and dangerous reversal of settled United States passport policy.” It also concludes the new policy is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
“It discriminates against individuals based on their sex and, as to some, their transgender status,” reads the lawsuit. “It is motivated by impermissible animus. It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have.”
Solomon-Lane, who lives in North Adams, Mass., with his spouse and their three children, in an ACLU press release says he has “lived virtually my entire adult life as a man” and “everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man.”
āI thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” he said. “Now, as a married father of three, Trumpās executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.”
“If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my familyās safety,ā added Solomon-Lane.
Federal Government
Education Department moves to end support for trans students
Mental health services among programs that are in jeopardy

An email sent to employees at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday explains that “programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices” will be reviewed and cut in cases where they āfail to affirm the reality of biological sex.ā
The move, which is of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting transgender rights, jeopardizes the future of initiatives at the agency like mental health services and support for students experiencing homelessness.
Along with external-facing work at the agency, the directive targets employee programs such as those administered by LGBTQ resource groups, in keeping with the Trump-Vance administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government.
In recent weeks, federal agencies had begun changing their documents, policies, and websites for purposes of compliance with the new administration’s first executive action targeting the trans community, āDefending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.ā
For instance, the Education Department had removed a webpage offering tips for schools to better support homeless LGBTQ youth, noted ProPublica, which broke the news of the “sweeping” changes announced in the email to DOE staff.
According to the news service, the directive further explains the administration’s position that āThe deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology ā whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms ā negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”
A U.S. Senate committee hearing will be held Thursday for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, who has been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups. GLAAD, for instance, notes that she helped to launch and currently chairs the board of a conservative think tank that “has campaigned against policies that support transgender rights in education.”
NBC News reported on Tuesday that Trump planned to issue an executive order this week to abolish the Education Department altogether.
While the president and his conservative allies in and outside the administration have repeatedly expressed plans to disband the agency, doing so would require approval from Congress.
State Department
Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding
Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday protested outside the State Department and demanded U.S. officials fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.
The activists ā members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group ā blocked an intersection for an hour. Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell told the Washington Blade that police did not make any arrests.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other ālife-saving humanitarian assistanceā programs to continue to operate during the freeze.
The Blade on Wednesday reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding.
āPEPFAR is a program that has saved 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Housing Works CEO Charles King in a press release. “The recent freeze on its funding is not just a bureaucratic decision; it is a death sentence for millions who rely on these life-saving treatments. We cannot allow decades of progress to be undone. The U.S. must immediately reaffirm its commitment to global health and human dignity by restoring PEPFAR funding.”
āWe demand Secretary Rubio immediately reverse his deadly, illegal stop-work order, which has already disrupted life-saving HIV services worldwide,” added Russell. “Any waiver process is too little, too late.”
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