National
A preview of tonight’s State of the Union
Will president again mention LGBT issues in annual speech?

UPDATE: A gay rights advocate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said LGBT-specific content in the State of the Union address is not expected. According to the source, Obama’s speech will have “maybe a mention of LGBT,” but no LGBT-specific policy initiatives will be discussed.
Leaders of state LGBT advocacy groups working to advance marriage equality legislation say President Obama can a make a big speech tonight even bigger by throwing his support behind marriage rights for gay couples.
Obama is set to deliver before a joint session of Congress his third State of the Union address at 9 p.m.
As Obama makes the finishing touches to his speech, LGBT advocates in states across the country — most notably in Washington State, Maryland and New Jersey — are preparing for legislative fights to advance marriage rights for gay couples.
Passing same-sex marriage legislation in these states has various challenges. Marriage in Washington State and Maryland could go to referendum after the governors there sign the legislation into law, while New Jersey’s governor has previously said he’d veto any such bill.
State advocacy groups working on same-sex marriage legislation say an announcement from President Obama in support of marriage equality could give them an edge in their fights. The president, who doesn’t support same-sex marriage, said his view could “evolve,” but he hasn’t yet declared support for marriage rights for gay couples.
Josh Friedes, marriage equality director for Equal Rights Washington, said personal conversation is what drives support for same-sex marriage and that a public endorsement from Obama during the State of the Union address would certainly get tongues wagging.
“If the president of the United States were to announce support for marriage equality, his words would serve as a catalyst for millions of conversations,” Friedes said. “And that’s what we need in Washington State as we contemplate the likelihood of a referendum on a marriage bill this fall. Indeed there is probably no person who can better increase the number of conversations than the president.”
The bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington found the needed support among lawmakers this week to reach Gov. Christine Gregoire’s (D) desk, but the possibility of the law being overturned later this year in a voter-initiated referendum still looms.
Friedes added that Obama is respected as “a family man” and his support for marriage equality “could open the hearts of many people to revaluate their own positions.”
“But mostly if the president announces support for marriage equality it’s on us to use the event as an opportunity to share our personal stories,” Friedes said.
Carrie Evans, executive director of Equality Maryland, had similar thoughts on the helpfulness of Obama declaring support for marriage equality during his speech, which is happening the day after Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced same-sex marriage legislation in that state’s legislature.
“If President Obama voices his support for marriage equality in his State of the Union address it will add even more momentum to our efforts in Maryland and help us get the bill over the finish line,” Evans said.
A national group that has been pushing for Obama to endorse same-sex marriage continues to apply pressure as the American public awaits the president’s remarks tonight.
Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, said the day Obama joins the majority of Americans — who, according to polls, now support same-sex marriage — will be “a meaningful day for families who cherish the love and commitment that make marriage matter.”
“It will also be a really a good day for the president, as he will tap into the political momentum and energy that come to candidates who do the right thing,” Wolfson added.
Whether the president will endorse marriage equality during his speech remains to be seen. As the nation continues to recover from a recession and the unemployment rate remains above 8 percent, Obama will focus his speech on improving the economy.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Obama would lay out a blueprint in the speech that includes four pillars to improve the economy: manufacturing, energy, skills for workers and fairness and responsibility.
“We need an American economy where everyone gets a fair shot, where everyone gets a fair shake, and where everybody does their fair share,” a senior administration official said. “And those are the kinds of things that will be reinforced in the State of the Union.”
On Friday, when asked by the Washington Blade whether Obama would announce support same-sex marriage in the speech, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he wouldn’t rule “in or out” the possibility of the president endorsing gay nuptials during the address.
Obama has incorporated LGBT issues in his State of the Union speech in previous instances. In 2010, he pledged to work with Congress and the military to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” In 2011, Obama promised to certify repeal to lift the gay ban from the books before the end of the year — and later fulfilled that pledge.
According to Politico, the Human Rights Campaign has this year “pushed Obama to mention the LGBT community in his list of accomplishments and policy proposals.”
Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president of communications, reportedly told Politico, “The inclusion of our community in those laundry lists in any part of the speech helps us tremendously in being thought of as a vital part of the American fabric.”
But Michael Cole-Schwartz, another HRC spokesperson, told the Blade on Monday that he doesn’t “have anything” on the inclusion of LGBT-specific language in this year’s State of the Union address.
At least one workplace rights advocate is pushing Obama to address the lack of federal non-discrimination protections for LGBT people in his speech.
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said he hopes Obama will take the opportunity to “mention how LGBT Americans have no federal law to protect us from irrational firings and harassment on the job.”
“By delivering this message, the president can help us do some important public education, given that 90 percent of American voters mistakenly think ENDA is already the law of the land,” Almeida said.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act is legislation that has stalled in Congress and would prohibit private and public employers from discriminating against workers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Almeida called on Obama to announce during the State of the Union address that he would issue an executive order barring federal dollars from going to contractors that don’t have non-discrimination protections for LGBT workers.
“President Obama has the power to change that by just putting pen to paper, without any need to wait for this dysfunctional Congress to do the right thing,” Almeida said. “Even if he does not announce the ENDA executive order during the State of the Union, I remain hopeful the president will take strong executive action very soon.”
Federal Government
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency.
Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”
The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”
At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.
But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs.
Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts.
“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees.
“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”
Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts
Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”
“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”
One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”
The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.
Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.
“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”
Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed
Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”
With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”
Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.
Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.
“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”
LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation
The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).
“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.
“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”
Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”
“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”
The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports
27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.
In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.
The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.
“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.
He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”
Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”
Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.
Federal Government
UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House
University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.
“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”
Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”
Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”
Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.
Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.
The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.
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