Tag: politics

Texas A&M System removes courses on LGBTQ, ethnic studies and climate change from core offerings

Read more at KERA.

Students at 11 Texas A&M University System schools will see fewer classes related to LGBTQ literature, climate change and women writers meet graduation requirements under a proposal to remove more than 200 classes from general-education course lists.

System regents voted Thursday to scale back the classes that qualify after a review prompted by a new state law that requires public university boards to examine what classes undergraduates must take regardless of their majors.

Regents must ensure those courses “are foundational and fundamental” for a college education and that they prepare students for civic life and the workforce, according to Senate Bill 37. The law also requires public university governing boards to consider the potential tuition, fee and time costs of those requirements to students.

“The universities did a credible job in streamlining their various course listings of what most of us agreed could be described as somewhat bloated,” regent Sam Torn said. “There is still much work to be done in the near future … to reach our goal of fully preparing students for the modern world in which they will live.”

The agenda packet contains 360 entries marked “remove” across 11 universities’ general-education course lists. However, some courses appear more than once because they are listed under multiple departments or in more than one general-education category.

Texas A&M University in College Station has the most entries being removed with 103. Texas A&M-San Antonio has 76; Tarleton State University has 48; and West Texas A&M and Texas A&M University-Texarkana each have 21. The other six universities have between 13 and 18 removal entries on their lists.

Of the courses set to be removed at the flagship school are introduction to women’s and gender studies; LGBTQ literatures; introduction to Latinx literature studies; women writers; introduction to race and ethnicity; gender and health; Blacks in the United States; Bible as literature and climate change.

Leonard Bright, president of the American Association of University Professors chapter at Texas A&M-College Station, slammed the latest course review as an overreach of SB 37. Bright said the pattern of courses up for removal suggest the regents are bending to conservative pressure.

“This is a political decision,” Bright said. “You are basically telling us now that the globalness that it once valued and said that it was going to protect is no longer a priority. …They’re going to basically whitewash our programs.”

Bright raised concerns about whether students will be prepared without these courses that he said are foundational to their understanding of the world.

In a written statement, Texas A&M System spokesman Chris Bryan said each university conducted its own course-by-course review. He did not identify who at each campus conducted the review or explain why particular courses were recommended for removal.

Bryan said the reviews determined only which courses should count toward the core curriculum and that “it was not a determination of whether a particular subject is appropriate for study or whether a course may be offered.”

Universities may continue offering the courses outside of the core, he said.

“Each institution’s core varies because its mission and academic offerings are different, but all were reviewed against the same requirements in state law and system policy,” he said.

The system’s review, which must be done at least once every five years, comes ahead of a Jan. 1 deadline.

Courses up for removal lists at other system schools range from those that study women in the U.S. to those that study literature from authors of various ethnicities.

For example, at Prairie View A&M, a historically Black university, the removal list includes Mexican-American culture and sociology of minorities. A course titled diversity was on the removal list for East Texas A&M.

Of the system’s 12 universities, Texas A&M-Central Texas has no removal entries. That school does not offer the lower-level core courses at issue as it serves transfer students who typically complete those requirements at community colleges or other universities.

The agenda listed 27 entries marked “add” at seven universities.

Those additions include human nutrition at Texas A&M in College Station, precalculus at Prairie View A&M, Mexican American literature at Texas A&M International, professional ethics and environmental sustainability at Texas A&M-Kingsville, astronomy and anatomy courses at West Texas A&M.

The core curriculum review is separate from a policy A&M regents adopted last fall after conservative backlash over a classroom lesson on gender identity.

That policy bars any academic course from advocating “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” Only specific non-core or graduate courses can receive an exception, with prior written approval from the university’s chief executive and a demonstrated necessary educational purpose.

Gender ideology was defined by the regents as treating self-assessed gender identity as replacing, or more legitimate than, biological sex. The policy states race ideology includes concepts that shame people, assign them racial guilt or portray them as oppressors or lesser contributors because of their race or ethnicity.

The American Association of University Professors and four A&M System professors, including Bright, sued the system in an attempt to block the policy on Aug. 3, arguing it violates their First Amendment rights. A judge has not yet ruled in the case.

Texas A&M is not alone in reviewing its core offerings under SB 37, though universities are taking different approaches.

At the University of Houston, regents cut the flagship campus’ core-course menu down from 241 to 144. The removals included introduction courses on global climate change and on LGBT studies, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The University of Texas is also considering cutting more than 100 core courses as part of an overhaul of the general education curriculum after the provost’s office determined the classes were too “narrow.” A handful of the courses on the chopping block mirror those up for removal at A&M.

This came after UT-Austin President Jim Davis presented a proposal to replace the current choose-from-a-menu core curriculum.

UT students would instead take a course covering each of 12 specified subject areas, including Western civilization, American politics, world politics and cultures, science, computer science and artificial intelligence, and “Great Questions of Human Life.”

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22 states sue Trump admin over “unprecedented” attack on gender-affirming care

Read more on LGBTQ Nation.

A coalition of blue states has come together to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging its plan to strip federal funds from gender-affirming care for minors. The lawsuit alleges that the administration is overstepping its authority by trying to dictate what medical procedures can and can’t be covered by federal funding.

“[The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)] has disregarded the law and its own policy precedent in another attempt to restrict transgender individuals’ access to crucial care,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “We will not stand by as the Trump administration oversteps its authority and twists the facts to justify its bad-faith agenda against transgender Americans. We will continue to fight to secure access to medically necessary care and protect transgender individuals’ abilities to prosper as their authentic selves.”

The lawsuit targets Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the head of HHS, as well as Dr. Mehmet Oz in his role as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Last month, the departments finalized a plan to prevent federal Medicare and Medicaid plans from covering gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18, and to bar plans under the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from covering the care for anyone under 19.

The plan spent months in a public comment period during which is received nearly 35,000 comments, over 90% of which opposed the plan. Despite this, the rule is set to go into effect on October 13 with little change to the text of the final document.

The lawsuit wastes no time highlighting to the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts that the administration’s new plan is not about healthcare, but an attack on trans people.

The introduction states, “The Administration seeks such broad and unprecedented powers in part to advance its social policy agenda, a key component of which involves relentless attacks on a small and vulnerable population—transgender individuals—whose very existence the President scapegoats to stoke national division.”

The lawsuit makes a case that the proposed rule oversteps states’ rights by regulating the practice of medicine, a responsibility that both Congress and existing legal precedent have made clear is reserved for the states themselves. The suing states also say that HHS has cherry-picked its evidence and failed to make a case for its ban on gender-affirming care funding, and that the plan change violates the Social Security Act and HHS precedent by excluding care that has been deemed medically necessary by the states.

The lawsuit also highlights that Congress left the decision for what should be covered by Medicare and CHIP to the states, and therefore the federal government cannot simply impose a rule to prevent the states from exercising their own will.

“The federal government does not have the authority to dictate what medically necessary care New York provides to its residents,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. “This unlawful rule threatens access to health care for transgender young people and undermines states’ ability to administer our own Medicaid programs. New York will continue to stand up for patients and defend our authority to provide the care they need.”

The lawsuit additionally includes a nod towards a longstanding argument that banning gender-affirming care is discrimination based on sex, as under the proposed rule cis patients will still be able to receive coverage for the same treatment and care that is being denied to trans patients.

In his statement, Attorney General Bonta was keen to highlight that this proposed rule does not stop anyone from practicing gender-affirming care in any state where it is still legal (which includes California). The only restriction is on the use of federal funds, and the rule explicitly still allows for state funds to be used for the care.

An earlier HHS attempt saw the department pushing a rule that would have barred hospitals and clinics that provided gender-affirming care from receiving any form of federal funding at all. However, a judge struck that rule down in April and the Trump administration seemed to back off from trying to appeal that ruling in July.

Trans journalist Erin Reed called the states’ lawsuit “the next major step in the fight to protect transgender healthcare,” since the removal of federal funding would be ” a virtual death sentence for any hospital system.”

Reed noted that over “40 hospitals and health systems have stopped or paused their programs in capitulation” to the administration despite there being no federal law against the care. Some of these institutions have stopped providing the care in violation of state or local laws that explicitly protect transgender people from healthcare discrimination.

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Federal judge shuts down Texas drag ban: If you don’t like drag “just don’t go”

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

A federal judge in Texas ruled this week that the state’s drag ban is an unconstitutional restriction of free speech in violation of the First Amendment.

US District Court Judge David Hittner’s Tuesday decision strikes down S.B. 12, a 2023 law signed by anti-LGBTQ+ Gov. Greg Abbott (R). While the law does not explicitly mention the word drag, it criminalized “sexually explicit” performances in the presence of minors, defining such performances as those featuring “a male performer exhibiting as a female, or a female performer exhibiting as a male, who uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers and who sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience.”

Under the law, businesses that host all-ages drag shows faced up to $10,000 in fines, and performers could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor resulting in up to one year in prison.

S.B. 12 was initially scheduled to take effect on September 1, 2023. But several LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations and drag groups — including The Woodlands Pride, Abilene Pride Alliance, and 360 Queen Entertainment — challenged the law. In September 2023, Hittner issued a permanent injunction blocking enforcement of the law, ruling that it constituted “viewpoint discrimination” and that it was “substantially overbroad” and “unconstitutionally vague.”

After Texas appealed the decision, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Hittner’s permanent injunction last November, sending the case back to the lower court and instructing Hittner to focus only on the claims from 360 Queen Entertainment. The appeals court’s ruling also allowed the law to go into effect while the case played out.

On Tuesday, Hittner once again ruled that S.B. 12 “is an UNCONSTITUTIONAL restriction on speech” that “violates the First Amendment,” even under the conditions the 5th Circuit outlined, according to The Texan.

The law, Hittner wrote, “applies to countless protected performances that might contain elements that are ‘in some sense erotic’ and meet either the law’s definition of ‘nude’ or ‘sexual conduct’ but are not obscene or obscene for minors and are thus constitutionally protected.” Hittner cited examples including a gymnast performing in a leotard and a singer performing in a lowcut dress.

As NBC News notes, Hittner went so far as to cite the late Dolly Parton, an LGBTQ+ ally who supported drag performers and even gifted a rhinestone guitar to drag performer and advocate Brigitte Bandit, one of the plaintiffs in the case, as an example of a performer who might be targeted by the law for her reputation “as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and breast exposure.”

Hittner further ruled that “S.B. 12 is unconstitutionally vague because it fails to give a reasonable person notice of what is prohibited.” While “multiple aspects of the law render it vague,” Hittner wrote, the “most glaring issue” relates to the inclusion of the term “prurient interest in sex.” The fact that the term “is undefined in Texas law, lacks a readily ascertainable ordinary meaning, and applies to all performances targeted by the statute,” Hittner wrote, “renders S.B. 12 irredeemably vague… in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”

“Finally, for those who find such activities as described in this case offensive, the solution is relatively simple,” Hittner wrote. “Just don’t go.”

In several Instagram Stories posts Tuesday, Bandit responded to Hittner’s ruling, writing that “drag is free speech b—-” and that the decision “is a huge win for Texas and my t——.”

Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who is running for US Senate, described Hittner’s ruling as “a profoundly flawed decision that endangers our children and is an affront to Texas values.”

“I will appeal this decision immediately and continue to fight to protect our kids,” Paxton wrote in an X post.

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NC’s newest bathroom battle is stoking worries about LGBTQ student harassment

Read more at Charlotte Observer.

Transgender students are absorbing the consequences of a growing fight in Cabarrus County Schools, where two federal lawsuits and a Trump administration investigation are challenging how the district handles bathroom access, LGBTQ advocates say. For months, parents, elected officials and community members clashed over whether transgender students should be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. But advocates say another question has received less attention: What does the fight mean for LGBTQ students going to school every day?

“When I think about a trans girl going into a girl’s restroom, I worry about her harassment, not what she will do to other young people,” said Sarah Mikhail, CEO of Time Out Youth. Time Out Youth serves LGBTQ young people ages 13 to 24 in Charlotte and surrounding communities. Within the organization, young people regularly talk about the broader social climate surrounding bathrooms, sports and LGBTQ issues in schools, she said. Mikhail said the effect shows up in basic routines. Some young people Time Out Youth works with avoid school bathrooms entirely because they do not feel safe using them. She said that kind of vigilance does not stay confined to the restroom. Students who are constantly calculating where they can go, who might be watching them or whether an adult will support them can have a harder time concentrating, asking for help or feeling comfortable enough to learn. “We have young people that do not go to the bathroom all day at school,” Mikhail said. “This is not uncommonly reported.”

LGBTQ students not only face school rules, they also hear messages from politicians, social media, family members and community leaders about what gender means and what transgender people should be allowed to do. For some students, those messages arrive before they even figure out how they identify or whether they feel safe coming out. That uncertainty, she said, can impact whether students feel comfortable telling a teacher they had a hard night, asking for help on an assignment or using the name and pronouns that feel right to them. “You need to feel emotionally okay to share and be yourself at school,” Mikhail said. “So then you can be open to learning.” How Cabarrus became a legal battleground Cabarrus County Schools does not have a separate policy governing transgender students’ bathroom access. School board attorney William Isenhour has said the district handles the relatively rare situations on a case-by-case basis while attempting to comply with federal law.

The district has repeatedly pointed to a 2020 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board. In that case, the court ruled a Virginia school board violated Title IX and constitutional protections when it required a transgender boy to use bathrooms based on his sex assigned at birth or use a private restroom. Because the Fourth Circuit includes North Carolina, Cabarrus officials have said the ruling binds the district. The Trump administration now takes a different view. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a Title IX investigation into Cabarrus in June after complaints that the district allowed transgender students to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. Federal officials said the administration interprets Title IX based on biological sex and is investigating whether the district violated the privacy and safety rights of female students. On July 31, three anonymous 17-year-old Cox Mill High School students and their parents sued the district. Represented by the conservative legal organization America First Legal, they argue transgender students should not be permitted to use multi-person bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding with their gender identity.

A second lawsuit followed one week later. Cabarrus father Brandon Matthews sued after school officials declined to promise they would notify him if transgender students were permitted to use the same sex-segregated bathrooms or locker rooms as his children. He argues parents have a constitutional and religious right to receive that information and request another arrangement. The Cabarrus controversy comes as transgender rights have become a major national political talking point, with fights over girls’ sports, bathroom access and school policies playing out in courts and school board meetings. ‘Stop arguing about bathrooms’ Rebecca Herrick, a mother of three Cabarrus County Schools students, said she sees the bathroom fight as a distraction from other issues in the district. Her own children have thrived socially in CCS, Herrick said, and she wants transgender students to be treated the same. She said the controversy pulls energy away from issues that affect students more, including the district’s ongoing financial and operational challenges.

“It is time to stop arguing about bathrooms,” Herrick said. “By shifting the conversation to social issues, they are successfully diverting public energy.” Herrick said she worries that it sends a message about who belongs in school when adults devote so much attention to policing which bathrooms students use. She said the repeated lawsuits and public fights over bathrooms risk turning transgender students themselves into the subject of controversy. “These bathroom bills and the resulting lawsuits create a climate of fear and exclusion that treats transgender students as problems rather than children who deserve support,” Herrick said. ‘They’re just kids’ Joshua Jernigan said he is already hearing that fear from families. Jernigan founded the Gender Education Network, which works with transgender and gender-diverse children age 12 and younger and their families across North and South Carolina.

Jernigan said his organization has heard directly from families since the lawsuits and federal investigation intensified attention on the district. Some have reached out worried about what the legal fight could mean for their children and whether it will make school feel less safe. “We’ve had a lot of families reach out in a bit of a panic,” Jernigan said. He said transgender and gender-diverse children may not follow the legal arguments themselves, but they hear how adults in their communities talk about people like them. When they hear phrases like “these people” or “those people,” Jernigan said, they understand they are being singled out. That can be especially unsettling for children approaching middle school, he said, when situations involving locker rooms and trying to fit in already feel scary. “There’s nothing sinister or nefarious about trans kids,” Jernigan said. “They’re just kids who want to go out for recess and hate math.”

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Rehoboth Beach elects first openly gay mayor, the resort town’s first female leader in decades

Read more at WHYY.

Residents of Rehoboth Beach chose a new mayor last weekend. Susan Stewart was elected by a wide margin, winning more than 60% of the vote out of four mayoral candidates.

Stewart’s win is significant; she will be the first openly gay mayor of Rehoboth Beach, and the first woman elected mayor in decades.

The win comes only a year after Stewart was elected to the city’s Board of Commissioners.

“I went knocking on all these doors for the second summer in a row, because I ran last year for commissioner,” Stewart told WHYY News. “Every commissioner should have to do it because it’s such an enlightening experience to sit down and hear people.”

She said she didn’t have plans to run for mayor after that election, but was encouraged to campaign by local residents, leaders and organizations. Stewart said it took her a long time to think about running again, but decided to start campaigning as she felt she was the only person right for the position.

Preserving Rehoboth Beach’s charm

Stewart started her professional career as an attorney, but spent most of it in financial services. She is originally from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and lived in Washington, D.C., prior to Rehoboth Beach. She had a vacation home in the city since 2013, but moved to the beach full time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During her campaign, Stewart emphasized her desire to preserve the character of Rehoboth Beach. She told WHYY News there is a physical charm to the city, showcased through old buildings, outdoor spaces and the beach itself.

Stewart also said there is a fun atmosphere to the area, pointing to specific traditions like the Mrs. Roper Romp, where crowds of people dress up like the character Mrs. Roper from the 1970s sitcom  “Three’s Company,” and walk through the city.

“I don’t have the skill set to articulate what I like about it, but I know I like it,” Stewart said.

Before her term as an elected official, she served on the city’s Planning Commission, as well as the Mixed-Use Zoning Ordinance Task Force and Stormwater Utility Task Force.

While serving in these groups, Stewart said she learned about zoning codes, challenges in the commercial district and the city’s comprehensive development plan. It outlines goals and policies for how the city’s land is used. That includes increasing mixed-use developments, workforce housing, walkability and how bicycle-friendly the city is. When Stewart decided to run, she said the city was at a tipping point with expanding growth, business and tourism.

“We really needed to be very thoughtful and purposeful about what we see as the future of Rehoboth Beach, and that it needed a leader that would help us articulate that in a way that preserves our quality of life and our charm that was getting away from us,” Stewart said.

Stewart said that more than 60% of the city’s revenue is tourism related, including parking, the hotel accommodations tax and the short-term rental tax, while about 10% comes from property taxes. According to Stewart, the majority of the voting population in town are property owners, while “revenue generators are a different cohort.”

“What we need to do as a community of engaged residents is to figure out how we preserve that revenue stream, but perhaps more importantly, how we find a way to preserve our quality of life, because some of the tourism is what causes tension,” she said.

Stewart said that she plans to continue having the city consult with experts ranging in topics from urban planning to business development to traffic, as well as gather community input on what the city should look like over the next decade. Their input will help form a city master plan.

“I believe all our interests are aligned, residents and business owners and commercial property owners and developers. It’s just never been considered holistically before,” she said. Rehoboth Beach adopted its first five-year strategic plan in May 2025, and is currently in the process of rewriting its zoning code. Stewart said this is foundational to creating a master plan.

“Harmonizing our code will be important, because there are gaps in our existing code that lead to tensions,” she said. “If a zoning code or building code doesn’t address something clearly, then that leaves it subject to interpretation.”

Last month, the city hosted a week’s worth of events and public meetings with the urban planning group Dover Kohl & Partners to gather community feedback on zoning changes.

The city reported that some of the top concerns from residents involved downtown revitalization, increasing mixed-use development and workforce housing, reducing parking requirements and traffic, and supporting local business and cultural and art programs.

Stewart said the events during the week, like a walking tour of the city, helped visualize some of these ideas.

“When you turn onto Rehoboth Avenue, it’s our boulevard, and it’s the boulevard to our beautiful nature and our boardwalk, but it’s filled with cars,” she said. “Our forebears did a great job of laying out the city, but it was done decades and decades ago.”

To Stewart, the event was valuable to the city and she believes it’s important to keep engaging in consistent dialogue with residents.

Mike Venanzi is a business owner and board member for Rehoboth Beach Main Street, a nonprofit designed to promote the downtown area of the city. He said he supports Stewart as mayor, and believes her election will benefit the city as a whole. “I think having a commissioner and a mayor that welcome the business owners, speak with them, invite them to have conversations, are good for business, good for the residents of Rehoboth and good for the tourists,” Venanzi said. “That’s really [what] Susan and the entire crew there are focused on that.”

He said he hopes that during her term, Stewart is able to encourage growth as well through policy.

“Some of the growth that should have happened here in town — that was really stalled — because of rules, regulations that don’t make sense anymore,” Venanzi said.

Stewart said she also wants to make the city government more efficient. She said that after she was elected commissioner, she realized that the governing body can keep city staff from getting work done by being too involved in daily operations.

“I’ve been trying to work on a set of rules for us as a governing body that will help us get back to the point where we can concentrate on strategy and vision and let the professionals execute that vision,” she said. A historic election

Robin Brennan is the executive director for CAMP Rehoboth, a nonprofit focused on cultivating an inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ individuals. She described the election as “incredible.”

“My first thought was really about representation and how much it matters,” Brennan said. “When people see themselves reflected in leadership positions, it sends a powerful message about who belongs and that our voices matter, that we’re heard.”

Rehoboth Beach has had a strong LGBTQ+ presence for decades, and Brennan said having an openly gay mayor reflects an important population that has shaped the city’s history.

The Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index, which rates cities based on how their policies serve LGBTQ+ residents, issued Rehoboth Beach  a perfect score last year. It was an increase from the 61 out of 100 the city received in 2024. City officials cited a stronger partnership with CAMP Rehoboth as the reason the score improved.

Stewart said she believes community members and organizations like CAMP Rehoboth have helped the city become more welcoming. Though she acknowledges that there are still struggles for LGBTQ+ people, she said she feels there is less division in Rehoboth Beach.

“This is just a place where everyone are people, and that’s the aspiration for everything,” Stewart said.

Brennan said she hopes that partnership can continue to grow under Stewart’s leadership.

Stewart will be sworn into office on Sept. 18.

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Slovakia defies EU & refuses to register gay couple’s marriage

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

The Central European nation of Slovakia rejected a gay couple’s attempt to have their marriage registered, possibly setting up a clash with the European Union (EU).

Ivan Novotný and Metod Špaček, who are both Slovak, got married in Austria in 2020. Both nations are EU member states.

This past December, they applied to have their marriage registered in their country, and they finally got a response this past Monday in the form of a rejection letter. IBTimes notes that the letter didn’t come from the registrar’s office like it normally would have, but directly from Slovak Minister of Interior Matúš Šutaj Eštok.

“We submitted our application to the registry office, and it was the registry office that should have made the decision,” Novotný said. “Instead, we learned of the rejection—which was based on weak legal arguments—only through a letter from the incompetent Šutaj Eštok.”

Novotný claims that Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico went to the registry office on June 12 to order them to refuse to register the marriage certificate, citing the country’s recently adopted constitutional ban on same-sex marriage rights.

The couple plans to sue to challenge the decision. “I reiterate that I have no doubt we will ultimately achieve equality for all in Slovakia as well,” Novotný said.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled last November that EU member states had to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other EU member states in a lawsuit involving a Polish couple that married in Germany. While a Polish court originally abided by the CJEU ruling, the country’s Constitutional Tribunal ultimately overturned that decision in July.

The European Commission denounced Slovakia’s rejection of the marriage as well as its defiance of the CJEU decision.

“One of the foundations of our Union is that EU law, as interpreted by the Court of Justice of the EU, takes precedence over national law,” the European Commission said in a statement. “All Member States have the obligation to fully implement all judgments of the CJEU. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely and, if necessary, will not hesitate to use all the instruments at our disposal.”

Slovakia is a Christian-majority nation where same-sex relationships have been legal since 1962, when it was part of Czechoslovakia. Sexual orientation and gender identity are protected categories under the nation’s anti-discrimination laws, and LGBTQ+ people can serve in the military.

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Medicaid to stop covering gender-affirming care for transgender kids

Read more at USA Today.

The federal agency that runs Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will no longer pay for gender-affirming care for minors who don’t identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Aug. 12 that it finalized a rule after more than a year of taking steps to use the federal government’s power to limit this type of medical care.

“We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies,” President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post.

More than 30 major medical associations and health organizations worldwide support health care for transgender adults and youth, which they say can help prevent suicide in this vulnerable population.

The rule goes into effect Oct. 13 and includes a six-month grace period for children with government insurance who are currently using hormone therapy, according to HHS. It does not affect mental health coverage.

“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a news release. He said the move is “protecting children from potentially irreversible harm.”

HHS did not say how much federal money it currently spends on surgeries, puberty blockers or hormone therapy, or how many children enrolled in government health insurance are receiving gender-affirming care.

Most gender-affirming care is sought by young adults, not children, but as many as one in four people getting this type of care are covered by Medicaid.

Rep. Mark Takano, a Democrat who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, called the move “another cruel, overreaching attack” on transgender youth.

“Decisions about a young person’s care should be between the patient, their parents, and their provider – not politicians,” Takano wrote.

Trump first took action against gender-affirming care for minors with an executive order in January 2025. In April 2025, Oz told states not to use Medicaid funding for surgeries or hormone treatment.

In December, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his department was beginning an administrative process to end funding for hospitals who provide gender-affirming surgeries.

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical devices, also sent warning letters to manufacturers of breast binders telling them not to market their devices to children with gender dysphoria.

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Bolivia recognizes first same-sex marriage in historic step towards equality

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

After a nearly four-year legal battle, Fabiana Banzer and Scarlett Rocha became the first same-sex couple to be civilly married in the South American country of Bolivia. Despite these women’s recent wedding, the country’s constitution still forbids same-sex marriages. Nevertheless, their legal victory could open the door to other same-sex couples eventually marrying.

The couple applied for a civil marriage certificate on October 12, 2022, with the legal support of the non-governmental LGBTQ+ rights organization IGUAL Bolivia. The organization noted that, on January 9, 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which oversees 21 Caribbean, Central, and South American countries issued an advisory opinion stating that countries that had signed onto the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights should grant same-sex couples “accession to all existing domestic legal systems of family registration, including marriage, along with all rights that derive from marriage.”

However, Article 63 of Bolivia’s constitution limits marriage to heterosexual couples. The lengthy subsequent legal battle for Banzer and Rocha resulted in courts issuing two constitutional injunctions, an extraordinary judicial remedy used to protect citizens against actions that violate basic constitutional rights, Merco Press reported.

The couple eventually won their battle, but their court victory applies only to them, and no legislative or constitutional changes have occurred to allow same-sex marriages nationwide. Nevertheless, the victory could open the door to similar challenges that could accelerate the path towards marriage equality.

“Scar and I have been together for more than 4 years,” Banzer wrote in a public August 8 Facebook post. “It makes me very happy to announce to our family and friends that after a legal fight of 3 years and 10 months we have finally been able to access civil marriage as two women.”

Interestingly, Banzer and Rocha are the second same-sex couple to win legal recognition from their home country. In December 2020, David Aruquipa and Guido Montaño won their court battle to become the first same-sex couple to register their partnership as a civil union (a form of legal recognition that bestows many of the same legal privileges as marriage).

In Aruquipa and Montaño’s case, the Second Constitutional Chamber of the La Paz departmental court issued a ruling in the couple’s favor that was upheld by the Plurinational Constitutional Court. But similar to Banzer and Rocha’s case, the men’s legal victory didn’t immediately open the door to legalized same-sex unions across the country until further legal challenges resulted in spring 2023 court rulings requiring Bolivia’s Civil Registry Service to allow same-sex unions.

Aruquipa said on Sunday that he considers the women’s recent marriage to be a significant development in the country’s longer journey towards marriage equality. “Rather than speaking of a beginning, we should speak of a historical continuity: from the first recognized union to the first civil marriage,” he said.

While Bolivia doesn’t criminalize same-sex sexual encounters and has LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections, same-sex couples and partners aren’t legally allowed to adopt children, lesbian couples aren’t guaranteed access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), and conversion therapy remains legal.

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An 11th state is set to ban updating gender markers on licenses

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

South Dakota is reportedly set to enforce a policy that will make it impossible for trans people in the state to update the gender marker on their driver’s license. However, the policy has not yet been enacted, meaning trans people may still have a small window to update their gender markers.

There are currently ten states that bar trans people from obtaining an accurate driver’s license. Some have passed laws that strictly forbid gender correction for licenses under any circumstances; others have created policies that rely on other restrictions to do the job, such as requiring an amended birth certificate in a state where one cannot be legally obtained.

The South Dakota drivers’ license policy is set to mimic the second option. In March, South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden (R) signed HB 1184, which banned legal recognition of trans identities by defining “sex” as “an individual’s biological sex, either male or female.” The law restricted trans people from updating their birth certificates. It was also signed less than a month after the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that a trans woman could not update her birth certificate and neither could other trans people born in the state.

However, it wasn’t clear exactly how that law and ruling would impact drivers’ licenses. While an amended birth certificate could be used to update the gender marker on a license, it was not the only method.

The previous rules allowed gender markers to be updated based on an amended birth certificate, passport, or a court order, combined with either a court order certifying someone’s gender change or “a letter from a physician stating that the applicant is undergoing gender reassignment care (such as hormone replacement therapy),” as Equaldex explained. While the requirement for a doctor to sign off on gender-affirming care is a large hurdle, the restrictions are still looser than in some states, which require surgery before updating gender markers.

After a public records request was denied, Aleksandra Vaca of Transitics contacted employees at the South Dakota Department of Public Safety (DPS), who issue drivers’ licenses for the state. She was told that a policy was updated on July 1st to require applicants for a gender change to provide an amended birth certificate. That is no longer possible to obtain, and so the policy will prevent trans people born in South Dakota or other states that refuse to issue corrected birth certificates from updating their drivers’ licenses unless they already have an updated birth certificate.

But the policy isn’t being implemented yet. The DPS employees told Vaca they are waiting to “get word” from their superiors before starting enforcement.

There’s no telling how soon that might happen, but in the meantime, there remains a potential window for trans people in South Dakota. While some states, such as Kansas, retroactively revoked the licenses of trans drivers with practically no notice period, there’s no indication that the South Dakota policy would do the same.

South Dakota has moved forward with these policies despite evidence of flaws in the system and the harm they cause trans people (having an ID that does not match the way someone presents could out them in situations where it’s dangerous). Last month, a trans woman was charged for not having a valid license because the officer didn’t believe the male gender marker on her ID. The charges were eventually dropped.

As with Wyoming’s ban on updating gender markers on drivers’ licenses, this policy has been crafted without any fanfare, suggesting the point is to harm trans people rather than to score political points.

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Polish court rejects European court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Poland’s highest court rejected a ruling from a European court requiring the Catholic-majority nation to recognize same-sex marriages performed abroad.

The ruling from the Constitutional Tribunal comes after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled last November that Poland, which is a European Union member state, has to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other countries, even if it doesn’t perform same-sex marriages itself.

But the Constitutional Tribunal on Tuesday rejected that, DW reports. While a full opinion is not yet available, the court said that the CJEU decision was “inconsistent with Article 92, Paragraph 1, in conjunction with Article 18 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland.”

Article 18 says: “Marriage, being a union of a man and a woman, as well as the family, motherhood and parenthood, shall be placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland,” and Article 92, Paragraph 1 says that regulations are determined by “the organs specified in the Constitution.”

That is, the court found that Poland’s constitution claims sovereign authority to determine who has access to marriage, which creates a potential conflict with the European court.

The original case was filed by a German-Polish gay couple who got married in Berlin in 2018. When they returned to Poland, the government refused to recognize their marriage, so they sued.

They ultimately won their case in a ruling that said that EU member states are required to recognize marriages performed in other EU countries, citing the EU’s protection of “respect for private and family life.” Of the 27 EU member states, only 18 recognize marriage equality.

In March, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) ruled in favor of the couple as well, ordering that the men’s German same-sex marriage certificate be transcribed into the Polish system. The NSA said that the couple had a “right to lead a normal family life” while exercising their “freedom to move and reside within the territory of the member states” as EU citizens.

Earlier this year, Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, promised to pass a law to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other EU countries in response to the CJEU and NSA rulings. Parliament passed a bill to create “cohabitation contracts” for same-sex couples, but President Karol Nawrocki, whose party is more conservative than Tusk’s, vetoed it last week, saying that the cohabitation contracts were too similar to marriage.

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