National
After action on immigration, will Obama move to protect LGBT workers?
White House says no executive order ‘at this time’

President Obama’s action last week protecting many young, undocumented immigrants from deportation has won praise in progressive circles — including among LGBT advocates — but the move raises a question: Can the LGBT community now expect that the previously denied administrative actions they’ve been seeking will come to fruition?
On Friday, the Obama administration announced that an estimated 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States will be considered for relief from removal from the country if they meet certain criteria. Among the criteria is whether the person in question has a college education or has served in the military. Those criteria would have protected such immigrants from deportation had Congress passed the DREAM Act.
During remarks in the White House Rose Garden, Obama announced the policy change and said it was a means to keep talented people in the United States.
“As I said in my speech on the economy yesterday, it makes no sense to expel talented young people, who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans — they’ve been raised as Americans; understand themselves to be part of this country — to expel these young people who want to staff our labs, or start new businesses, or defend our country simply because of the actions of their parents — or because of the inaction of politicians,” Obama said.
Excitement among immigration rights advocates ensued and hundreds of young people swarmed the White House to rally in support of the president’s action. And this praise was echoed by LGBT rights advocates.
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, was among those who praised the move.
“We applaud the Obama administration for taking this monumental and inspiring step,” Carey said. “It shows true leadership. It is heartening to know that hundreds of thousands of young people will no longer have to live in daily fear of being forced out of the country, away from the life and dreams they have built.”
But the policy change marks a turnabout for the administration, which had previously stated it wanted legislative action on the DREAM Act as opposed to pursuing executive action.
In September remarks before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala, Obama talked about wanting Congress to take action on the DREAM Act
“I wish I had a magic wand and could make this all happen on my own,” Obama said. “There are times where — until Nancy Pelosi is speaker again — I’d like to work my way around Congress. But the fact is, even as we work towards a day when I can sign an immigration bill, we’ve got laws on the books that have to be upheld.”
To be fair, Obama didn’t completely rule out executive action on the DREAM Act at the gala. Saying “how we enforce those laws is also important,” the president noted the Department of Homeland Security is taking common-sense steps for immigration enforcement.
But the remarks should ring a bell. They’re along the lines of similar talking points that administration officials have expressed in regard to actions sought by the LGBT community. Now that the administration has taken action to help young, undocumented immigrants, will it reconsider its position on those other actions?
Perhaps the most high-profile outstanding request of the administration is an executive order requiring contractors doing business with the federal government to have employment non-discrimination policies inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity. In April, the White House announced it wouldn’t take such action at this time and was opting instead for a legislative solution.
Felipe Matos, GetEQUAL’s national field director and a gay, undocumented immigrant, said last week following the announcement that he’s happy with Obama’s action, but wants to see more efforts on employment non-discrimination.
“I’m still reeling from the news and overjoyed by the announcement — but my heart has just enough room in it for another executive order,” Matos said. “It’s my hope that President Obama will make today especially historic by signing another executive order — one that will guarantee that I have the right to work freely and openly as an immigrant, but also as a gay American.”
Questions about why Obama chose to take administrative action on the immigration issue and not on the issue of LGBT workplace discrimination were asked even in Republican circles.
Richard Grenell, who’s gay and was briefly a foreign policy spokesperson for the Romney campaign, criticized Obama following the immigration announcement — reiterating a previously stated belief that Obama is playing politics with the LGBT community.
“President Obama obviously made a calculated political move to NOT give an executive order for ENDA,” Grenell said in an email to the Blade. “It’s painfully evident that the president doesn’t think gays are equal, he just thinks they are his solid and sure voting bloc and will treat us in raw political terms. Both parties, sadly, play politics with an issue that is about equality.”
For his part, Romney is facing his own political problems as a result of the DREAM Act administrative action. While taking a hard line on immigration during the Republican primary and saying he’d veto the DREAM Act, Romney has refused to say following Obama’s move whether he’d undo the action if elected president.
Despite these calls, the administration hasn’t changed its line on LGBT employment non-discrimination policy in the wake of the immigration policy.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said nothing has changed in the administration’s position, reiterating that the directive won’t happen “at this time.”
“As has been previously stated, while it is not our usual practice to discuss executive orders that may or may not be under consideration, an order on LGBT non-discrimination for federal contractors will not be issued at this time,” Inouye said.
Another request of the administration is meant to protect bi-national same-sex couples from separation. Straight Americans can marry their foreign spouses to protect from deportations, but the same option isn’t available to gay Americans because of DOMA.
LGBT immigration rights groups have been asking the Department of Homeland Security to hold in abeyance the marriage-based green card applications for foreign nationals in same-sex relationships. The administration has said consistently in response to requests for this action that it plans to continue to enforce DOMA while it’s on the books.
Rachel Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, called the immigration announcement “great news for our country” and said it would protect gay foreign nationals in same-sex couples if they qualify for relief under the DREAM Act. Still, she called for additional action.
“No person should face forcible separation from their families, regardless of their age,” Tiven said. “That is why the White House should follow today’s announcement with a proposal to extend that same relief to immigrants with U.S.-citizen partners and spouses across the board. Keeping families together is good policy, and all families, including those that are LGBT, should have the support of the president in the form of a similar policy.”
Lavi Soloway, co-founder of Stop the Deportations, said he celebrates the move but wants additional action from the administration for bi-national couples in the wake of decisions from six federal courts finding DOMA unconstitutional.
“Every day these couples worry that they will be torn apart or forced into exile in order to stay together,” Soloway said. “This administration has said that denying green cards to the spouses of gay and lesbian Americans is a violation of the equal protection guarantee of the U.S. Constitution, but has not taken the steps necessary to mitigate the discriminatory impact of DOMA in this area.”
The actions that Soloway is seeking are: ordering an immediate moratorium on deportations of the foreign partners of gay Americans; providing temporary parole to the partners, spouses and children of gay Americans who are stuck outside the United States so that these families can be reunited; and putting on hold all “green card” petitions filed by gay Americans for their spouses.
Peter Boogard, a DHS spokesperson, reiterated that it will continue to enforce DOMA when asked about holding marriage-based green cards in abeyance.
“Pursuant to the attorney general’s guidance, the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect and the executive branch, including the Department of Homeland Security, will continue to enforce it unless and until Congress repeals it, or there a final judicial determination that it is unconstitutional,” Boogard said.
But recent news may be an indication that the Obama administration is changing its tune. In recent weeks, the Board of Immigration Appeals has rejected the denial of green card petitions issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the cases filed by four married, gay couples who live in in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Canada.
In all cases, the BIA ordered the USCIS to conduct further inquiry to determine if these marriages are legally valid and whether if not for DOMA, the spouse would qualify for a green card.
In one case, the ruling re-opened removal proceedings for the spouse of a gay American who is facing an outstanding deportation order. According to Soloway, who’s handling the cases, the Board of Immigration Appeals has never before re-opened removal proceedings or remanded green card petitions back to USCIS after denials based solely on DOMA.
The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
LGBT advocates say they’ll continue to press forward. Speaking with the Washington Blade earlier this week, Chad Griffin, the new president of the Human Rights Campaign, commended Obama for taking action on immigration and said HRC will push forward when asked about these LGBT-related issues.
“HRC has been supportive of the DREAM Act for a long time,” Griffin said. “The president made an important step recently in the last week in what he announced and we have more to accomplish on some things that HRC will continue to voice our concern on.”
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.