A U.S. District Court judge on Jan. 21 denied a request by attorneys representing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a gay captain accusing police officials of illegally demoting him for taking parental leave to join his husband in caring for their newborn son.

The lawsuit filed by Capt. Paul Hrebenak charges that police officials violated the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act, a similar D.C. family leave law, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by refusing to allow him to return to his position as director of the department’s School Safety Division upon his return from parental leave.  

It says police officials transferred Hrebenak to another police division against his wishes, which was a far less desirable job and was the equivalent of a demotion, even though it had the same pay grade as his earlier job.

In response to a motion filed by attorneys with the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents and defends D.C. government agencies against lawsuits, Judge Randolph D. Moss agreed to dismiss seven of the lawsuit’s 14 counts or claims but left in place six counts.

Scott Lempert, the attorney representing Hrebenak, said he and Hrebenak agreed to drop one of the 14 counts prior to the Jan. 21 court hearing.

“He did not dismiss the essential claims in this case,” Lempert told the Washington Blade. “So, we won is the short answer. We defeated the motion to dismiss the case.”  

Gabriel Shoglow, a spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, said the office has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation and it would not comment on the judge’s ruling upholding six of the lawsuit’s initial 14 counts.

In issuing his ruling from the bench, Moss gave Lempert the option of filing an amended complaint by March 6 to seek the reinstatement of the counts he dismissed. He gave attorneys for the D.C. attorney general’s office a deadline of March 20 to file a response to an amended complaint.

Lempert told the Blade he and Hrebenak have yet to decide whether to file an amended complaint or whether to ask the judge to move the case ahead to a jury trial, which they initially requested.

In its 26-page motion calling for dismissal of the case, filed on May 30, 2025, D.C. Office of the Attorney General attorneys argue that the police department has legal authority to transfer its officers, including captains, to a different job. It says that Hrebenak’s transfer to a position of watch commander at the department’s First District was fully equivalent in status to his job as director of the School Safety Division.

“The Watch Commander position is not alleged to have changed plaintiff’s rank of captain or his benefits or pay, and thus plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that he was put in a non-equivalent position,” the motion to dismiss states.

“Thus, his reassignment is not a demotion,” it says. “And the fact that his shift changed does not mean that the position is not equivalent to his prior position. The law does not require that every single aspect of the positions be the same.”

Hrebenak’s lawsuit states that “straight” police officers have routinely taken similar family and parental leave to care for a newborn child and have not been transferred to a different job. According to the lawsuit, the School Safety Division assignment allowed him to work a day shift, a needed shift for his recognized disability of Crohn’s Disease, which the lawsuit says is exacerbated by working late hours at night.

The lawsuit points out that Hrebenak disclosed he had Crohn’s Disease at the time he applied for his police job, and it was determined he could carry out his duties as an officer despite this ailment, which was listed as a disability.

Among other things, the lawsuit notes that Hrebenak had a designated reserved parking space for his earlier job and lost the parking space for the job to which he was transferred.

“Plaintiff’s removal as director at MPD’s School Safety Division was a targeted, premeditated punishment for his taking statutorily protected leave as a gay man,” the lawsuit states. “There was no operational need by MPD to remove plaintiff as director of MPD’s School Safety Division, a position in which plaintiff very successfully served for years,” it says.

 In another action to strengthen Hrebenak’s opposition to the city’s motion to dismiss the case, Lempert filed with the court on Jan. 15 a “Notice of Supplemental Authority” that included two controversial reports that Lempert said showed that former D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith put in place a policy of involuntary police transfers “to effectively demote and end careers of personnel who had displeased Chief Smith and or others in MPD leadership.”

One of the reports was prepared by the Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the other was prepared by the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C. appointed by President Donald Trump.

Both reports allege that Smith, who resigned from her position as chief effective Dec. 31, pressured police officials to change crime reporting data to make it appear that the number of violent crimes was significantly lower than it actually was by threatening to transfer them to undesirable positions in the department. Smith has denied those claims.

“These findings support plaintiff’s arguments that it was the policy or custom of MPD to inflect involuntary transfers on MPD personnel as retaliation for doing or saying something  in which leadership disapproved,” Lempert says in his court filing submitting the two reports.

“As shown, many officers suffered under this pervasive custom, including Capt. Hrebenak,” he stated. “Accordingly, by definition, transferred positions were not equivalent to officers’ previous positions,” he added.  

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 as she attempted to drive away from law enforcement during a protest.

Since Good’s killing, ICE has faced national backlash over the excessive use of deadly force, prompting the Trump-Vance administration to double down on escalating enforcement measures in cities across the country.

The Washington Blade spoke with Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing Good’s family following her death.

Romanucci said that Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent seen on video shooting Good — acted in an antagonizing manner, escalated the encounter in violation of ICE directives, and has not been held accountable as ICE and other federal agents continue to “ramp up” operations in Minnesota.

A day before the fatal shooting, the Department of Homeland Security began what it described as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out by the agency, according to DHS’s own X post.

That escalation, Romanucci said, is critical context in understanding how Good was shot and why, so far, the agent who killed her has faced no consequences for killing a queer mother as she attempted to disengage from a confrontation.

“You have to look at this in the totality of the circumstances … One of the first things we need to look at is what was the mission here to begin with — with ICE coming into Minneapolis,” Romanucci told the Blade. “We knew the mission was to get the worst of the worst, and that was defined as finding illegal immigrants who had felony convictions. When you look at what happened on Jan. 7 with Renee and Rebecca [Good, Renee’s wife], certainly that was far from their mission, wasn’t it? What they really did was they killed a good woman — someone who was a mother, a daughter, a sister, a committed companion, an animal lover.”

Romanucci said finding and charging those responsible for Good’s death is now the focus of his work with her family.

“What our mission is now is to ensure that we achieve transparency, accountability, and justice … We aim to get it in front of, hopefully, a judge or a jury one day to make that determination.”

Those are three things Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS has outright rejected while smearing Good in the official record — including accusing her of being a “domestic terrorist” without evidence and standing by Ross, who Noem said acted in self-defense.

The version of events advanced by Noem and ICE has been widely contradicted by the volume of video footage of the shooting circulating online. Multiple angles show Good’s Honda Pilot parked diagonally in the street alongside other protesters attempting to block ICE agents from entering Richard E. Green Central Park Elementary School.

The videos show ICE officers approaching Good’s vehicle and ordering her to “get out of the car.” She then puts the car in reverse, backs up briefly, shifts into drive, and steers to the right — away from the officers.

The abundance of video evidence directly contradicts statements made by President Donald Trump, Noem, and other administration officials in interviews following Good’s death.

“The video shows that Renee told Jonathan Ross that ‘I’m not mad at you,’ so we know that her state of mind was one of peace,” Romanucci said. “She steered the car away from where he was standing, and we know that he was standing in front of the car. Reasonable police practices say that you do not stand in front of the car when there’s a driver behind the wheel. When you leave yourself with only the ability to use deadly force as an option to escape, that is not a reasonable police practice.”

An autopsy commissioned by Good’s family further supports that account, finding that her injuries were consistent with being shot from the direction of someone driving away.

The autopsy found three gunshot wounds: one to Good’s left forearm, one that struck her right breast without piercing major organs, and a third that entered the left side of her head near the temple and exited on the right side.

Romanucci said Ross not only placed himself directly in harm’s way, but then used deadly force after creating the conditions he claimed justified it — a move that violates DHS and ICE policy, according to former Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Juliette Kayyem.

“As a general rule, police officers and law enforcement do not shoot into moving cars, do not put themselves in front of cars, because those are things that are easily de-escalated,” Kayyem told PBS in a Jan. 8 interview.

“When he put himself in a situation of danger, the only way that he could get out of danger is by shooting her, because he felt himself in peril,” Romanucci said. “That is not a reasonable police practice when you leave yourself with only the ability to use deadly force as an option. That’s what happened here. That’s why we believe, based on what we’ve seen, that this case is unlawful and unconstitutional.”

Romanucci said he was appalled by how Trump and Noem described Good following her death.

“I will never use those words in describing our client and a loved one,” he said. “Those words, in my opinion, certainly do not apply to her, and they never should apply to her. I think the words, when they were used to describe her, were nearly slanderous … Renee Good driving her SUV at two miles per hour away from an ICE agent to move down the street is not an act of domestic terrorism at all.”

He added that his office has taken steps to preserve evidence in anticipation of potential civil litigation, even as the Justice Department has declined to open an investigation.

“We did issue a letter of preservation to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies to ensure that any evidence that’s in their possession be not destroyed or altered or modified,” Romanucci said. “We’ve heard Todd Blanche say just in the last couple of days that they don’t believe that they need to investigate at all. So we’re going to be demanding that the car be returned to its rightful owner, because if there’s no investigation, then we want our property back.”

The lack of accountability for Ross — and the continued expansion of ICE operations — has fueled nationwide protests against federal law enforcement under the Trump-Vance administration.

“The response we’ve seen since Renee’s killing has been that ICE has ramped up its efforts even more,” Romanucci said. “There are now over 3,000 ICE agents in a city where there are only 600 police officers, which, in my opinion, is defined as an invasion of federal law enforcement officers into a city … When you see the government ramping up its efforts in the face of constitutional assembly, I think we need to be concerned.”

As of now, Romanucci said, there appears to be no meaningful accountability mechanism preventing ICE agents from continuing to patrol — and, in some cases, terrorize — the Minneapolis community.

“What we know is that none of these officers are getting disciplined for any of their wrongdoings,” he said. “The government is saying that none of their officers have acted in a wrongful manner, but that’s not what the courts are saying … Until they get disciplined for their wrongdoings, they will continue to act with impunity.”

When asked what the public should remember about Good, Romanucci emphasized that she was a real person — a mother, a wife, and a community member whose life was cut short. Her wife lost her partner, and three children lost a parent.

“I’d like the public to remember Renee about is the stories that Rebecca has to tell — how the two of them would share road trips together, how they loved to share home-cooked meals together, what a good mother she was, and what a community member she was trying to make herself into,” Romanucci said. “They were new to Minneapolis and were really trying to make themselves a home there because they thought they could have a better life. Given all of that, along with her personality of being one of peace and one of love and care, I think that’s what needs to be remembered about Renee.”

A dozen companies that are participating in the World Economic Forum on Wednesday lit up their venues on the Davos promenade in rainbow colors.

Amazon, Axios, Bloomberg, Circle, Cisco, Cloudflare, Edelman Trust House, Hub Culture, Salesforce, SAP, Snowflake, and Workday participated in the “Pride on the Promenade” that GLAAD, Open for Business, and the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality organized. It is the fourth year the organizations have organized the initiative during the World Economic Forum.

The annual event is taking place this week in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos.

GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis on Wednesday moderated a panel in which Open for Business CEO Ken Janssens and Iris Bohnet, co-director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program, among others, participated. President Donald Trump earlier in the day spoke at the World Economic Forum.

“World leaders, corporate executives, and global media are discussing new ways to evolve inclusion and social issues, but leaders in those institutions and our community as a whole need to do more to support LGBTQ people globally,” said Ellis in a statement that GLAAD sent to the Washington Blade on Thursday. “At a time when decades-old alliances are being challenged, the importance of this visible show of solidarity at the largest convening of global decision makers cannot be understated. Inclusion remains a necessary business practice and companies that demonstrate shared values of family and freedom know this helps grow the bottom line.”