National
Exxon Mobil to offer spousal benefits to gay employees
Accused of anti-gay bias, oil giant institutes change to comply with fed’l policy

Exxon Mobil has adopted spousal benefits for its gay employees (Photo of Exxon sign by Ildar Sagdejev, photo of Mobil sign by Terence Ong; courtesy Wikimedia Commons).
Faced with criticism over anti-LGBT policies and a lawsuit alleging anti-gay bias in its hiring practices, oil-and-gas giant Exxon Mobil has elected to offer employees in same-sex marriages health and pension benefits.
Alan Jeffers, an Exxon Mobil spokesperson, said in a statement Friday the company had decided to institute the benefits in the wake of the Supreme Court decision against the Defense of Marriage Act to achieve consistency with the federal government.
“ExxonMobil will recognize all legal marriages for the purposes of eligibility in U.S. benefit plans to ensure consistency for employees across the country,” Jeffers said. “The decision is consistent with the direction of most U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Treasury and the IRS. Legal marriages are determined by the laws of the state or country where the marriage took place.”
Jeffers said this approach to spousal benefits is consistent in all countries where Exxon Mobil operates, which looks to national laws to determine eligibility for spousal benefits. According to Exxon Mobil, the company provides benefits to same-sex spouses in 30 countries outside the United States.
Speaking with the Blade, Jeffers declined to say who executed the change within Exxon Mobil, but maintained it was enacted for the sake of consistency and will be effective Tuesday. Jeffers said the company won’t recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships, only legal marriages.
Exxon Mobil enacts these benefits amid criticism for having anti-LGBT policies. For example, the company has no non-discrimination protections for workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity in its Equal Employment Opportunity guidance. Exxon Mobil has the notorious distinction of being rated “-25” in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, the lowest of any company.
Deena Fidas, director of HRC’s Workplace Equality Program, called the move from Exxon Mobil “a step toward equality,” but expressed continued disappointment with the company for its overall practices in comparison to its competitors like Chevron or BP.
“There is no federal law protecting employees from discrimination against sexual orientation or gender identity and ExxonMobil refuses to join the majority of their Fortune 500 colleagues in adopting their own such policies,” Fidas said. “One has to wonder, what good are benefits for your same-sex spouse if you risk being fired for disclosing your sexual orientation in order to access them?”
The new policy from Exxon Mobil follows a similar decision from retail giant Walmart, which announced earlier this month it would begin offering domestic partner benefits to employees. But unlike Exxon Mobil, Walmart isn’t recognizing the same-sex marriages of workers for the purposes, even in states where same-sex marriage is legal.
For the 16th time this year, Exxon Mobil shareholders rejected a resolution that would have expanded the company’s equal employment opportunity policy to include non-discrimination protections for LGBT workers. This year, the resolution was sponsored by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, whose state owns a significant share of the company.
In a statement, DiNapoli commended Exxon Mobil for its new policy.
“Corporate discrimination in any form is simply not good business,” DiNapoli said. “On behalf of those who have supported the New York State Common Retirement Fund’s shareholder resolutions on this issue over these past four years, I am gratified that ExxonMobil, one of the largest corporations in the world and one of the Fund’s largest holdings, will treat its employees with the dignity, equality and respect that they deserve.”
Exxon Mobil enacts the new policy as it faces a lawsuit in Illinois filed by the LGBT group Freedom to Work over alleged anti-gay bias in hiring practices. The case is pending before the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, called the company’s new policy “a victory,” but said it should be followed with the company settling the lawsuit by enacting a non-discrimination policy for its LGBT workers.
“It’s time for Exxon to stop wasting its shareholders’ money by running up legal bills on discrimination proceedings that can be settled right away if the corporation would simply add LGBT protections to Exxon’s official equal employment opportunity document,” Almeida said. “We’d like to begin settlement talks next week in our Illinois lawsuit stemming from evidence that Exxon gave hiring preference to a less qualified straight applicant over a more qualified lesbian applicant.”
But Exxon Mobil shows no signs of buckling on the issue of non-discrimination. Jeffers said the equal employment opportunity is based on the current federal law — which affords no explicit protections for LGBT workers — and said Freedom to Work’s lawsuit is without merit because it’s based on fictitious resumes sent to the company and not any real discrimination.
“We have responded to the claims,” Jeffers said. “We consider them baseless, without merit. We feel that the organization filed the complaint to really use our name to advance its political agenda. This is not a case of discrimination. We do not accept the claim and provided a response to the Department of Human Rights in Illinois.”
Additionally, Jeffers said the company has a “zero-tolerance” policy for discrimination. Although the equal employment non-discrimination policy doesn’t include protections for LGBT workers, Jeffers said the company has “very explicit” training against any form of discrimination, including sexual orientation, and has employee affinity groups, including one for LGBT employees.
Almeida acknowledged he had read the response filed by Exxon Mobil in the case and said it was written by Seyfarth Shaw, a Chicago-based firm that he earlier said was representing Exxon Mobil in the case. However, Almeida declined to provide a copy of the response. Exxon Mobil didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up request to provide the response.
Still, Almeida noted Exxon Mobil made the change to spousal benefits one week after the Labor Department made public its post-DOMA guidance for employer-provided pension and health care for employees, saying it’s evidence the company will act in a pro-LGBT way if required by federal law.
“The timing shows that Exxon is the kind of company that only does the right thing when they are forced by law, and therefore we will push forward on Freedom to Work’s lawsuit until Exxon agrees to amend its policies to make clear that LGBT Americans have the same workplace protections as everyone else,” Almeida 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.
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