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Sessions to enforce hate crimes law ‘aggressively’ for trans murders

14 anti-trans killings have already taken place halfway through 2017

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Jeff Sessions, United States Senate, Alabama, gay news, Washington Blade

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has pledged to enforce the hate crimes law for transgender murders. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions — criticized for his long anti-LGBT record — pledged Thursday to enforce the federal hate crimes law “aggressively and appropriately” in cases of ongoing transgender murders.

Sessions made the remarks at a hate crimes summit held at the Justice Department, saying the Trump administration is committed to reducing violent crimes and “hate crimes are violent crimes.”

“No person should have to fear being violently attacked because of who they are, what they believe, or how they worship,” Sessions said. “So I pledge to you: As long as I am attorney general, the Department of Justice will continue to protect the civil rights of all Americans — and we will not tolerate the targeting of any community in our country.”

Sessions ticked off a few Justice Department ongoing investigations under the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act – a measure he opposed as a U.S. senator before former President Obama signed it into law in 2009.

Commending the work of FBI and international partners, Sessions said a suspect was found and arrested in Israel for allegedly making threatening phone calls to Jewish community centers. The Justice Department, Sessions said, brought federal charges against him and continues an investigation into whether the acts are hate crimes.

In response to potential anti-Islamic hate crimes, Sessions recalled seeking an indictment of a Texas man who now faces 40 years in prison for burglary and arson of the Victoria Islamic Center; a man sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for trying to recruit people to help him burn down a mosque in New York State; and the indictment of Kansas man for shooting three men at a bar because he thought they were of Persian origin.

But Sessions also made a point to commit to enforcing hate crimes law when it comes to violence against transgender people, pointing to the first-ever prosecution of an anti-transgender hate crime under the Matthew Shepard & Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which recently resulted in a conviction under the law.

“We have and will continue to enforce hate crime laws aggressively and appropriately where transgendered individuals are victims,” Sessions said. “Last month, Joshua Brandon Vallum was sentenced to 49 years in prison for assaulting and murdering Mercedes Williamson. This is the first case prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act involving the murder of a transgender person.”

Amid ongoing reports of transgender murders throughout the country, Sessions said he personally met with the department’s senior leadership and the Civil Rights Division on the issue. According to the Human Rights Campaign, those murders have reached a tally of 14 only halfway through 2017.

Sessions said he directed the Civil Rights Division to work with U.S. attorneys’ offices and the FBI to “support the state and local law enforcement authorities investigating these incidents and to determine whether federal action would be appropriate.”

Further, Sessions said he directed the review of files “to ensure that there is no single person or group behind these murders or to what extent hate crime motivation lies behind such murders.” Sessions said he receives regular updates on these reviews.

The attorney general’s remarks come after LGBT rights supporters sought to derail his nomination unsuccessfully based on his anti-LGBT record as a U.S. senator, which includes votes against the hate crimes law, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act as well as support for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Upon confirmation as attorney general, Sessions revoked Obama-era guidance instructing schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity. Sessions said the law on which the guidance was based, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, doesn’t make that a requirement — despite numerous court rulings that have determined otherwise.

Emily Waters, senior manager of national research and policy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, said Sessions’ speech doesn’t make up for his other actions at the Justice Department.

“We won’t allow Jeff Sessions to use the violence perpetrated against LGBTQ people, and particularly the homicides of transgender women of color, to push forward a pro-policing agenda that does not acknowledge, recognize or protect LGBTQ people of color who are victims of police violence and brutality,” Waters said. “This is very clearly a tool to get more money for policing, and has nothing to do with actual hate crime prevention. If Jeff Sessions truly cares about LGBTQ people, then he would be diverting resources into the communities most impacted to address the real root causes of violence.”

On the same day Sessions delivered the remarks, the White House announced President Trump nominated Eric Dreiband, a former George W. Bush administration official, to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Civil rights groups declared opposition to the nominee upon the announcement.

Vanita Gupta, who ran the division under the Obama administration and is now CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, said Dreiband is “woefully unqualified” for the job.

“Drieband has devoted the vast majority of his career to defending corporations accused of employment discrimination.” Gupta said. “He has opposed important legislation to safeguard our civil rights. And he has no known experience in most of the Civil Rights Division’s core issue areas, such as voting rights, police reform, housing, education, and hate crimes. He is the wrong person for the job.”

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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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The White House

Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality

President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates

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President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 13, 2025. (Photo courtesy of the White House's X page)

Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.

Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.

“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”

Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”

“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.

The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)

A beach in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Oct. 3, 2024. Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in the country that President Donald Trump visited last week. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.

The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”

Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.

Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.

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