National
House Dems to urge Supreme Court to strike down DOMA
Other briefs filed by businesses, ‘red state’ coalition, GOP
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will lead Democrats in a brief against DOMA before the Supreme Court. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
House Democrats are circulating a legal brief that will argue against the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act before the Supreme Court, the Washington Blade has learned.
Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said his boss will lead other Democrats in the friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, which is due on Friday. The case pending before the court is known as Windsor v. United States.
“There will be a strong expression of support from the House Democratic Caucus in support of overturning DOMA and casting DOMA into the dustbin of history,” Hammill said.
Hammill declined to provide additional details about the filing, so it’s unknown what the argument of the brief will be. It will likely counter the arguments presented by the House Republican-led Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group that the committee speaks for the House as a whole.
The individual House members who signed the brief and the total number of signatures wasn’t immediately known. But Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesperson for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), said his boss is the principal signer of the brief. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif), the only openly gay Asian-American in Congress, and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the only bisexual member, independently told the Washington Blade they would sign the brief.
It’s not surprising House Democrats are preparing a brief because they’ve participated in each of the DOMA challenges pending before appellate courts.
They filed a brief before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals when the Windsor case was before that court. House Democrats also filed a brief before the First Circuit in the combined case of Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. Department of Health & Human Services, and another before the Ninth Circuit in the case of Golinski v. United States.
House Democrats are preparing their brief amid a flurry of news regarding other briefs that have been submitted in the case against DOMA before the Supreme Court as well as Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case challenging California’s Proposition 8.
LGBT advocates are also eagerly waiting to see whether the Obama administration will take part in the lawsuit against Prop 8 before the Supreme Court. The deadline for the Justice Department to do so is Thursday.
Following the White House news briefing on Wednesday, the Blade shouted out to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney an inquiry on whether the Justice Department would file a brief. Without turning around to answer as he left the room, Carney replied, “I don’t have anything for you on that.”
A group of 278 businesses and organizations — including tech companies like Xerox and Microsoft as well as web companies like Google, Twitter and eBay — filed a friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court on Wednesday arguing that DOMA is bad for business.
In the 36-page brief, the companies argue that DOMA imposes compliance burdens upon employers because they treat benefits — such as health care benefits and family leave — differently for straight married employees and gay married employees.
“Although marriages are celebrated and recognized under state law, DOMA, a federal law withholding marital benefits from some lawful marriages but not others, requires that employers treat one employee differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful,” the brief states. “DOMA thus impairs employer/employee relations and other business interests.”
The brief also argues that DOMA requires companies to affirm discrimination they believe is injurious to their corporate missions and is contrary to non-discrimination laws and policies.
“DOMA imposes on amici not simply the considerable burden of compliance and cost,” the brief states. “DOMA conscripts amici to become the face of its mandate that two separate castes of married persons be identified and separately treated.”
Also among the signatories is the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the official non-partisan organization of all United States cities with populations of 30,000 or more.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and a member of the group Mayors for the Freedom to Marry, said the conference is proud to take part in the brief.
“Mayors want their citizens and businesses to prosper, and that means supporting them against discrimination – from any level of government,” Nutter said. “Married means married, and mayors and businesses agree that DOMA can’t stand.”
Another brief was filed on Wednesday by a coalition of groups representing Red States where same-sex marriage isn’t legal. The “Red State” brief, which responds to both the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, was signed by groups like Kentucky Equality Federation, Equality Virginia, the Utah Pride Center and the the Utah Pride Center and the Campaign for Southern Equality.
The 34-page brief argues that the Supreme Court should find laws related to sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny, citing laws that demean gay students in the education system as well as bans on adoption and same-sex marriage.
“The keystone of existing systems of de jure denigration of gay Americans is the denial of their right to marry,” the brief states. “It is both the crux of the matter and the root of other forms of discrimination against gay citizens. The heartbreaking message to committed, gay couples: Your love is unworthy of marriage.”
And The New York Times reported that more than two-dozen Republicans have signed onto the brief against Prop 8 being circulated by gay former Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman, which received significant media attention this week. The additional reported signers include former Rep. Charles Bass of New Hampshire, who signed on as co-sponsor of DOMA repeal late last year, and Beth Myers, who was an adviser to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The Times initially reported that former congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, who authored the Federal Marriage Amendment while in Congress, was another signer. But Musgrave denied to local Denver media that she signed the brief and the Times later ran a correction saying the signer was in fact B. J. Nikkel, who last year was the only Republican on the Colorado House Judiciary Committee to vote in support of civil unions and worked as district director for Musgrave.
National
213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric
Letter cites ‘demonizing and dehumanizing’ language
The Congressional Equality Caucus has sent a letter urging Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to condemn the surge in anti-trans rhetoric coming from members of Congress.
The letter, signed by 213 members, criticizes Johnson for permitting some lawmakers to use “demonizing and dehumanizing” language directed at the transgender community.
The first signature on the letter is Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the only transgender member of Congress.
It also includes signatures from Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (MA-05), House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA-33), every member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and members of every major House Democratic ideological caucus.
Some House Republicans have used slurs to address members of the transgender community during official business, including in committee hearings and on the House floor.
The House has strict rules governing proper language—rules the letter directly cites—while noting that no corrective action was taken by the Chair or Speaker Pro Tempore when these violations occurred.
The letter also calls out members of Congress—though none by name—for inappropriate comments, including calls to institutionalize all transgender people, references to transgender people as mentally ill, and false claims portraying them as inherently violent or as a national security threat.
Citing FBI data, the letter notes that 463 hate crime incidents were reported due to gender identity bias. It also references a 2023 Williams Institute report showing that transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, despite making up less than 2% of the U.S. population.
The letter ends with a renewed plea for Speaker Johnson to take appropriate measures to protect not only the trans member of Congress from harassment, but also transgender people across the country.
“We urge you to condemn the rise in dehumanizing rhetoric targeting the transgender community and to ensure members of your conference are abiding by rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat the transgender community, including by ensuring members are not using slurs to refer to the transgender community.”
The full letter, including the complete list of signatories, can be found at equality.house.gov. (https://equality.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/equality.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-speaker-johnson-on-anti-transgender-rhetoric-enforcing-rules-of-decorum.pdf)
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.”
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