National
Anti-gay groups file Prop 8, DOMA briefs
Attorneys cite inability of gay couples to procreate
Anti-gay groups this week filed brief before the Supreme Court (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Anti-gay forces drew upon reasoning they’ve used the past — such as the inability of gay parents to procreate — in legal briefs filed before the Supreme Court this week in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8.
In two separate briefs filed on Tuesday, attorneys representing ProtectMarriage.com and the House Republican-led Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group made their case for why the Supreme Court should uphold the anti-gay measures — despite multiple rulings from lower courts that have found DOMA and Prop 8 unconstitutional.
In the 65-page brief filed in the Prop 8 case, they urge the Supreme Court justices to uphold California’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, approved by California voters in 2008, because, among other reasons, the measure helps ensure children are raised by their biological parents.
“In particular, an animating purpose of marriage is to increase the likelihood that children will be born and raised in stable and enduring family units by their own mothers and fathers,” the brief states. “Because relationships between persons of the same sex do not have the capacity to produce children, they do not implicate this interest in responsible procreation and childrearing in the same way.”
Attorneys who signed the brief include Andrew Pugno, the lead counsel for ProtectMarriage.com; Charles Cooper, a private attorney representing the group as well as lawyers from the anti-gay Alliance Defending Freedom.
In the brief, these lawyers maintain Prop 8 doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause under the U.S. Constitution for four major reasons: 1) Prop 8 advances an interest in procreation and child-rearing; 2) Prop 8 serves an interest in “proceeding with caution” before redefining a social institution; 3) Prop 8 restores democratic authority over a vital principle and 4) Prop 8 does not “dishonor” gay people.
Additionally, the brief answers the earlier posted question from the Supreme Court over whether these lawyers have standing to defend Prop 8 in lieu of California officials — Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris — who have declined to defend the law in court.
Attorneys assert they have standing because Supreme Court precedent has established that state law determines who’s authorized to defend the constitutionality of a law in that state. The brief notes the California Supreme Court determined that ProtectMarriage.com has authority to defend Prop 8.
Anti-gay language is also found in the 60-page brief in the DOMA case submitted by BLAG, a five-member panel of U.S. House members that voted 3-2 along party lines to defend the 1996 law in court. The brief makes similar arguments that the government has invested in prohibiting same-sex marriage to encourage procreation.
“Only opposite-sex relationships have the tendency to produce children without such advance planning (indeed, especially without advance planning,)” the brief states. “Thus, the traditional definition of marriage remains society’s rational response to this unique tendency of opposite-sex relationships. And in light of that understanding of marriage, it is perfectly rational not to define as marriage, or extend the benefits of marriage to, other relationships that, whatever their other similarities, simply do not have the same tendency to produce unplanned and potentially unwanted children.”
Attorneys who signed this brief include House General Counsel Kerry Kircher and private attorney Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general under the Bush administration who was hired for $520 an hour at a cost cap that has now reached $3 million to defend DOMA in court.
BLAG offers five major arguments for why the Supreme Court should uphold DOMA: 1) DOMA preserves each sovereign’s right to define marriage for itself; 2) DOMA ensures uniformity in eligibility for federal benefits; 3) DOMA preserves past legislative judgments and and conserves fiscal resources; 4) Congress proceeded with caution when enacting the law and 5) the federal government can retain marriage as one man, one woman for the same reason a state can.
The brief also goes at length to dispute the idea that laws affecting gay people should be subjected to heightened scrutiny, or a greater assumption they’re unconstitutional, because they’re a suspect class. The view that DOMA should be subjected to this standard is held by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Obama administration.
As part of this argument, the brief denies gays are politically powerless class, citing the LGBT community’s influence on the Democratic Party and Obama, who has come out for marriage equality.
“Perhaps most critically, gays and lesbians have substantial political power, and that power is growing,” the brief states. “There is absolutely no reason to think that gays and lesbians are shut out of the political process to a degree that would justify judicial intervention on an issue as divisive and fast-moving as same-sex marriage.”
Other arguments to dispute classifying gays and lesbians as part of a suspect are sexual orientation isn’t an immutable characteristic and the histories of discrimination is different for race, ethnicity, gender and legitimacy — others groups that have been designated as suspect classes.
Evan Wolfson, president of the LGBT advocacy group Freedom to Marry, said he believes the Supreme Court would be unpersuaded by the arguments in these briefs because they’re the same earlier arguments that lower courts rejected when striking down Prop 8 and DOMA.
“Ten federal rulings — from judges appointed by presidents including Reagan, both Bushes, and even Nixon — have found these alleged justifications for discriminating in marriage insufficient to meet the constitution’s command of equal protection under the law, as have numerous state judges,” Wolfson said. “The fact that all they have to offer the Supreme Court at this late stage in the day is such old wine in new bottles should help persuade the justices that neither DOMA nor Prop 8 serves any sufficient, legitimate purpose and that both discriminatory measures must fall.”
The next deadline for briefs in these cases is Tuesday, when parties supporting the anti-gay side must file their friend-of-the-court briefs. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Prop 8 case are set for March 26 and in the DOMA case are set for March 27. The Supreme Court must deliver rulings on the constitutionality of Prop 8 and DOMA before the end of its term in June.
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
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.
Laverne Cox, Reneé Rapp, Deacon Maccubbin named WorldPride grand marshals
House passes reconciliation with gender-affirming care funding ban
PHOTOS: D.C. Trans Pride
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
WorldPride events round-up
Pope Leo XIV: Family based on ‘stable union between a man and a woman’
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
