National
D.C. panel examines DOMA impact on older gay couples
National Press Club gathering took place ahead of expected Supreme Court rulings


Advocates say Edith Windsor‘s case clearly demonstrates DOMA’s harmful effect on older gay couples. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Advocates and public policy officials on Monday discussed the impact they say the Defense of Marriage Act continues to have on older same-sex couples during a panel at the National Press Club in D.C.
“We know that LGBT older adults want to marry for the same reasons that all other Americans want to marry,” Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) Executive Director Michael Adams said during the SAGE and Freedom to Marry-sponsored gathering. “It’s a basic freedom at should not be denied to any committed couple.”
Democratic political strategist Hilary Rosen moderated the panel that featured Sarah Byrne of the Alliance for Retired Americans, National Senior Citizens Law Center Executive Director Paul Nathanson, Web Phillips of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, Stacy Sanders of the Medicare Rights Center and New York attorney Thomas Sciacca. National Hispanic Council on Aging CEO Yanira Cruz and Imani Woody, founder of Mary’s House for Older Adults, which has eight units of housing for LGBT Washingtonians over 60, also took part.
Panelists noted same-sex couples are denied Social Security spousal and survivor benefits and Medicaid spousal impoverishment protections because of DOMA.
Phillips stressed the roughly 250,000 children who are raised by gay and lesbian parents also “lose benefits” because they can only claim Social Security benefits from their biological parent — as opposed to either parent if they were a married heterosexual couple. Sciacca noted same-sex couples face additional challenges around state laws that allow biological next of kin to challenge a person’s will and permit only blood relatives to make burial or cremation arrangements upon a person’s death.
Woody said she must pay almost $700 a month in additional health care costs because she is unable to get onto the insurance plan her spouse has through her employer.
“This is a burden for us,” she said. “This is a terrible burden on our lives; one that heterosexual married couples do not share.”
The National Press Club panel took place ahead of this month’s U.S. Supreme Court rulings on cases that challenge both DOMA and California’s Proposition 8 that banned same-sex marriage in the state in 2008.
Edith “Edie” Windsor challenged DOMA after she paid $363,000 in federal estate taxes after Thea Spyer, her partner of more than 40 years whom she married in Canada in 2007, passed away in 2009.
“In the midst of my grief I realized that the federal government was treating us as strangers,” Windsor told reporters outside the Supreme Court in March after the justices heard oral arguments in her case. “I paid a humongous estate tax. And it means selling a lot of stuff to do it, and it wasn’t easy.”
Adams noted the Windsor case is “emblematic” of the inequalities older same-sex couples face because of DOMA.
“Edie was treated in a really unconscionable way in terms of discriminatory treatment under our tax code,” he said.
California Congresswoman Linda Sánchez last year introduced a bill – the Social Security Equality Act – that would extend the same survivor and pension benefits heterosexual receive to gay couples and their families. It has yet to be reintroduced during this Congress.
Lawmakers are expected to reintroduce a DOMA repeal measure until the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the law.
“[We support] the repeal of DOMA, invalidation of DOMA or whatever else needs to be done to eliminate the barriers that would provide equal protection and equal benefits to all America’s families,” Phillips said. “We regard this as a matter of simple fairness.”
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.
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