National
Pa. school board faces lawsuit over GSA refusal
Wednesday deadline for Chambersburg’s response

Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU-PA, said Chambersburg has until this Wednesday to respond to a lawsuit threatened over the town’s refusal to allow a GSA to form. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)
By MICHAEL MARTIN GARRETT
UPDATE 3/21: The Chambersburg Area School Board informed the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on Wednesday of its intent to “reconsider their vote on the [Gay Straight Alliance’s] application to be a club at their meeting on Wednesday, March 27,” Molly Tack-Hooper, staff attorney with the ACLU-PA, said.
The GSA will be granted all the privileges of an officially sanctioned school club, though Tack-Hooper said that this is a “temporary status pending their revote. We won’t know anything for sure until the evening of the 27.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Equality Pennsylvania are threatening the school board of Chambersburg, a south central Pennsylvanian town, with legal action after the board voted 5-4 against allowing high school students to form a Gay-Straight Alliance on Feb 27.
The ACLU-PA and Equality PA sent a letter on March 12 to the Chambersburg Area School District superintendent and board president asking them to reverse their decision by March 15 or face a lawsuit in United States district court.
Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU-PA, said the school board asked for a month’s extension. The board now has until Wednesday, March 20 to respond, he said.
The school board’s Feb 27 decision came after several delays, including tabling the issue and questioning the club’s bylaws, which Equality Pennsylvania Executive Director Ted Martin called “traditional delaying tactics.”
“[The ACLU-PA and Equality PA] decided to give the ultimatum to the school board because the decision they made was wrong,” Martin said. “It was time for them to realize that what they were doing was violating the law.”
Walczak said the board’s decision was a violation of the Equal Access Act, a federal law that prevents discrimination against noncircular clubs in federally funded secondary schools.
“If the school board allows any noncircular clubs, then they have to allow the Gay-Straight Alliance,” Walczak said. The Chambersburg high school currently has a Bible Club and a Ping Pong Club, among others, he said.
“Not only is this the right thing to do from a policy perspective – to treat all students fairly… but they also have a legal obligation to do so,” Walczak said.
School board member Carl Barton said he voted against allowing the GSA because he “thought we needed to do some more research and consensus building.” Barton said that he was also concerned about the possible liability of students receiving “counseling” from non-licensed individuals at club meetings.
“You can’t do counseling, per se, because we then might have a liability,” Barton sad. “Legally, if one kid’s sitting down with another and talking to him about critical things – like depression – it can become quite serious.”
Barton said he also was trying to keep the GSA from “becoming the major issues for the school board election.”
The other members of the school board and superintendent Joseph Padasak could not be reached for comment. Assistant superintendent Eric Michael declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss the actions of the board in light of the threat of legal action.
Former Chambersburg Area Senior High School student Thomas McCalmont started a petition on Change.org for the school board to reverse its decision two days after the board’s decision. As of March 16, the petition had 6,057 signatures.
McCalmont, who tried unsuccessfully to start a GSA each year he attended CASHS, said he felt compelled to act because of his experiences with bullying as a gay youth at CASHS.
“I had gone through every year being verbally bullied two to three times a day… and I knew other kids were going through the same thing,” McCalmont said.
One incident in his senior year led to McCalmont no longer being able to use the locker room before and after gym class because of the harassment he faced, McCalmont said.
“What I was trying to do [with the petition] was just to… put a little pressure on the school board to show there’s a lot of support for this club, both in and outside of the community,” McCalmont said.
Barton said he’s unsure how much of a factor McCalmont’s petition is on his position on the GSA because “there’s not a great indication of any great number of local people [who signed it].”
McCalmont said approximately 300 of the signatures are from people in Chambersburg, while almost 300 more are from the surrounding school districts. Almost 5,000 of the signatures are from Pennsylvania gay and lesbian allies, he said.
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.