By Ann Rostow—
Judge Vacates Kennedy’s Crazy Policy
As we went to press last issue, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the anti-trans “Kennedy Declaration” was unconstitutional and could not be upheld. I confess that the December 18, 2025, “Declaration” from our bizarre Secretary of Health and Human Services may have escaped my notice at the time. It was the holidays, after all! But also, in the firehose of attacks on transgender kids and adults, it’s sometimes hard to recognize particular streams of cruelty.
For the record, the Kennedy Declaration goes like this:
“Sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors, and therefore, fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care. For the purposes of this declaration, ‘sex-rejecting procedures’ means pharmaceutical or surgical interventions, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries such as mastectomies, vaginoplasties, and other procedures, that attempt to align an individual’s physical appearance or body with an asserted identity that differs from the individual’s sex.”
According to the so-called legal experts within Kennedy’s department, the Declaration was issued “pursuant to the authority vested in the HHS Secretary,” and supersedes “statewide or national standards of care, whether in writing or not … .” Any medical provider who defies Kennedy’s random musings on trans health “will be deemed not to meet professionally recognized standards of health care,” and, by implication, could lose Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Just days after the Declaration was announced, the health department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) began threatening certain hospitals with the total loss of funding unless transgender services were suspended. The OIG sent letters to 17 medical entities before agreeing to pause while this lawsuit developed. Meanwhile, some 40 groups “voluntarily” dropped care for transgender kids, fearing the loss of all their Medicare and Medicaid money.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued under the Administrative Procedure Act that governs the behavior of federal agencies. Without delving into the various counts or the other statutes that were raised by the states, let’s just say that the Kennedy Declaration does not have the force of law. The Secretary of Health cannot simply issue a bald statement and wipe out an entire category of health care with a wave of his or her hand. As such, Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a permanent injunction, one drafted by the plaintiff states, in short barring the Department of Health and Human Services from “enforcing, implementing, giving intent to, or relying, in whole or in part, on the Kennedy Declaration—or any materially similar policy which supersedes or purports to supersede the professionally recognized standards of care for gender-affirming care that exist in the Plaintiff States—against any provider in the Plaintiff States.”
God knows what the Trump administration will do now. Sending this 50-page opinion to the Ninth Circuit doesn’t look like a winner to Bay Times legal experts, and Trump has already issued a number of anti-LGBT Executive Orders, including one that banned gender care for youth. Those orders are tied up in litigation, and we hope they remain in limbo for the remainder of his term.
Let’s Roll the Tape
I should move directly to the Justice Department’s attempt to subpoena the complete medical records of transgender patients at a Rhode Island hospital. Or maybe to the High Court’s decision to accept review of a GLBT victory in Colorado, where parents want to allow religious preschools to reject the kids of same-sex parents. But my news list also includes “pantless mayor,” “Clavicular,” “sundowning,” and a host of anti-trans bills in various state legislatures.
Something about “pantless mayor” is calling to me. The story concerns Mooresville, North Carolina, Mayor Chris Carney, who was caught on video back in 2024 running around town hall with his pants off in the middle of what looked like a late night tryst with some woman who was not his wife. His antics triggered a motion alarm, and police found him in the early morning hours. Carney explained that he was looking for his phone, and had come to the office with a “consultant” (a “family friend”) in order to sober up after a party. It’s not clear that he had an explanation for removing his pants in the hallway.
The Board of Commissioners recently asked him to resign, but the 4–2 Board vote did not remove him from office, but merely served as some kind of suggestion. Mayor Carney declined the offer and has remained at his post.
The aforementioned video has never been released to the public, and a town IT worker has filed suit, alleging he was fired after telling his supervisor about the video a few days after the incident. Two other former employees have also filed suits for wrongful termination: an IT director and an assistant police chief. Meanwhile, a local TV station sued for release of the risqué video, and the reason this story has returned to the news is because a judge just granted that request. Soon, we’ll able be able to witness the top town official in his underwear, and perhaps get a glimpse of the family friend who shared this escapade.
As for why this even deserves a mention in our GLBT roundup, we always have a space for politicians or other leaders caught in embarrassing circumstances. Indeed, it’s what we live for.
Oh, damn! Wait a second. The town of Mooresville has appealed this judge’s ruling. According to local news, the town “said the request raises concerns about safety and security, particularly in places like police departments, fire stations, and courthouses. In a statement, the Board of Commissioners said that their focus is on protecting staff and the public, but not defending Carney’s behavior, which they have previously said they do not condone.”
Hmmm. Sounds fishy to me. I don’t feel like rewriting or deleting the start of this item, but this is something of a letdown. I wanted to see the video!
Court Takes Another GLBT Case Out of Colorado
Moving right along, we’re coming to the last few weeks of the High Court’s 2025/26 season, where we expect a ruling on the two transgender athlete cases from Idaho and West Virginia. The Court heard oral arguments back in January, and various legal eagles think the anti-trans side will win.
Meanwhile, the justices just accepted a new GLBT case out of Colorado, where you may recall the state has a ban on GLBT discrimination. You may recall that because it seems like the Rocky Mountain State gets an undue share of religious freedom cases before the Supreme Court, and, somehow, its civil rights law falls short in the justices’ determinations.
Remember the cake baker (who sort of won)? The wedding video gal? The conversion therapy counselor? Now we have our friends in the Catholic Church arguing that the state’s universal preschool program should give them a pass and allow them to bar same-sex families on religious grounds. Both the district court judge and the Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of Colorado, so the High Court’s decision to take the case is unnerving.
The main thrust of the case, we thought, was a challenge to Employment Division v Smith, one of our favorite precedents. The 1990 opinion, written by Justice Scalia, held that citizens cannot demand religious exemptions from neutral laws that apply to everyone. A couple of guys from Oregon were fired for peyote use and subsequently denied unemployment benefits. They sued, claiming that they used peyote for a religious ritual, and, after a long back and forth between the courts, Scalia denied their claim. Allowing everyone to have their own personal religious objections to general laws would “open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.”
Since several conservative justices have complained about the restrictions delivered under Employment Division v Smith, this seemed like yet another opportunity for the Court to overturn Scalia’s decision. However, in accepting this case, the justices deliberately refused to consider overturning the precedent, limiting the questions to how you might prove that a law was not generally applicable, and, second, whether or not a more recent precedent (the Maine school voucher case) would pre-empt Employment Division v Smith. Stay with me here! The Maine case involved a state voucher system that paid parents living in remote areas to send their kids to secular private schools. The voucher program did not cover religious schools, but, in 2022, the Supreme Court said it must.
Unlike the Maine case, the Colorado preschools are following a civil rights law. There are no transfers of public funds involved. There is only the antigay bigotry of the Catholic Church and its disdain for our humanity. The idea of rejecting toddlers with gay parents is the antithesis of Christianity, and the fact that the Court accepted review is discouraging.
Say What?
Before we continue with serious news, I read the other day that Fox News ridiculed Canadian politician Leah Gazan for her use of the abbreviation: “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.”
“When the budget was released,” she posted on social media, “I was shocked to find out that Prime Minister Carney is cutting $7 billion between Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations. They provided zero to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. This is abhorrent. This is callous.”
Oh my God, Leah! I agree with Fox News that this locution is simply absurd. It stands for “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual Plus people,” a hodgepodge of categories that makes no sense whatsoever. I suppose the expression refers, not simply to gay and lesbian people, but to missing and murdered gay and lesbian people, along with all the other missing and murdered regular people except for men. (What the hell is Asexual Plus? Why do they get their own position in the queer category list?)
Bottom line? You simply cannot use an “abbreviation” that is completely incomprehensible. I’ve always looked askance when our community’s “LGBT” evolves into LGBTQI-whatever, because many of us don’t know what the other letters represent. However, we know the LGBT, and we can extrapolate that the other stuff involves subcategories of the rainbow coalition. But “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+?” Just no. (For the record, I picked “GLBT” at a time when there were several acronyms floating around and I just wanted to decide on one. Now I feel it’s a signature of sorts.)
Oh, and “ongoing genocide?” Genocide is the term for attacking an entire group or clan or religion. It’s not used to define murder rates in general. And this budget area sounds like it’s devoted to indigenous citizens, whom I’m sure we all agree should be fully funded, but who are not directly tied to the LGBT rainbow.
What Now, Brown Cow?
I find myself running out of space to discuss the state legislatures, but you can guess what the red states are up to. I was also going to note that Trump’s insane all-night texting is a sign of “sundowning,” a symptom of dementia, and I was also going to write about the looksmaxing internet guy “Clavicular,” who passed out on camera from some careless drug use the other day.
In addition, I’m looking at some old notes that I can’t identify. “Missouri trans” is probably state legislative news, and I’m thinking “Scouts rejects 11th cct case” is actually “SCOTUS,” not scouts. This is actually a story I’ve been looking for! The Leon County, Florida, school district was sued in 2021 by parents who claimed the district did not check with them when they discussed gender identity with their child. The case went through the courts before winding up at the 11th circuit, where a 2–1 majority sided with the school district. The parents tried unsuccessfully to have their case reviewed by the full appellate court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on April 27.
I promise to get into the Rhode Island Hospital transgender medical information case next time, as well as FCC chair Brendon Carr’s new plan to issue special TV ratings for shows involving gender identity. I can’t wait!
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on May 7, 2026
Recent Comments