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FBI updates 2020 hate crimes data

Data show small increase in anti-gay bias incidents

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shooting, DC Eagle, assault, hate crime, anti-gay attack, police discrimination, sex police, Sisson, gay news, Washington Blade

The FBI on Oct. 25 released updated data for its 2020 annual hate crimes statistics report originally released in August that shows an increase in overall hate crimes for 2020 but no significant change in the number of hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people.

The first version of the report, which the FBI says lacked data it later obtained from Ohio, shows the percentage of hate crimes nationwide targeting victims because of their sexual orientation to be 20.5 percent. The revised report shows that number to be 20.0 percent.

The earlier version of the report showed the percentage of hate crimes targeting a victim because of their gender identity to be 2.5 percent and the revised report shows gender identity victims to be 2.7 percent of the total number of hate crime victims.

However, the revised 2020 report shows that the 20 percent figure for sexual orientation related hate crimes represents an increase from 16.8 percent of sexual orientation related hate crimes reported in 2019. The revised report also shows that the 2.7 percent figure for gender identity related hate crimes, which the FBI says involves transgender and gender nonconforming people, represents a decline from the 4.8 percent gender identity related hate crimes reported in 2019.

Like recent past years, the largest percentage of hate crimes reported by law enforcement agencies from across the country to the FBI in 2020 as shown in the FBI’s updated report – 61.9 percent – falls into the category of race/ethnicity/ancestry bias. The earlier version of the report placed that category at 61.8.

The percentage of other categories of victims reported in the FBI’s revised 2020 report include 13.3 percent of bias related crimes targeting a victim for their religion; 1.4 percent for their disability; and 0.7 percent for their gender. There were no significant changes in these categories from the earlier version of the 2020 report.

LGBTQ rights advocates have joined representatives of civil rights groups in expressing concern that the FBI’s annual hate crime report reflects a large undercounting of the actual number of hate crimes nationwide. Observers familiar with the reporting say the underreporting stems from the substantial number of local law enforcement agencies that do not submit hate crime data to the FBI. The Washington Post reported in August that 422 fewer law enforcement agencies submitted hate crime data to the FBI in 2020 than those submitting data in 2019. 

The revised FBI report says law enforcement agencies in 2020 submitted incident reports involving a total of 8,263 criminal incidents and 11,129 related incidents as being motivated by bias. The report says the data show there were a total of 8,052 single-bias incidents involving 11,126 victims.

This marks an increase from the earlier report, before the Ohio data was included, from 7,759 criminal incidents and 10,532 related incidents in 2020. The earlier report showed there were 7,554 single-bias incidents involving 10,528 victims.

A separate compilation of reported hate crimes for D.C. in 2020 published on the U.S. Department of Justice website, based on FBI data obtained from D.C. police, shows the total number of reported hate crimes in D.C. declined from 222 in 2019 to 133 in 2020. The data show a decline in the number of sexual orientation related hate crimes and a slight increase in gender identity related bias crimes in D.C.

The DOJ report compares the 2019 and 2020 hate crimes data for D.C. by category of victim using the number of incidents rather than by percentage. The data show the following breakdown:

• Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry—2019: 119; 2020: 63

• Sexual Orientation—2019: 65; 2020: 41

• Gender Identity—2019: 27; 2020: 28

• Religion—2019: 8; 2020: 1

• Gender—2019: 2; 2020: 0

• Disability—2019: 1; 2020: 0

The drop in 2020 reported hate crimes in D.C. targeting victims for their race and ethnicity appears to go against the nationwide reports by community activists of a spike in race and ethnicity related hate crime targeting African Americans and Asian Americans. Asian American groups have reported an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes based on the bogus notion that Asians are responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic because it may have started in China.

Among the anti-Asian incidents reported in D.C. this year was an attack by a D.C. man against a gay Asian man and his parents in August. The man, who was arrested by D.C. police, shouted anti-gay and anti-Asian insults at the three victims while assaulting them, according to a D.C. police report.

Hate crimes data posted on the D.C. police website for the period of Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, 2021, show a total of 119 reported hate crimes for that period. The data show 29 of the incidents were based on the victim’s sexual orientation and eight were based on the victim’s gender identity or expression. Forty-six were listed as being based on the victim’s ethnicity/national origin and 33 were said to be based on the victim’s race.

In a list of categories that differs from the FBI’s hate crime categories, the D.C. police website listing of 2021 hate crime incidents reports no hate crime incidents based on a victim’s status of being homeless or their political affiliation. It reports one incident based on the victim’s gender/sex and no incidents based on a victim’s disability.

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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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