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Advocates eye immigration, ‘tax’ parity in next Congress

Plans surface for incorporating LGBT language in non-LGBT bills

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Jerrold Nadler, U.S. House of Representatives, congress, gay news, Washington Blade
Jerrold Nadler, U.S. House of Representatives, congress, gay news, Washington Blade

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), one of the strongest allies of the LGBT community in Congress, is optimistic about possible advances for LGBT equality in Congress next year. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

With free-standing LGBT supportive bills having little or no chance of passing in Congress next year due to the Republican-controlled House, advocates are developing plans to push for inserting LGBT-supportive language in broader, non-gay bills that enjoy bipartisan support, according to Capitol Hill insiders.

One bill under consideration for inclusion in a broader, non-LGBT measure is the Uniting American Families Act, which would provide equal immigration rights to foreign nationals who are same-sex partners of American citizens.

Another bill under similar consideration is the Tax Parity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act, which would allow domestic partners to obtain the same tax exemption for health insurance and other health benefits provided by employers that married opposite-sex couples now enjoy.

“There are lots of ways you can do this,” said Allison Herwitt, legislative director of the Human Rights Campaign, which is mapping strategy for LGBT-supportive legislation in the 113th Congress, which convenes in January.

“You can do it in committee. You could try to get it put in the bill as the bill is being written,” Herwitt said. “It’s always better to have the pro-equality language that we want put in the bill before it gets to the floor because it’s easier to protect your language from being stripped than it is to affirmatively add language.”

Herwitt and representatives with other LGBT advocacy groups say that despite the positive developments for the LGBT community in the Nov. 6 election, the makeup of Congress has remained largely the same in terms of the support for at least seven LGBT related bills.

Among them is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which calls for banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. DOMA defines marriage under federal law as a union only between a man and a woman.

Steve Ralls, a spokesperson for the national LGBT group Immigration Equality, said the group is “highly optimistic” that the Uniting American Families Act will pass in the first half of next year as part of a broader immigration reform bill.

Ralls notes that President Obama, most Democratic lawmakers, and some congressional Republicans support an immigration reform measure. With the Hispanic vote going overwhelmingly to Obama and Democratic congressional candidates in the election two weeks ago, Republican leaders are much more likely to go along with a comprehensive immigration bill that’s strongly supported by the U.S. Latino community, Ralls said.

He said Immigration Equality is confident that the Senate, under the leadership of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, will support the inclusion of language from the Uniting American Families Act in an immigration reform bill.

“I am very hopeful that by next summer we could have a very significant win on this,” Ralls said.

Herwitt said she is similarly hopeful that the House and Senate will go along with including the tax parity measure for employer health benefits aimed at same-sex partners within a tax-related bill expected to come up next year.

R. Clarke Cooper, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, has said an LGBT-related bill most likely to gain Republican support in Congress is one that would redress unfair taxation on Americans, including LGBT Americans.

While HRC and Immigration Equality expressed optimism over the strategy of seeking to add gay bills to broader non-LGBT legislation, gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who’s retiring from Congress in January, said he’s far less optimistic about the prospect of any LGBT legislation while Republicans control the House for at least the next two years.

“The Republicans continue to be opposed to everything,” he told the Blade. “Look at the Republican platform. We certainly can block any negative stuff they may try to do,” he said.

“But with the Republicans controlling the House there’s zero chance of anything good happening…They’re negative on everything. They voted 98 percent against us on everything that came up,” he said. “They voted 90 some percent to reaffirm the Defense of Marriage Act. So there’s zero chance of them allowing anything.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), one of the strongest allies of the LGBT community in Congress, while agreeing that the GOP majority in the House remains “fiercely opposed to LGBT rights,” is optimistic about possible advances for LGBT equality in Congress next year.

“On the heels of tremendous momentum nationally – with the recent victory of marriage equality in four states, the president’s explicit support for LGBT rights, the tide of federal court cases backing equal protection for LGBT Americans, and a rapidly growing acceptance of the LGBT community – we have a great deal of validation to take with us into the 113th Congress,” Nadler said in a statement to the Blade.

Nadler said he, too, is optimistic about the prospects passing the gay immigration and tax parity measures as part of broader bills.

“We must prepare to work together, with Democrats and our GOP allies, to use every tool available to us to advance pro-equality legislation now,” he said.

HRC’s Herwitt, however, points out that the breakdown in the House between LGBT supportive and anti-LGBT members in the 113th Congress will make it difficult to pass LGBT legislation in any form.

“If you look at the makeup of the 113th Congress, they are going in with about 225 members who are solidly anti-LGBT,” she said, noting that most in this group are Republicans but some Democrats. About 184 House members, most Democrats, are supporters of LGBT equality and are expected to vote for LGBT bills, Herwitt said.

The remaining 26 are “in the middle,” with HRC and congressional allies uncertain how they will vote.

With 218 being the magic number needed to pass a bill, an amendment, or a discharge petition that could force GOP House leaders to bring a bill to the floor for a vote, LGBT advocates are not too far away from reaching that number, Herwitt and other advocates said.

But even if they were to convince House GOP leaders to allow an LGBT bill like ENDA to reach the floor for a vote, supporters don’t think they have the votes now to pass such a bill.

“Clearly, what we need to do during these next two years is work like hell to change the hearts and minds of the voters to make sure we have the support we need in the next election in 2014,”said Maryland transgender rights advocate Dana Beyer.

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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

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

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.

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National

Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information

Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

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.

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U.S. Federal Courts

Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections

Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

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Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Screen capture: YouTube)

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.

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