National
Advocates issue call to action on Transgender Day of Remembrance
Dozens of trans people killed in the U.S. in 2024 amid more anti-trans rhetoric
LGBTQ organizations and religious congregations across the country are marking Transgender Day of Remembrance with vigils and other events to honor trans people who lost their lives this year.
Founded in 1999 by trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the first day of remembrance began as a vigil to commemorate the one year anniversary of the murder of Rita Hester, a trans woman who was killed in Boston. Since then, the day has grown into a national and international event to honor the memory of trans people who have been murdered, and to spotlight anti-trans violence.
The Transgender Day of Remembrance is Nov. 20.
The Human Rights Campaign on Tuesday released its annual report documenting fatal violence against trans and gender-expansive people.
The report found at least 36 trans and gender-expansive people in the U.S. lost their lives to violence since the last Transgender Day of Remembrance. The true number is likely higher, the report noted, as some deaths go unreported or misreported.
Most of the victims were young and people of color, with Black trans women accounting for half of the lives lost.
Tori Cooper, the director of community engagement for the HRC’s Trans Justice Initiative, described the disproportionately high rates of violence against Black trans women as “a disturbing reality that reflects the trend of violence that continues to plague our community which disproportionately faces racism, misogynoir, sexism, transphobia, and a myriad of other societal issues.”
Advocates for Trans Equality, a trans advocacy group, published its own report on Monday, documenting at least 43 trans people lost to violence since November 2023. Another 24 died by suicide.
Olivia Hunt, director of federal policy at Advocates for Trans Equality, said in a statement accompanying the report’s release that it “honors the memory of those lost and spotlights the urgent need for change to protect those still with us.”
“Despite hopeful strides in healthcare, identity documentation, housing, employment, and education over the past 25 years, a resurgence of hate and misinformation — especially during this recent election cycle — reminds us how hard-won and fragile these advances are,” she said.
Anti-trans rhetoric was central to the campaigns of President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans this year, who collectively spent nearly $65 million on anti-trans ads between August and October.
On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to push for legislation that would establish the recognition of “only two genders” in the U.S. and to ban hormonal or surgical intervention for trans youth across all 50 states. Trump also promised to reverse a 2024 Biden administration policy that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation under the Title IX federal civil rights law, and to reinstate a ban on trans people serving in the military on his first day in office.
Cathy Renna, the director of communications at the National LGBTQ Task Force, said Republicans’ harmful rhetoric, laden with misinformation and stereotypes about trans issues, creates a “permissible climate of hate” that emboldens transphobia.
In light of the incoming administration, Renna said the Task Force is focusing on supporting the trans community, “doing the work that we need to do to either shore up rights that we’ve already been able to achieve, and fight back against the ongoing attacks, whether it’s a legislative attack, or whether it’s just the continued pushing out of misinformation, particularly about trans youth.”
Translegislation.com, which tracks trans-specific legislation, this year has tracked a record-breaking 665 anti-trans bills considered across 43 states this year, of which 45 have passed. The majority of these bills target access to gender affirming care for trans youth, which trans activists say is essential health care.
Cooper linked the denial of such care to the fact that trans people are significantly more likely to experience poor mental health during their lifetimes than cisgender people.
“Any child who is denied the health care that they need, though they don’t always fail, it’s setting them up for failure … It’s setting them up to experience mental health issues and discomfort in a variety of ways, and that’s especially important for trans youth,” Cooper said. “We’re not experiencing more mental health issues because we’re trans. It is because of the way that people who are not trans treat us and talk about us and create legislation about our gender identities and our gender journeys.”
Cooper, whose Trans Justice Initiative supports trans people through leadership programs and grants, emphasized allies play a crucial role in ensuring trans people feel safe and in countering anti-trans rhetoric.
“Trump and his allies, what many of them have done, is they’ve created lies. And the lies have unfortunately fooled — there’s no other way to say it — they have fooled people who don’t know trans people,” she said.
Allies should fully embrace and actively practice allyship, Cooper explained, in order to ensure that trans people feel safe, comfortable, and supported. At the same time, allies must confront and immediately correct any disinformation and misinformation about trans issues with factual information.
Local groups commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance
Several organizations in D.C. and beyond are commemorating the Transgender Day of Remembrance and showing solidarity with the trans community this week.
The Metropolitan Community Church of Washington DC is hosting a service from 6-8 p.m on Wednesday. The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center on Wednesday is organizing an open mic event at the Busboys and Poets on 14th Street, N.W., to honor the trans people who lost their lives this year.
Equality Loudoun is holding a vigil on Thursday in Ashburn.
Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ synagogue in D.C., on Nov. 15 marked the occasion with a commemorative service. Maryland Safe Haven on Nov. 16 held a vigil outside Baltimore City Hall and a ball at the Baltimore War Memorial Building afterwards.
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.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
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.)
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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