National
Can Obama stop enforcing DOMA?
Experts divided as legal challenges loom
President Obama (Blade photo by Michael Key)
The announcement from President Obama last week that he believes Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and that he will no longer defend the law in court is raising questions about whether he can further help the LGBT community by discontinuing enforcement of the law.
Dan Pinello, who’s gay and a government professor at the City University of New York, said he believes Obama has the authority to stop enforcing Section 3 of DOMA, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, now that he has deemed the statute unconstitutional.
“If an order came down from the White House to start treating married same-sex couples like married opposite-sex couples, I think that would be honored in terms of bureaucrats sitting up and doing what he says,” Pinello said. “A president can seek not to enforce a statute if he believes, legally and otherwise, it’s unconstitutional.”
In the past, presidents have declined to enforce laws that they believe are unconstitutional, but such situations are rare. President Woodrow Wilson ignored a statute that conditioned removal of postmasters on Senate approval. In 1926, the Supreme Court struck down the the law as unconstitutional without making any suggestion that Wilson overstepped his boundaries by not enforcing the statute.
In 1994, then-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger wrote a memorandum to then-White House Counsel Abner Mikva asserting the president “may appropriately decline to enforce a statute that he views as unconstitutional.”
“As a general matter, if the President believes that the [Supreme] Court would sustain a particular provision as constitutional, the President should execute the statute, notwithstanding his own beliefs about the constitutional issue,” Dellinger writes. “If, however, the President, exercising his independent judgment, determines both that a provision would violate the Constitution and that it is probable that the Court would agree with him, the President has the authority to decline to execute the statute.”
But the memorandum examines whether a president can decline to enforce a statute in terms of whether the president has authority not to uphold a law recently approved by Congress. Dellinger states that if Congress is making progress toward passing a law that the president believes is unconstitutional, the White House should “promptly identify unconstitutional provisions and communicate its concerns to Congress.”
Such a situation would be different from what happened with DOMA, when the president determined the statute was unconstitutional nearly 15 years after a Republican Congress passed the bill and then-President Clinton signed it into law.
Jon Davidson, legal director for Lambda Legal, said there is “significant dispute” over whether a president can unilaterally decline to enforce a statute.
“When a president simply refuses to enforce the law, it’s not always clear that there is anyone who would have the legal ability to sue to require him to do so,” Davidson said. “This ability to exercise unilateral authority is troubling to many scholars.”
Still, Davidson noted that precedent exists for presidents to decline to enforce particular laws. For 25 years following its enactment in 1968, he said, every president refused to enforce a law seeking to make the Miranda case inapplicable to federal prosecutions until the courts struck down the law. Similarly, Davidson said numerous presidents refused to abide by laws allowing for legislative vetoes of presidential action, such as the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
For its part, the Obama administration seems intent on maintaining enforcement of DOMA even though the president has deemed it unconstitutional. In the case of Golinski v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management — concerning U.S. Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s order to give court employee Karen Golinski benefits for her same-sex spouse — the Obama administration reiterates that it plans to continue enforcement of DOMA.
Kozinski ordered the U.S. government to answer questions about its continued refusal to offer Golinski federal benefits in light of its decision that DOMA is unconstitutional. On Monday, the Justice Department responded to Kozinski by saying that Obama is obligated to continue to enforce the law until either Congress repeals the statute or the courts strike it down.
“The President has determined that Executive agencies will continue to enforce Section 3 of DOMA, a course of action that accords appropriate deference to the Congress that enacted DOMA and allows the judiciary to be the final arbiter of DOMA’s constitutionality, as stated by the Attorney General,” the Justice Department states. “Moreover, as discussed, the Executive Branch has fulfilled its statutory obligation to notify Congress of the decision not to defend the statute and is committed to urging the courts to provide Congress with a full and fair opportunity to participate in the litigation of DOMA cases.”
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said Obama plans to continue to enforce DOMA even though he’s decided no longer to enforce the statute in court.
“Consistent with past practice when a president determines and announces publicly that a law is unconstitutional, the president has directed the Department of Justice to cease defending the law in court,” Inouye said. “Until there is a final determination by the courts of the law’s validity or it is repealed by Congress, however, it remains the law of the land and the president will continue to enforce it as such.”
Many legal experts who are LGBT advocates are wary of the prospects of the president declining to enforce a statute — even one as harmful to married same-sex couples as DOMA — simply on the basis that Obama deems the law unconstitutional.
Nan Hunter, a lesbian law professor at Georgetown University, said no one believes more strongly than she that DOMA is unconstitutional, but cautioned against having the president stopping to enforce DOMA because “you have to look beyond your nose when you’re thinking about the ramifications of these sorts of decisions.”
“We do not want to live in a country in which the president can declare statutes to be unconstitutional because he doesn’t like them,” Hunter said. “That’s really not a place where any of us should want to live.”
To support the idea of a president ceasing to enforce a statute because the administration believes it’s unconstitutional, Hunter said she wants to see a guiding set of principles that would allow Obama to stop enforcing the statute while being consistent with the rule of law.
“I think everyone agrees that the criteria would have to be extremely limited so that such a situation would be extremely rare,” Hunter said. “Maybe someone could persuade that this fits into that very limited criteria, but I just haven’t heard any.”
Richard Socarides, president of the media watchdog group Equality Matters, said given the history of DOMA, the Obama administration would be “hard pressed” to decide unilaterally to stop enforcing DOMA.
“I just think it would be disruptive to the normal order of things,” Socarides said. “I’m sure that their lawyers made pretty convincing arguments that the more orderly way to do this was to await a definitive ruling from the court, which should be fairly quickly forthcoming based upon the government’s new position.”
Amid this debate, another LGBT advocate is drawing on the recent change in how the Obama administration is handling DOMA to press the administration to exercise prosecutorial discretion in cases involving bi-national same-sex couples.
Lavi Soloway, an attorney with Masliah & Soloway PC in New York, is representing three married, same-sex bi-national couples in New York, New Jersey and California who are facing deportation proceedings.
Alex Benshimol and Doug Gentry are scheduled for a July 13 hearing in San Francisco; Monica Alcota and Cristina Ojeda are scheduled for a March 22 hearing in New York; and Henry Velandia and Josh Vandiver scheduled for a May 6 hearing in Newark, N.J. Each of the American spouses in these cases has filed green card petitions on behalf of their foreign national partners, although DOMA prevents American nationals from sponsoring their partners.
“We intend to argue as a result of the shifting position of the executive branch with respect to DOMA that it’s appropriate for the immigration judges and also for the attorneys that represent the Department of Homeland Security to exercise what’s called prosecutorial discretion, which simply means exercising more discretion in how to proceed with these cases,” Soloway said.
In the three pending cases, Soloway is asking for judges to consider changes that were made to how the Obama administration is handling DOMA in court and to put off deportation proceedings until another time when different relief of legal options may be available. According to Soloway, if anyone in these cases is deported, they won’t be able to return to the United States for another 10 years, even if DOMA is repealed or overturned sometime before then.
“I’m calling on the Department of Homeland Security … to develop reasonable innovative policy to deal with the particular moment that we’re in,” Soloway said. “We’re just in a very short-term moment where things are in a state of flux. I’m not asking them to stop enforcing any law; this is part of enforcing the law.”
Florida
Homeless transgender woman murdered in Miami Beach
Andrea Doria Dos Passos attacked while she slept
Gregory Fitzgerald Gibert, 53, who was out on probation, is charged with the second-degree murder of 37-year-old Andrea Doria Dos Passos, a transgender Latina woman who was found deceased in front of the Miami Ballet company facility by a security guard this past week.
According to a Miami Beach Police spokesperson the security guard thought Dos Passos was sleeping in the entranceway around 6:45 a.m. on April 23 and when he went to wake her he discovered the blood and her injuries and alerted 911.
She was deceased from massive trauma to her face and head. According to Miami Beach police when video surveillance footage was reviewed, it showed Dos Passos lying down in the entranceway apparently asleep. WFOR reported: In the early morning hours, a man arrived, looked around, and spotted her. Police said the man was dressed in a black shirt, red shorts, and red shoes.
At one point, he walked away, picked up a metal pipe from the ground, and then returned. After looking around, he sat on a bench near Dos Passos. After a while, he got up and repeatedly hit her in the head and face while she was sleeping, according to police.
“The male is then seen standing over her, striking her, and then manipulating her body. The male then walks away and places the pipe inside a nearby trash can (the pipe was found and recovered in the same trash can),” according to the arrest report.
Police noted that in addition to trauma on her face and head, two wooden sticks were lodged in her nostrils and there was a puncture wound in her chest.
Victor Van Gilst, Dos Passos’s stepfather confirmed she was trans and experiencing homelessness.
“She had no chance to defend herself whatsoever. I don’t know if this was a hate crime since she was transgender or if she had some sort of interaction with this person because he might have been homeless as well. The detective could not say if she was attacked because she was transgender,” said Van Gilst.
“She has been struggling with mental health issues for a long time, going back to when she was in her early 20s. We did everything we could to help her. My wife is devastated. For her, this is like a nightmare that turned into reality. Andrea moved around a lot and even lived in California for a while. She was sadly homeless. I feel the system let her down. She was a good person,” he added.
The Miami Police Department arrested Gibert, collected his clothing, noting the red shorts were the same type in the video and had blood on them. Blood was also found on his shoes, according to police. He was taken into custody and charged.
“The suspect has an extensive criminal record and reportedly was recently released from custody on probation for prior criminal charges. Police apprehended the suspect in the city of Miami and the investigation is currently ongoing. This case is further evidence that individuals need to be held accountable for prior violent crimes for the protection of the public. We offer our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the victim,” Miami Beach Mayor Steve Meiner said in a statement.
Joe Saunders, senior political director with LGBTQ rights group Equality Florida, told the Miami Herald that “whenever a transgender person is murdered, especially when it is with such brutality, the question should be asked about whether or not this was a hate-motivated crime.”
Federal Government
HHS reverses Trump-era anti-LGBTQ rule
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act now protects LGBTQ people
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has issued a final rule on Friday under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act advancing protections against discrimination in health care prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics), in covered health programs or activities.
The updated rule does not force medical professionals to provide certain types of health care, but rather ensures nondiscrimination protections so that providers cannot turn away patients based on individual characteristics such as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or pregnant.
“This rule ensures that people nationwide can access health care free from discrimination,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “Standing with communities in need is critical, particularly given increased attacks on women, trans youth, and health care providers. Health care should be a right not dependent on looks, location, love, language, or the type of care someone needs.”
The new rule restores and clarifies important regulatory protections for LGBTQ people and other vulnerable populations under Section 1557, also known as the health care nondiscrimination law, that were previously rescinded by the Trump administration.
“Healthcare is a fundamental human right. The rule released today restores critical regulatory nondiscrimination protections for those who need them most and ensures a legally proper reading of the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare nondiscrimination law,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, counsel and health care strategist for Lambda Legal.
“The Biden administration today reversed the harmful, discriminatory, and unlawful effort by the previous administration to eliminate critical regulatory protections for LGBTQ+ people and other vulnerable populations, such as people with limited English proficiency, by carving them out from the rule and limiting the scope of entities to which the rule applied,” Gonzalez-Pagan added. “The rule released today has reinstated many of these important protections, as well as clarifying the broad, intended scope of the rule to cover all health programs and activities and health insurers receiving federal funds. While we evaluate the new rule in detail, it is important to highlight that this rule will help members of the LGBTQ+ community — especially transgender people, non-English speakers, immigrants, people of color, and people living with disabilities — to access the care they need and deserve, saving lives and making sure healthcare professionals serve patients with essential care no matter who they are.”
In addition to rescinding critical regulatory protections for LGBTQ people, the Trump administration’s rule also limited the remedies available to people who face health disparities, limited access to health care for people with Limited English Proficiency, and dramatically reduced the number of healthcare entities and health plans subject to the rule.
Lambda Legal, along with a broad coalition of LGBTQ advocacy groups, filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration rule, Whitman-Walker Clinic v. HHS, and secured a preliminary injunction preventing key aspects of the Trump rule from taking effect.
These included the elimination of regulatory protections for LGBTQ people and the unlawful expansion of religious exemptions, which the new rule corrects. The preliminary injunction in Whitman-Walker Clinic v. HHS remains in place. Any next steps in the case will be determined at a later time, after a fulsome review of the new rule.
GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis released the following statement in response to the news:
“The Biden administration’s updates to rules regarding Section 1557 of the ACA will ensure that no one who is LGBTQI or pregnant can face discrimination in accessing essential health care. This reversal of Trump-era discriminatory rules that sought to single out Americans based on who they are and make it difficult or impossible for them to access necessary medical care will have a direct, positive impact on the day to day lives of millions of people. Today’s move marks the 334th action from the Biden-Harris White House in support of LGBTQ people. Health care is a human right that should be accessible to all Americans equally without unfair and discriminatory restrictions. LGBTQ Americans are grateful for this step forward to combat discrimination in health care so no one is barred from lifesaving treatment.”
The White House
Four states to ignore new Title IX rules protecting transgender students
Biden administration last Friday released final regulations
BY ERIN REED | Last Friday, the Biden administration released its final Title IX rules, which include protections for LGBTQ students by clarifying that Title IX forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The rule change could have a significant impact as it would supersede bathroom bans and other discriminatory policies that have become increasingly common in Republican states within the U.S.
As of Thursday morning, however, officials in at least four states — Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina — have directed schools to ignore the regulations, potentially setting up a federal showdown that may ultimately end up in a protracted court battle in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.
Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley was the first to respond, decrying the fact that the new Title IX regulations could block teachers and other students from exercising what has been dubbed by some a “right to bully” transgender students by using their old names and pronouns intentionally.
Asserting that Title IX law does not protect trans and queer students, Brumley states that schools “should not alter policies or procedures at this time.” Critically, several courts have ruled that trans and queer students are protected by Title IX, including the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent case in West Virginia.
In South Carolina, Schools Supt. Ellen Weaver wrote in a letter that providing protections for trans and LGBTQ students under Title IX “would rescind 50 years of progress and equality of opportunity by putting girls and women at a disadvantage in the educational arena,” apparently leaving trans kids out of her definition of those who deserve progress and equality of opportunity.
She then directed schools to ignore the new directive while waiting for court challenges. While South Carolina does not have a bathroom ban or statewide “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law, such bills continue to be proposed in the state.
Responding to the South Carolina letter, Chase Glenn of Alliance For Full Acceptance stated, “While Supt. Weaver may not personally support the rights of LGBTQ+ students, she has the responsibility as the top school leader in our state to ensure that all students have equal rights and protections, and a safe place to learn and be themselves. The flagrant disregard shown for the Title IX rule tells me that our superintendent unfortunately does not have the best interests of all students in mind.”
Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz also joined in instructing schools not to implement Title IX regulations. In a letter issued to area schools, Diaz stated that the new Title IX regulations were tantamount to “gaslighting the country into believing that biological sex no longer has any meaning.”
Governor Ron DeSantis approved of the letter and stated that Florida “will not comply.” Florida has notably been the site of some of the most viciously anti-queer and anti-trans legislation in recent history, including a “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law that was used to force a trans female teacher to go by “Mr.”
State Education Supt. Ryan Walters of Oklahoma was the latest to echo similar sentiments. Walters has recently appointed the right-wing media figure Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok to an advisory role “to improve school safety,” and notably, Raichik has posed proudly with papers accusing her of instigating bomb threats with her incendiary posts about LGBTQ people in classrooms.
The Title IX policies have been universally applauded by large LGBTQ rights organizations in the U.S. Lambda Legal, a key figure in fighting anti-LGBTQ legislation nationwide, said that the regulations “clearly cover LGBTQ+ students, as well as survivors and pregnant and parenting students across race and gender identity.” The Human Rights Campaign also praised the rule, stating, “rule will be life-changing for so many LGBTQ+ youth and help ensure LGBTQ+ students can receive the same educational experience as their peers: Going to dances, safely using the restroom, and writing stories that tell the truth about their own lives.”
The rule is slated to go into effect Aug. 1, pending any legal challenges.
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Erin Reed is a transgender woman (she/her pronouns) and researcher who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world and helps people become better advocates for their queer family, friends, colleagues, and community. Reed also is a social media consultant and public speaker.
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The preceding article was first published at Erin In The Morning and is republished with permission.
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