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Trump Political Appointee Sues Biden After Refusing to Resign

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Roger Severino, the anti-LGBTQ right-wing Christian activist who made things difficult for LGBTQ Americans during his time running HHS’s Office Of Civil Rights for Trump, is suing the Biden administration for firing him.

Roger Severino, a former Trump appointee at the Dept. of Health and Human Services who targeted LGBTQ Americans in his religious crusade as head of the Office of Civil Rights, is suing the Biden administration for firing him from his appointment by the former president to an obscure but powerful federal government agency known as ACUS.

He is refusing to resign, despite being a political appointee.

“President Biden’s attempt to remove me contrary to law exposes his lofty promises of healing and uniting all Americans as nothing more than cynical manipulation,” Severino defiantly told Newsweek.

“Because I am not one to be bullied, not even by the President himself, I will not resign my duly commissioned post and look forward to seeing how President Biden tries to justify his vindictive actions in court.”

Severino’s lawsuit claims that “President Biden has no constitutional authority under Article II to terminate Mr. Severino’s appointment to the Council.”

“The Council” is the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), which holds sway over how U.S. government regulatory agencies operate.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, writes on Twitter that “Severino’s substantive argument … seems to suggest that ACUS is part of no branch of government, but instead sits outside the executive branch on some heavenly plane.”

He calls the lawsuit “bonkers, BONKERS, just eye-melting galaxy-brain-level drivel.”

Severino spent his four years in the Trump administration working tirelessly to kill protections, many installed by the Obama administration, for LGBTQ patients, effectively promoting discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. He also expanded opportunities for people of faith to claim anti-religion discrimination by creating the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division at HHS.

At HHS Severino called Obama-era protections for transgender patients “unnecessary.”

And in defending an anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” regulation, Severino told reporters, “Patients want doctors who match their values.”

As NCRM has previously reported, Severino has been called a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist by the Human Rights Campaign. He once served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He has also served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

He is married to Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which spent millions to install President Donald Trump’s extremist judges, including reportedly tens of millions of dollars to help secure Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.

Legal Experts Blast Appeals Court Ruling Striking Down Florida Conversion Therapy Ban

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The deciding votes in the 2-1 decision invalidating the city of Miami Beach’s ban on conversion therapy for minors were made by Trump-appointed judges, because of course they were.

A federal appeals court on Friday, November 18 struck down two local Florida ordinances that ban dangerous and harmful conversion therapy by licensed medical professionals. The 2-1 majority decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is being criticized by legal and human rights experts.

Nearly every major medical association in the U.S. has denounced conversion therapy as harmful and dangerous. The practice, which purports to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, has been linked to suicide. Those who have been subjected to it often call it “torture.”

The Florida law applies only to licensed medical professionals, not to members of the clergy, yet on Friday the 11th Circuit panel claimed it violated the First Amendment.

Slate’s legal expert Mark Joseph Stern called the ruling a “really awful and frightening decision.”

Georgia State University College of Law law professor Anthony Michael Kreis calls conversion therapy “abusive,” and says the ruling by the 11th Circuit is a “truly reprehensible decision and civil rights disaster that will necessarily result in children suffering.”

“To date 107 laws have passed to protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy,” says Matthew Shurka, the co-founder of NCLR’s Born Perfect. He calls the 11th Circuit’s ruling an “outlier.”

“Five of those laws have been challenged in federal court and each have been upheld. Today’s ruling from the 11th circuit is an outlier. Our courts cannot allow professionals to harm our LGBTQ youth.”

But Slate’s Stern says he expects the U.S. Supreme Court will take up these cases, and warns the current 6-3 conservative majority will strike down any bans on conversion therapy.

“I have no real doubt that SCOTUS will find these bans unconstitutional,” Stern warns.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by Daniel Gonzales via Flickr and a CC license.

Dept. Of Education Threatens To Withhold $18 Million From Schools That Let Transgender Athletes Compete

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Betsy DeVos’s reasoning is based on prejudicial misunderstandings and bears a strong resemblance to a current lawsuit against Connecticut schools by the anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom.

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE), led by Betsy DeVos (pictured above), is threatening to withhold $18 million in federal funds from three Connecticut school districts unless they stop following the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s guidelines allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports.

The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to the Groton, Hartford and New Haven school districts telling them that allowing trans students to compete in sports teams matching their gender identities violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a subsection of the law that requires federally funded institutions not to discriminate on the basis of sex.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has pledged to “vigorously oppose” defunding efforts, but the state’s Democratic Governor, Ned Lamont, has said he doesn’t want to lose federal dollars over the policy, potentially placing it at risk.

The anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is currently suing five Connecticut school districts over the same policy for the same reasons. The suit, brought by the parents of three cisgender female track athletes, makes the same Title IX claims as the DOE and claims that trans girls have an unfair physical advantage which could prevent their daughters from advancing in competitions and winning college scholarships.

Earlier in her tenure, DeVos rolled back Obama-era protections allowing trans students to use bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identity. She later admitted that she did this even though she knew that it could lead to increased harassment, depression, and possibly suicide among transgender students.

Written by Daniel Villareal, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.

McEnany: Trump Trying to Ban Citizenship of Same-Sex Couples’ Kids Has ‘Nothing to Do’ With Sexual Orientation

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Despite the fact that the Trump administration has only tried to block citizenship for children of same-sex parents, Trump’s press secretary claims the policy has nothing to do with anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says the Trump administration’s attempts to ban U.S. citizenship from same-sex couples’ children born overseas via surrogacy has “nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the parents.” The Trump State Dept. has only worked to block citizenship of these children when American same-sex couples are the parents.

“A federal judge in Georgia last week was the latest to rule against the administration … denying gay couples citizenship for their children born overseas by a surrogate,” The Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson told McEnany.

“So that pertains to surrogacy and had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the parents,” McEnany, reading from prepared remarks, replied.

“And this administration and president will proudly stand on a record of achievements, like India, leading a global initiative to end the criminalization of homosexuality throughout the world, launching a plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, and easing a ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.”

“A federal judge has ruled the interpretation of that law is not correct and that there’s statutory and constitutional concerns,” Johnson countered, before the press secretary, who has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments, interjected.

The “global initiative to end the criminalization of homosexuality” has accomplished nothing because it does not exist; “launching a plan” is not implementing a plan or seeing success, neither of which the administration has done. And “easing a ban on blood donations” was done only because of the coronavirus pandemic. And it did not end the ban.

Watch:

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.

Trump Just Erased Any Mention of LGBTQ People from a Major U.S. Foreign Aid Policy

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A revision of USAID’s Gender Identity and Women’s Empowerment Policy finds all mention of LGBTQ issues stricken from the document, despite its previous version, from 2012, highlighting LGBTQ people as targets for discrimination.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — an independent agency that administers $27 billion in foreign-aid programs, including development, poverty and disaster relief — has removed all references of LGBTQ people, contraception and gender identity (an inclusive term acknowledging transgender people) from its revised draft of its Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy.

The 2012 version of the policy included these mentions, but the erasure is just the latest move from the Trump Administration in continually erasing LGBTQ people and reproductive rights from U.S. policy.

The revised draft removes all of the 2012 version’s mentions of gender identity, which had been defined in the document as “an individual’s internal, personal sense of being male or female” and isn’t necessarily determined by biological and physiological features.

The 2012 version also explicitly mentioned LGBTQ people in lists of organizations that USAID should partner with, types of people specifically targeted for discrimination, and forms of gender-based violence that concern USAID. All those explicit mentions have since been erased.

LGBTQ Nation notes:

The 2012 policy lists several factors that can further marginalize people, and it includes sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV status, as well as ethnicity, disability, and lack of income. The 2020 policy only mentions “those who face discrimination” without expanding on who, exactly, could face discrimination.

ProPublica mentioned that the revised draft removed several references to contraception used in the 2012 version as well.

Timothy Meisburger — USAID’s director of the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance — wrote that the staff’s duty is to “faithfully execute the policy of the current Administration.” Considering that the Trump Administration has doggedly pursued policies that target trans people and LGBTQ rights, the erasure of our community from the government documents should come as little surprise, even though it’s totally disappointing.

People around the world are targeted for violence and harassment for not conforming to their perceived sex or gender, but now USAID won’t be directed to specifically help such people, leaving them subject to discrimination while the U.S. focuses its efforts elsewhere.

In June, Trump appointed Merritt Corrigan to serve as deputy White House liaison at the USAID, even though she had written tweets and articles declaring that a “homo-empire” was driving the U.S. and other countries towards a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.” She was subsequently fired, but only after USAID condemned news outlets for reporting about what she had written.

Written by Daniel Villareal, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Trump-Appointed Judge Says It’s Constitutional for Businesses to Refuse Gay Customers

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Trump’s conservative judicial appointees continue to spread the idea that things like wedding cakes constitute “art” and are therefore exempt from anti-discrimination laws. Go figure.

Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Justin Reed Walker ruled on Friday that it’s perfectly constitutional for a Christian photographer in Louisville, Kentucky to refuse service to same-sex couples even though the city has an ordinance prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination and even though no gay couples have actually asked the photographer to take pictures of anything for them.

In his ruling, the judge wrote that “Christian” photographer Chelsey Walker cannot be compelled to take photos of same-sex weddings, even though she offers her photography as a public business, because her photos are “art” and art is a form of “speech.” Therefore, no government can force people to make any speech against their will. The judge said that requiring her to take photos of gay weddings would also go against Walker’s religious beliefs.

“Just as gay and lesbian Americans cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth,” the judge wrote, “neither can Americans ‘with a deep faith that requires them to do things passing legislative majorities might find unseemly or uncouth.”

In 2019, Nelson asked the Louisville District Court to issue an injunction ensuring that she never has to comply with the city’s Fairness Ordinance. She said she worried about being sued if she marketed her business and the city became aware of her refusal to shoot same-sex marriages. She was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a right-wing Christian legal defense counsel that is regularly behind anti-LGBTQ lawsuits meant to challenge any expanse of non-discrimination laws or queer civil rights.

If the judge’s legal “reasoning” sounds familiar, it’s because it’s nearly the exact same argument that the Trump Administration used in a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in defense of the Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Colorado bakery that in 2012 refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

“An artist cannot be forced to paint, a musician cannot be forced to play and a poet cannot be forced to write,” the Department of Justice’s amicus brief said. The brief asserted that public accommodation non-discrimination laws (like Lousiville’s Fairness Ordinance) are supposed to apply only to goods and services (like dispensing pharmaceutical medicine or renting hotel rooms) and not to artistic creations that are “expressly communicative” like wedding cakes and wedding photography.

As Hornet explained, “If public accommodation laws require a baker to make a cake for a gay wedding, the brief argues, then they could also potentially force a freelance designer to design fliers for a neo-Nazi group or the Westboro Baptist Church.”

The brief went on to say that opposing racism and misogyny is different from opposing homophobia because the Supreme Court has not yet ruled that “eradicating private individuals’ opposition to same-sex marriage is a uniquely compelling interest” — that’s because gay marriage had only been legal nationwide for a few years.

But the fact is that the government does have a compelling interest to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment ensuring that all individuals are treated equally under the law, rather than allowing individuals to deny same-sex couples the same treatment as everyone else.

The case may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is the ADF’s goal. They keep filing these lawsuits in hopes that the conservative-leaning courts will help strike down LGBTQ anti-discrimination ordinances nationwide.

Written by Daniel Villareal, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM