News
New Mexico high court rules for marriage equality
Decision makes state the 17th with same-sex marriage on the books
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in favor marriage equality. (Photo public domain)
Capping off a year of historic victories, the New Mexico high court handed down a unanimous ruling on Thursday granting same-sex couples the ability to wed in the state.
The 5-0 decision is written by Justice Edward Chavez, who concludes the current statutory scheme of the marriage law violates the Equal Protection Clause under Article II, Section 18, of the state constitution.
“We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law,” the ruling states.
The ruling, which takes effect immediately, makes New Mexico the 17th state with marriage equality on the books. It also retroactively affirms the same-sex marriages for couples who already wed after obtaining marriage licenses from county clerks in the state.
The parties in the lawsuit, Griego v. Oliver, were six same-sex couples as well as all 33 of the state’s county clerks, who sought clarification on whether the state law enabled them to deliver marriage licenses to gay couples. Representing the same-sex couples were the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, the national ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the law firm of Sutin, Thayer & Browne APC as well as New Mexico attorneys Maureen Sanders, N. Lynn Perls and J. Kate Girard.
Laura Schauer Ives, legal director for ACLU-New Mexico, said the decision represents a “historic and joyful day for New Mexico.”
“As a state, we have always strived to treat all families with dignity and respect, and today’s decision allowing loving, committed same sex couples to marry continues that tradition,” Schauer Ives said. “The more than 1,000 same-sex couples who have already married in New Mexico can now rest certain knowing their marriages will be recognized and respected by our state.”
Camilla Taylor, National Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal, commended her colleagues in the LGBT advocacy community for leading the way to a favorable decision on marriage equality in New Mexico.
“This beautiful unanimous decision explicitly underscores the argument we and our sister organizations have long made: denying same-sex couples the ability to marry imposes significant emotional and dignitary harm and is discrimination, pure and simple,” Taylor said.
New Mexico Gov. Suzanne Martinez, who opposes same-sex marriage but didn’t actively defend the marriage law, said in a statement she’ll abide by decision, but wish it were settled differently.
“My personal views on this issue are well-known, and I’m confident that most New Mexicans believe, like I do, that it should have been settled by a vote of the people,” Martinez said. “Instead, the Supreme Court stepped in and rendered their decision. While there will surely be intense debate about this decision moving forward, I encourage New Mexicans to continue to respect one another in their discourse, as this is an important issue for many New Mexicans on both sides.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said immediate after the ruling he had no “official reaction,” but offered some thoughts.
“I would say that we welcome that ruling, and this is another example of the extraordinary progress that’s been made when it comes to equal rights for LGBT Americans in this country,” Carney said.
Justices make use of the June decision from the U.S. Supreme Court against Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, noting the decision leaves marriage equality as the only option for same-sex couples to receive the federal benefits and for the state to avoid a federal challenge to its state law.
“Interpreting our statutes to authorize committed same-gender couples to enter into civil marriage will grant them the rights and privileges available to opposite-gender married couples in approximately one thousand statutes and federal regulations that refer to a person’s marital status, thereby avoiding a constitutional challenge on that basis,” the decision states.
The decision is the culmination of a drawn-out process over the course of 2013. It started in March with Santa Fe Mayor David Coss introducing a resolution, later approved the city council, saying marriage equality was already legal in New Mexico because of the gender-neutral construction of some portions of state law. That’s the conclusion Judge Alan Malott reached in a decision earlier this year extending marriage equality to Bernalillo and Santa Fe counties.
Notably, the court rejects in its decision the notion that marriage is already legal under the current state statutory scheme, observing that the legislature has passed laws, such as one changing the marriage application forms in 1961, defining marriage in opposite-sex terms.
“Thus, we conclude that a mix of gender-neutral and gender-specific terminology in the domestic relations statutes does not mean that the Legislature intended to authorize marriage between same-gender couples,” the decision states. “On the contrary, we conclude that the statutory scheme reflects a legislative intent to prohibit same-gender marriages.”
LGBT groups followed up with the Santa Fe resolution by filing a lawsuit on behalf of same-sex couples seeking to wed in New Mexico. Attorney General Gary King issued an opinion saying he wouldn’t defend the marriage law against a legal challenge in court on the basis that the law was unconstitutional.
Prior to the ruling from the New Mexico Supreme Court, a total of eight county clerks were already distributing marriage licenses to same-sex couples either through court order as a result of the litigation or on their own volition based on their interpretation of state law. An estimated 58.5 percent of New Mexico’s population had access to marriage equality prior to the Supreme Court ruling.
Attorney General King and plaintiffs in the case were pushing the idea that gays and lesbians are a suspect class and laws related to sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny — a idea with which New Mexico Supreme Court concurs because of the history of persecution faced by the LGBT community.
“Therefore, we conclude that intermediate scrutiny must be applied in this case because the LGBT community is a discrete group that has been subjected to a history of purposeful discrimination, and it has not had sufficient political strength to protect itself from such discrimination,” the ruling states.
It’s possible the opponents of the decision could place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2014 that would rescind the decision, but only by legislative referral, not by initiative petition. It’s unclear at this time what the legislature will do. Democrats hold strong majorities in both chambers of the New Mexico legislature.
Brian Brown, president of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, promised in a statement to pursue action to protect people in New Mexico who don’t support same-sex marriage.
“Once again, activists judges have thrown out the historic legal understanding of marriage in New Mexico,” Brown said. “This is a continuation of a very dangerous rush towards silencing people of faith who simply believe marriage to be the union of one man and one woman. The National Organization for Marriage will do everything in its power to protect believers of true marriage in New Mexico and around the nation from the fallout of radical judges who deny the truth of marriage.”
Marc Solomon, national campaign director of Freedom to Marry, said his organization is prepared to fight to make sure the New Mexico decision stays in place.
“We have a campaign that we played a lead role in setting up and are on the board of, New Mexico Unites for Marriage, to protect the decision and defeat any efforts to amend the constitution,” Solomon said. “We’ve hired a campaign manager and there’s a field and media team on the ground, lobbyists, and more. It’s cochaired by former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson and Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham.”
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
Advocacy groups are demanding the Trump-Vance administration not to deport two gay men to Iran.
MS Now on Jan. 23 reported the two men are among the 40 Iranian nationals who the White House plans to deport.
Iran is among the countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
The Washington Blade earlier this month reported LGBTQ Iranians have joined anti-government protests that broke out across the country on Dec. 28. Human rights groups say the Iranian government has killed thousands of people since the demonstrations began.
Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, which represents the two men, told MS Now her clients were scheduled to be on a deportation flight on Jan. 25. A Human Rights Campaign spokesperson on Tuesday told the Blade that one of the men “was able to obtain a temporary stay of removal from the” 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the other “is facing delayed deportation as the result of a measles outbreak at the facility where they’re being held.”
“My (organization, the American Immigration Council) represents those two gay men,” said American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in a Jan. 23 post on his Bluesky account. “They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump (administration) denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.”
“They are terrified,” added Reichlin-Melnick.
My org @immcouncil.org represents those two gay men. They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump admin denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.
They are terrified.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:26 AM
Reichlin-Melnick in a second Bluesky post said “deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act.”
“That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights,” he added.
Deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act. That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights. www.ms.now/news/trump-d…
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:27 AM
HRC Vice President of Government Affairs David Stacy in a statement to the Blade noted Iran “is one of 12 nations that still execute queer people, and we continue to fear for their safety.” Stacy also referenced Renee Good, a 37-year-old lesbian woman who a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Andry Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who the Trump-Vance administration “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador last year.
“This out-of-control administration continues to target immigrants and terrorize our communities,” said Stacy. “That same cruelty murdered Renee Nicole Good and imprisoned Andry Hernández Romero. We stand with the American Immigration Council and demand that these men receive the due process they deserve. Congress must refuse to fund this outrage and stand against the administration’s shameless dismissal of our constitutional rights.”
Maryland
Expanded PrEP access among FreeState Justice’s 2026 legislative priorities
Maryland General Assembly opened on Jan. 14
FreeState Justice this week spoke with the Washington Blade about their priorities during this year’s legislative session in Annapolis that began on Jan. 14.
Ronnie L. Taylor, the group’s community director, on Wednesday said the organization continues to fight against discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS. FreeState Justice is specifically championing a bill in the General Assembly that would expand access to PrEP in Maryland.
Taylor said FreeState Justice is working with state Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s County) and state Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Arundel and Howard Counties) on a bill that would expand the “scope of practice for pharmacists in Maryland to distribute PrEP.” The measure does not have a title or a number, but FreeState Justice expects it will have both in the coming weeks.
FreeState Justice has long been involved in the fight to end the criminalization of HIV in the state.
Governor Wes Moore last year signed House Bill 39, which decriminalized HIV in Maryland.
The bill — the Carlton R. Smith Jr. HIV Modernization Act — is named after Carlton Smith, a long-time LGBTQ activist known as the “mayor” of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood who died in 2024. FreeState Justice said Marylanders prosecuted under Maryland Health-General Code § 18-601.1 have already seen their convictions expunged.
Taylor said FreeState Justice will continue to “oppose anti anti-LGBTQ legislation” in the General Assembly. Their website later this week will publish a bill tracker.
The General Assembly’s legislative session is expected to end on April 13.
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