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Merkley urges activists to lobby House GOP on ENDA

Ore. senator honored by Nat’l Center for Trans Equality

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Jeff Merkley, United States Senate, Oregon, Democratic Party, gay news, Washington Blade
Jeff Merkley, United States Senate, Oregon, Democratic Party, gay news, Washington Blade

‘I want to encourage you to do a lot of talking about liberty,’ said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) of efforts to pass ENDA. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the lead sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate, called on LGBT activists to raise the issue of “individual liberty” to help persuade Republican leaders in the House to allow the LGBT civil rights bill to come up for a vote.

In a keynote address Monday night before the 10th anniversary reception in Washington of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Merkley praised the group for its lobbying efforts on behalf of ENDA in the Senate, which voted 64-32 to pass the measure last week.

“And so now you’re all thinking about how you’re going to lobby in the House of Representatives,” Merkley told a gathering of about 200 NCTE members and supporters at the Hamilton Restaurant and Music Hall on 14th Street, N.W.

“And I want to encourage you to do a lot of talking about liberty,” he said. “You go in and you’re talking to a conservative legislator and like, well, ‘I’m not sure about this.’ You say it’s all about liberty. That’s the magical word. That is a word that is deeply embedded in our national DNA.”

Merkley, a longtime supporter of LGBT rights, offered his lobbying advice on ENDA at a time when House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has reiterated his opposition to the bill.

NCTE is part of a coalition of national LGBT and mainline civil rights organizations seeking to develop a strategy for persuading Boehner and other House Republican leaders to allow ENDA to come up for a vote this year. Some House Republicans who support ENDA have joined Democratic lawmakers in predicting they have the votes to pass the bill if it reaches the floor.

ENDA currently has 196 House sponsors, just 22 votes short of the 218 votes needed to pass the bill in the 435-member House.

At the NCTE reception Monday night, Mara Keisling, the group’s executive director, praised Merkley for playing a key role in coordinating efforts to pass ENDA in the Senate. She called the Senate passage of the bill, which includes a provision banning job discrimination against transgender people, a historic development.

The group presented Merkley with its Congressional Momentum Award in honor of what Keisling said was his longstanding support for transgender equality.

Jeana Frazzini, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon, described Merkley’s long history of supporting LGBT civil rights during his tenure as a member of the Oregon State Legislature before winning election to the U.S. Senate.

In his remarks before the gathering, Merkley noted that he took the lead in the legislature in helping to secure passage of a state LGBT non-discrimination bill that includes housing and public accommodations protections as well as employment protection.

He said he also sponsored the state’s domestic partnership law. He noted that the legislature passed that law at a time when a 2004 ballot measure approved by voters banning same-sex marriage in the state constitution prevented the legislature from taking up a marriage equality bill.

Merkley said he would be working with Basic Rights Oregon next year on an effort to bring the same-sex marriage question back to the voters in a ballot measure calling for repealing the 2004 ban on gay marriage.

He praised the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) for taking the lead on ENDA for close to two decades and for calling on him to take the lead on ENDA in the Senate after Kennedy became ill and could no longer work on the measure.

“I want to say a message from Vicki Kennedy, who I talked to before the [ENDA] vote and I talked to her yesterday after the vote,” Merkley said in referring to Sen. Kennedy’s widow. “And she could not be more excited that this vision of Sen. Kennedy’s was finally fulfilled 19 years after he first introduced the act in the United States Senate,” Merkley said.

Merkley’s call for using the theme of liberty to lobby for ENDA in the House came one week after Ari Fleischer, a prominent Republican who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, came out in support of ENDA and linked the legislation to liberty.

“Allowing people to be successful in their workplaces is an essential piece of individual opportunity and liberty,” Fleischer said in an op-ed commentary published in Politico urging the House to pass ENDA.

Merkley told the NCTE gathering that the liberty theme “is a valuable way to connect with folks who have been out campaigning for their House seats talking about liberty and freedom.”

He added, “And you get to connect with them on that same wavelength of talking about liberty and freedom. And that’s how we need Speaker Boehner to put this bill on the floor of the House.”

NCTE gave its Media Momentum Award to law professor and MSNBC talk show host Melissa Harris-Perry, who spoke to the gathering in a video played during the event. The group gave its Julie Johnson Founder’s Award to transgender activists Dylan Orr, Chloe Schwenke and Amanda Simpson.

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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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