Ashley Brundage, 44, a DEI educator and former bank executive, moved one step closer on Tuesday to becoming the first elected transgender lawmaker from Florida despite a smear campaign perpetuated by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis.
Brundage, running for a state House seat from the Tampa area, swamped her opposition with more than 81 percent of the vote in Florida House District 65’s Democratic primary.
She’ll face incumbent Republican Florida state Rep. Karen Gonzalez Pittman in November.
“I am incredibly honored and humbled to announce that we’ve won the Democratic primary election with a resounding victory over 80% for Florida State House District 65!” Brundage posted on X.
Brundage joins two other winning LGBTQ+ candidates in Florida, former state representative Joe Saunders and climate advocate Nate Douglas, in trying to erase Republicans’ super majority in the state legislature in November.
A fourth LGBTQ+ candidate, former Obama staffer Chad Klitzman, did not fare as well, losing his primary in heavily Democratic Broward County to a pro-LGBTQ+ rights candidate, Barbara Sharief.
Brundage’s opponent in the general election is a former teacher in the Tampa area who voted in favor of Don’t Say Gay legislation and book bans in school libraries. Brundage is the award-winning author of Empowering Differences: Leveraging Your Differences to Impact Change.
Brundage says Pittman “only helped to scare away people from wanting to come to Florida” with the “draconian laws” she’s helped to pass.
Those include Gov. DeSantis’ signature Don’t Say Gay legislation, which Brundage described in an interview with LGBTQ Nation as “absolutely ridiculous.”
DeSantis’ antipathy for Brundage extends back, incongruously, to an award for which he congratulated her.
In 2022, Brundage was given a Spirit of the Community award by the Florida Commission on the Status of Women for bringing in tens of millions of dollars to the Tampa area with an international economic empowerment conference. Brundage received a letter of congratulations from DeSantis, who, it turns out, didn’t know Brundage was trans.
But news organizations did, and Brundage says DeSantis “dodged everybody’s request for comment on it. No comment. No comment. No comment. I announced my candidacy, of course, and talked about the letter. And then he finally responded — to the Daily Mail in the U.K. And he told them that he would have never given me the award if he had known that I was a transgender woman.”
Like his hateful Don’t Say Gay laws, Brundage called DeSantis’ disavowal “ridiculous.”
“I still brought in a $12.5 million conference, selling out two entire hotels and a convention center for the city of Tampa,” Brundage says. “I still did that. I still created a scholarship foundation for youth, and I still mentored children and women in my community through financial literacy educational programs for free.
“So none of that has changed, but because he knows my political affiliation, all of a sudden, he wants to say that he wouldn’t have given me that award. And that’s exactly what’s wrong with our political world right now. Partisan politics get in the way of actually accomplishing things that are good for our economy.”
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) understands the stakes of the upcoming election. He immigrated to the U.S. at age 5, became a U.S. citizen in his early 20s, tackled the COVID-19 epidemic as the youngest and first out LGBTQ+ mayor of Long Beach, California, and—after the virus killed both his mother and stepfather—became the first out gay immigrant ever elected to Congress. Now Garcia is surrounded by some Republican legislators who believe COVID-19 was a hoax, immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and that LGBTQ+ people don’t deserve legal protections.
About a month ago, Garcia was all in on the campaign to re-elect President Joe Biden. He supported Biden’s 2020 campaign as one of the first out LGBTQ+ people to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In April, he helped launch a national initiative focused on rallying LGBTQ+ voters and volunteers behind Biden, and while many Democrats called on Biden to step down following his lackluster June 27 debate performance, Garcia wasn’t among them.
But a lot has changed over the last month. Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21 and immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. Garcia quickly expressed his support for Harris — a fellow Californian — noting that he served as her campaign co-chair during her candidacy for president during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Barely two weeks later, Garcia cheered Harris’s selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, calling him “a home run pick” and adding, “He’s a former teacher and veteran and understands Congress. He has a strong record standing up for working families. Let’s go Harris-Walz because we are not going back!”
“It’s sad to see what’s happening in so many states in the South and Texas and so many other places,” Garcia told LGBTQ Nation about the wave of Republican legislation trying to roll back protections for LGBTQ+, reproductive, and immigrant rights. “And it’s really unfortunate that [these places] send representatives to Congress that can really impact all of our rights.”
With a conservative Supreme Court willing to overturn the court’s past decisionsupholding the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage, “We’re in a really dangerous moment for the community,” Garcia said. “Which is why we need to be very honest and focused on pushing really hard, winning the White House, on flipping the house and making sure that we do everything we can organize in these states.”
Luckily, Democratic enthusiasm has skyrocketed since Harris replaced Biden. According to gay election data analyst Nate Silver, Harris currently leads Trump in five critical swing states.
But history shows us that polls are anything but certain. In 2016, data indicated a promising victory for then-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton just before her shocking loss to Trump despite winning the popular vote.
For his next term, Trump has promised to outlaw gender-affirming care for trans youth (with prison time for anyone complicit in the act), deny federal funds to any hospital or doctors that offer gender-affirming care, and roll back all Biden administration policy protecting trans students “on day one” of his presidency. With the aid of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Trump has also promised a nationwide ban on trans student-athletes, a federal law recognizing only two genders, prosecution of schools with LGBTQ+-inclusive policies, and the end of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) that encourage the inclusion of non-white, women, and queer individuals.
Trump is also targeting undocumented immigrant families, and it’s an issue Garcia cares deeply about. Trump has also promised to conduct the largest domestic deportation of immigrants in American history (including individuals who have “anti-American views,” which is worrying since he considers racial justice and anti-fascist protestors to be “terrorists”); to reinstate his Muslim travel ban; to end the 125-year-old U.S. right to birthright citizenship; and to terminate the Department of Education.
“It’s really important that we tell people that we can’t be hopeless, that we have to fight back, and we can’t just allow them to steamroll us and to take our rights away.”Rep. Robert Garcia
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“I have met with folks that are really, really scared,” Garcia said. “I think it’s important to recognize that people are scared, that people are concerned at the same time. I think it’s really important that we tell people that we can’t be hopeless, that we have to fight back, and we can’t just allow them to steamroll us and to take our rights away.”
“It’s really important that we are aggressive and that we fight back, that we bring the fire,” Garcia added. “This is not a moment where we should be, in any way, holding back our punches. We’re going to be punching back really, really hard, and especially when you have nut jobs like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who are impacting our community and who… are insulting LGBTQ+ families almost every day in Congress.”
Garcia has exemplified his willingness to fight back against the likes of Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and their ilk in Congress.
He has said that Greene “obviously has no business being in Congress and is completely, in my opinion, a traitor to the country,” noting that she supported the Trump-inspired January 6, 2021, insurrection to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. He has called out hypocritical Republicans for ignoring the Trump family’s numerous (and possibly unethical) foreign business deals while Trump was in the White House; he also led efforts to kick out now-former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) for his dishonesty and financial misdealings.
Garcia has compared Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric to Hitler’s, saying, “His imagery, the way he supports white nationalism, the way he supports white supremacy, and those kinds of comments are completely offensive to immigrants and hopefully to all Americans in this country.”
For Garcia, the fight over immigrant rights remains particularly personal and important. When he was sworn into Congress in January 2023, he swore on a copy of the U.S. Constitution and three meaningful personal items: a photo of his mother and stepfather, who he had recently lost to COVID, his citizenship certificate, and an original 1939 first-issue copy of a Superman comic from the Library of Congress. Superman is himself an immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as a child and fought for “Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.”
Trump’s plan to deport 11 million undocumented people — despite his use of immigrant labor at his properties — would break up law-abiding immigrant families who have been living, working, and paying taxes in the U.S. for decades. Not only would the U.S. lose about $100 billion a year that they pay in taxes, according to Mother Jones, but the agriculture, construction, and hospitality industries, which largely rely on immigrant labor, would all take a massive hit.
“We came here when I was a young, young kid, and I grew up like a low-income family, a lot of good families, and it was a struggle and tough, but we all became citizens… very grateful and very patriotic Americans,” Garcia said. “And I certainly believe that other kids should have the same opportunity that was given to me to earn my citizenship.”
“It’s important, particularly in the LGBTQ+ community, to know that we all have shared struggles,” Garcia added, “and for us to have empathy and understand the humanity of migrants and of immigrants: that they are also LGBTQ+ migrants trying to flee oppressive countries or places where they are hurt or not accepted. There are areas where those issues intersect…. And I think it’s important for immigrants to support gay issues and vice versa.”
Garcia also knows that tomorrow may not look certain for LGBTQ+ people either, both domestically and abroad. But as a Congress member, he has shown what it means to fight for queer rights in the Capitol.
“Congress needs more radical homosexuals. I’m proud and openly queer, and we have 10 members of Congress that are gay — we need a lot more.”Rep. Robert Garcia
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For Garcia, “fighting back” not only means voting, though he acknowledges its importance — it means using influence to persuade and organize with others.
“Be vocal, be unapologetic, if you’re able to, with friends and family. Push and do what you can with organizing, volunteering for a campaign, and donating. There are a bunch of ways of organizing, and obviously, the work can happen any place,” Garcia said. “If you work at a school, there’s ways to organize. If you work at a healthcare system, there’s ways to organize. There’s a passion of community in every place, in every type of workplace.”
Garcia’s own means of organizing and persuading has included turning his House speeches into viral moments that raise his profile online. In fact, earlier this year, he won the “The Most Likely to Trumpet His Own Thirsty Award” in Politico‘s second-annual Thirsties Awards, an honor for “the members of Congress who have worked the hardest — at getting attention.”
For Garcia, these moments aren’t just about expressing himself, creating a viral moment, or raising his online profile. He sees it as an important part of the political process, too.
“When I try to incorporate pop culture and other things that I like, I know sometimes reaches a different audience,” Garcia said. “We have to learn how to speak to an entire audience, and we have to learn how to communicate to folks that maybe don’t follow politics.”
Garcia’s approach has made him a rising star in the Democratic Party, and he said he’s working hard to help elect other out and proud LGBTQ+ politicians, like Sarah McBride, who would become the first trans member of Congress out of Delaware, and Emily Randall of Washington who would be the first Latina lesbian in Congress.
“Congress needs more radical homosexuals,” Garcia said. “I’m proud and openly queer, and we have ten members of Congress that are gay — we need a lot more. We need a lot more folks that are aggressive, that stand up for the community: They’re going to talk about trans rights, health care, and the attacks on our community, and be proudly open while doing it.”
Over 1,000 people, primarily trans folk, showed up in a “Trans Folks for Harris” Zoom call to express support for Kamala Harris, The 19th reports.
“A lot of times, elected officials have not really taken our issues seriously, in part because they think that we’re too small of a community to matter,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality. “Now we’ve been able to prove that that is not true at all.”
The call featured a who’s who of well-known trans people, particularly trans politicians. Co-organized by activist Charlotte Clymer, the meeting also put a spotlight on elected officials like the soon-to-be Congresswoman and current Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride (D) and Hawaii’s first trans lawmaker, Kim Coco Iwamoto.
“We have so much power,” Clymer said. “We have way more power than they think, that’s for damn sure. And when we use that power, when we organize together and have each other’s backs, we can do great things.”
Over 2,600 more people have been screened for the fundraiser, with organizers still waiting to see just how much money has been raised.
Some LGBTQ+ individuals still remain skeptical of Harris, however, based on her having denied a trans woman gender-affirming care while in prison. Harris, however, has since apologized for this and disavowed her previous position.
In an attempt to garner more support, she picked Minnesota’s pro-LGBTQ+ governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. He passed several policies that helped trans people during his time as governor, including helping to make the state a refuge for trans folks.
Activists at the event show that a sizable portion of LGBTQ+ people support Harris, in large part because she has a record of opposing policies that former President Donald Trump has enacted.
“It’s a step forward to ensure that trans people, especially Black and Brown trans women, have the representation and the resources they need to live with dignity and pride,” said Zahara Bassett, CEO of Chicago-based trans advocacy organization Life is Work. “We need to make sure that our future is one of equity, justice, and liberation for us all.”
Last Friday, two New Hampshire teenagers – soccer players who have been living as girls since a young age – have sued the state of New Hampshire for instituting a transgender sports ban. The lawsuit was filed with help from the ACLU.
The lawsuit claims that the ban on trans inclusion in girls’ sports violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX, a 1972 amendment that further guarantees equal treatment in education on the basis of sex.
The lawsuit also reveals that the plaintiffs are aiming to file a restraining order against the defendants alongside their attempt to issue a temporary injunction on the bill to allow the girls to go back to playing sports.
Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney with GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), said in a statement, “Sports are a pillar of education in New Hampshire public schools because of the countless benefits of physical activity in a team environment, including physical and mental health, leadership skills, and social development. New Hampshire cannot justify singling out transgender girls to deny them essential educational benefits available to other students.”
H.B. 1205 was signed into law last month by Gov. Chris Sununu (R). The bill bans any transgender girl from participating on girls’ sports teams throughout high school. It was signed with two other anti-trans bills on the same day. A fourth bill, which would have overturned the state’s anti-discrimination measures for trans people, was vetoed by the governor.
The complaint names the Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education, members of the New Hampshire Board of Education, as well as members of the girls’ high school school board, as defendants in the suit. The plaintiffs are represented by Chris Erchull and Ben Klein at GLAD, Henry Klementowicz and Gilles Bissonnette at the ACLU of New Hampshire, and Louis Lobel, Kevin DeJong, and Elaine Blais at Goodwin.
Henry Klementowicz, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said in a statement, “H.B. 1205 stigmatizes and discriminates against transgender girls and tells them they aren’t deserving of the same educational opportunities to other girls in public schools. All students do better in school when they have access to resources that improve their mental, emotional, and physical health and [the girls] deserve that same access.”
A gay man from Britain who was jailed in Qatar after being entrapped by the police has finally been permitted to leave by Qatari authorities and has returned to the United Kingdom after months of imprisonment in inhumane conditions.
Manuel Guerrero Aviña, a gay man who has British/Mexican citizenship, was arrested in February 2024 in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal. Aviña was a former employee of Qatar Air Lines. He was convicted of drug possession in a so-called “honey trap.”
Aviña said he responded to fake messages on Grindr that were actually sent by the police.
He was lured to a location in Doha, where the profile he was messaging with said would meet other gay men, he says. In Doha, the police were waiting to arrest him. The police say they found methamphetamine in his apartment during the arrest, which Aviña says they planted there.
He was jailed on February 4, and was given a suspended six-month prison term and a fine at Al Sadd Criminal Court in the capital city of Doha in June.
While jailed, Aviña was deprived of antiretroviral medication that he needs as an HIV-positive man. He was also forced to sign documents pertaining to his imprisonment that were written in Arabic, which he does not speak, without a translator. He said that he was forced to identify which contacts in his phone were his sexual partners, and subjected to “psychological torture.”
Aviña’s family and LGBTQ+ rights advocates around the world launched a campaign for him to return home, which was finally successful this week.
The X account @QatarFreeManuel announced yesterday, “At this moment Manuel flies free and dignified towards London! We are grateful for the unwavering support in this fight for justice. There is no doubt that ‘solidarity is the tenderness of peoples.’”
A statement posted on the accounts reads, “Manuel and his family thank you for your tireless support in this emblematic struggle against injustice, against homophobia and in favor of human rights for all people. But, as the saying goes, the struggle goes on, it is not over, and it will not end until there is justice for all people. Manuel’s case, and all the cases we have defended, teach us that only organisation, solidarity and courage can change this world and its injustices.”
Aviña himself spoke about his release, saying, “Although I welcome the fact that I can leave the country, I still condemn the unfair trial I have been subjected to and the torture and ill-treatment I endured during my preliminary detention.”
“I urge the UK and Mexican governments to raise concerns with the relevant Qatari authorities about the unfair trial and the violations of due process,” he added.
A federal appeals court just ruled that Iowa can its enact bill banning LGBTQ+ books from classrooms.
The ruling, from a three-judge panel of the Eight Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, decided that the preliminary injunction issued by a lower court was based on a “flawed analysis” of the law.
The bill, SF 496, requires parental consent before giving their child any book containing content relating to LGBTQ+ topics. This effectively censors LGBTQ+ books from youth living in antagonistic homes. It was signed into law last year by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R).
The bill was challenged in the court case Iowa Safe Schools, et al v. Reynolds.
The three-judge panel specifically ruled that the law can still be challenged in further court proceedings, and they invited more insight into the topic. The judges also rebuffed points made by Iowa’s state government that were considered dangerous by the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and legal firm Jenner & Block.
In a joint statement, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and Jenner & Block criticized the ruling, saying, “Iowa families, and especially LGBTQ+ students who will again face bullying, intimidation, and censorship as they return for a new school year, are deeply frustrated and disappointed by this delay. Denying LGBTQ+ youth the chance to see themselves represented in classrooms and books sends a harmful message of shame and stigma that should not exist in schools.”
“We are, however, encouraged by the Eighth Circuit’s complete rejection of the State’s most dangerous arguments,” their statement continued. “The appeals court acknowledged that our student clients have been harmed by the law and have the right to bring suit. The court also rejected the State’s claim that banning books in libraries is a form of protected government speech. We will ask the district court to block the law again at the earliest opportunity.”
However, Gov. Reynolds celebrated the ruling in a statement, “Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit confirmed what we already knew—it should be parents who decide when and if sexually-explicit books are appropriate for their children. Here in Iowa, we will continue to focus on excellence in education and partnerships with parents and educators.”
While Reynolds and other Republican politicians have claimed that book bans seek to keep children from accessing “sexually-explicit” content, authors whose books are targeted by these bans are most frequently female, people of color, and/or LGBTQ+ individuals, according to the free-speech organization PEN America. Approximately 30% of the banned titles from the 2022-2023 school year included either characters of color or discussions of race and racism, and an additional 30% included LGBTQ+ characters or themes, the organization added.
Nevertheless, the Iowa attorney general, Brenna Bird, also celebrated the ruling, writing, “We went to court to defend Iowa’s schoolchildren and parental rights, and we won. This victory ensures age-appropriate books and curriculum in school classrooms and libraries. With this win, parents will no longer have to fear what their kids have access to in schools when they are not around.”
Joshua Brown, president of the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA), condemned the ruling. The ISEA was part of a separate lawsuit concerning this bill.
“Banning essential books in our schools is a burden for our educators, who will face punishment for not guessing which book fits into a supposed offensive category, and for our students, who are deprived of reading from great authors with valuable stories,” the ISEA wrote. “If Iowa’s elected leaders truly valued education professionals, they would leave important classroom decisions to the local school districts and the experts who work in them—not make what we teach our students a game of political football.”
In 2021, Terrance Alan celebrated the long-anticipated opening of Flore, a well-appointed cannabis dispensary just across the street from the legendary and now-closed Castro hangout Cafe Flore, a victim of the COVID pandemic.
Thirty years earlier, at the height of another devastating health crisis, Alan was a regular at Cafe Flore with his husband, who was HIV positive and slowly succumbing to the effects of the disease.
“Cafe Flore was a stop on the underground railway line for experimental HIV drugs, and my husband and I would go and hang out,” Alan explained in an interview with Greenstate. “And certain people would come around, and we would learn about this, that, and the other thing. Of course, nothing worked, but at least we generated a little bit of hope every time we tried something.”
At the same time, cannabis was providing relief that conventional therapies couldn’t, and illicit grows were popping up all over San Francisco.
So Alan joined a wave of indoor growers dialing in lighting, temperature, humidity and everything else to make cannabis happy absent the sun. Over time, he helped cultivators across the city with set-ups for HIV-positive patients like his husband.
It wasn’t without risk.
One night, the couple woke up to a SWAT team at the door of their warehouse home in search of his grow room — he was arrested in possession of 120 plants.
According to Alan, he was accused of being a part of “Dennis Peron’s gay weed mafia.”
Peron was a legendary figure in both the LGBTQ+ and cannabis communities as an early proponent of medical cannabis in service of AIDS patients. He had arrived in San Francisco after serving in Vietnam and, as a “Yippie,” famously organized cannabis “smoke-ins” around the city. He was an early supporter of slain Supervisor Harvey Milk, and when the AIDS crisis struck he was selling illicit weed out of Castro Street storefronts.
The day after Alan’s arrest, Peron showed up at his door. A trip to City Hall to meet the power brokers who could help make legal weed in San Francisco and California a reality followed.
A few years later, Peron would author Proposition 215, which legalized medical cannabis in the state.
“Being around Dennis, you learned that you were either part of the solution or part of the problem,” Alan said.
Alan’s own evolution to activist occurred following another bust by SFPD. This time the cops showed up to a New Year’s Party Alan threw in 1995 in honor of his late husband.
“They were not happy,” Alan said of the cops called to one last bust just after four in the morning. “And they showed their unhappiness by taking my drag queen, transgender, and differently attired guests who were at my event and showing them off by making fun of them in front of the other police officers.”
Twenty-eight people were arrested and thrown in the drunk tank.
That confrontation with police, “over a memorial for my husband who just died,” was the moment that cemented Alan as an activist, he said.
One result was the San Francisco Late Night Coalition, which advocated for city entertainment and permit reform and led to the formation the San Francisco Entertainment Commission, now a crucial city regulatory body.
Another was Alan’s cannabis advocacy: he pushed for legalization in different forums and was serving as chair of the San Francisco State Cannabis Legalization Task Force when Prop 64, the initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in California, was passed in 2016.
His Castro cannabis outpost, Flore, soon followed, and the activist still has the small cultivators at the top of his mind.
“The deck is stacked against the small operator, the small farmer, and the legacy farmer,” Alan explained. “The consumers’ most important tool is their dollars. If they do not spend their dollars at stores on products that are well grown, well packaged, and well presented, then that part of the industry will not survive.”
From his perch in the purple-hued Flore storefront, Alan is now focused on passing his legacy — and Peron’s — onto the next generation of politically minded advocates.
“I’m at the stage where I would like to empower young activists,” Alan shared. “I’m not the activist anymore. I am the Dennis Peron knocking on your door, teaching you to be an activist.”
Last week, a federal judge overturned Florida’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for state employees, referring to the insurance program in the state as “facially discriminatory.”
“Our clients dedicated their careers to bettering Florida, and in return they were denied coverage of essential medical care needed to better their own lives,” said Samantha Past, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida, in a statementcelebrating the ruling.
“Discrimination has no place here, and we are hopeful that this decision will encourage a commitment from the state to treating members of our transgender community with the respect they deserve and reciprocating their care and devotion to the state of Florida.”
Judge Mark Walker of the District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division, stated in his ruling that the restrictions are a Title VII violation. Title VII is a provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that restricts discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics, including race, sex, religion, and national origin. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII applies to anti-LGBTQ+ job discrimination because such discrimination is impossible without taking sex into account.
“Here, the undisputed facts demonstrate that the challenged exclusions apply only to transgender members, as only transgender individuals would seek the gender-affirming treatment that is excluded from coverage. Here, Plaintiffs are seeking gender-affirming treatment for their gender dysphoria, therefore the challenged exclusions apply to them because they are transgender… According to [Lange v. Houston Cnty., Ga.], this amounts to a facially discriminatory employer action under Title VII,” Walker said in the ruling.
According to the defendants, which included the Florida Department of Management Services and the University of Florida’s Board of Trustees, it was unknown why gender-affirming care was restricted, but it was stated that this restriction dated back to the 1970s when such care was deemed “experimental.” There was no medical or financial reason for the exclusion.
The ruling concerns a lawsuit, Claire et al. v. Florida Dep’t of Mgmt Servs. et al., where the plaintiffs were transgender former and current employees of Florida’s government. Jami Claire, Kathryn Lane, and Ahmir Murphy were all denied gender-affirming care under the provided insurance plan.
The case was filed in January 2020 and the ACLU filed a supplemental brief in the case in June of this year in an attempt to combat state insurance restrictions in S.B. 254, a sweeping gender-affirming care ban passed in 2023.
While some provisions of S.B. 254 were overturned earlier this year, a few still remained, including the gender-affirming care ban on state insurance, restrictions on the rare practice of gender-affirming surgeries for minors, and mandated in-person consent forms for adult surgeries.
“We are so grateful that the court is holding the state accountable for its facially discriminatory policy that carves out transgender state employees for unequal treatment,” said Simone Chriss, director of the Transgender Rights Initiative at Southern Legal Counsel, in a statement. “As the court made clear, ‘Title VII prohibits all forms of discrimination because of sex, however they manifest themselves,’ and we are thrilled that this antiquated relic of state-sanctioned discrimination has been left in the past where it belongs.”
This court will be holding a separate trial to determine the amount of damages that will be awarded to plaintiffs. The plaintiffs were represented by the Florida chapter of the ACLU, Southern Legal Counsel, and Legal Services of Greater Miami.
Florida’s Department of Management Services and the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis did not respond to an immediate request for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
In Colombia, armed groups are targeting transgender women along with other so-called undesirables in a violent campaign of “social cleansing” across the country.
Paramilitaries in Colombia—still operating despite a peace agreement with the country’s largest rebel group, the Farc, in 2016—killed more than 40 transgender women last year, according to reporting in The Guardian.
Eight more died between February and April this year, activists say, in an effort by armed groups to create a “parallel state” where trans women and others seen as damaging to society are punished or killed.
In Caquetá, a sparsely populated department in southern Colombia and a rebel stronghold, flyers began appearing on the streets and circulating through WhatsApp warning of “social cleansing” of “fa***ts, lesbians and men and women who destroy homes,” all of whom would be considered legitimate military targets.
One was Tatiana Cespedes, 51, a trans hairdresser who was working in her home salon when three armed men burst in and warned her she had a week to leave town or she would be killed. After hiding for several days, she packed a small bag and fled with her dog in the night.
Cespedes said she’s lived through similar periods of rebel conflict and endured the sexual violence that accompanies it.
“All I did was bear their desires because every time they got drunk I had to pay the price,” she said. “At times three, four, and up to five men would knock on my door and I was forced to open it. If I refused, they would assault me.”
Another trans woman from Caquetá, Yesenia Rodríguez, said she and other trans women in Colombia are limited in their ability to make a living because of discrimination and forced into sex work because of a lack of opportunities.
“When I started my transition, I used to work at night. At that time we would receive flyers announcing social cleansing of drug addicts, prostitutes, and fa***ts. Luckily, nothing happened to me, but a friend of mine was killed,” she said.
“As a young woman, I didn’t have any other option but to sell my body to survive. But now that time has passed it is difficult for me to work even in this.”
The 2016 peace agreement between the Farc and the Colombian government was supposed to end decades of conflict and included a formal recognition that LGBTQ+ people were victims of the conflict, along with a guarantee of political participation. That promise has fallen away with the armed groups’ resurgence and renewed threats to the LGBTQ+ community.
A transgender woman in Washington, D.C., Ximena Navarrete, claims she was sexually harassed, raped, and generally discriminated against while working at local Whole Foods supermarkets. She has filed lawsuits against the company and its parent company, Amazon, seeking a combined $2.5 million in damages.
Navarrete, age 46, allegedly endured sexual harassment, assault, and transphobic harassment, including nonconsensual touching, name-calling, indecent exposure, and lewd gestures, her lawsuit states. Amazon has denied any wrongful conduct.
She filled online food orders at several D.C.-area Whole Foods stores from September 20, 2020 to October 6, 2021. Even though she reportedly made it clear to the company’s Human Resources workers and store managers that she identified as a trans woman, she alleges that a manager still required her to wear a name tag containing her deadname. This, Navarrete said, led to harassment from co-workers.
She accused one male Whole Foods employee of groping her buttocks and breasts, another of exposing his genitals to her, and another of sending her “explicit text messages and photographs of male genitals,” The Washington Blade reported. She also accused a store security guard of raping her in her home when she asked for help resolving her workplace issues.
Navarrete was eventually fired.
In April 2021, she filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the D.C. Office of Human Rights. The EEOC gave her permission to file her lawsuit in federal court. The case is being presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
“[Navarrete] has suffered, and continues to suffer, mental anguish and emotional distress, including but not limited to, humiliation, embarrassment, stress and anxiety, loss of self-esteem and confidence, and emotional pain and suffering, as well as physical injury, for which she is entitled to an award of compensatory damages and other relief,” her lawsuit states.
Amazon received a perfect score of 100 in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2023-2024 Corporate Equality Index, a measure of LGBTQ+-inclusive workplace policies.
The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County ruled anti-trans discrimination as a form of sex-based discrimination forbidden by federal law. Nevertheless, nearly 50% of transgender employees have experienced workplace discrimination, compared to nearly 30% of cisgender LGB employees, according to the Williams Institute. Approximately 44% of trans employees reported experiencing verbal harassment, compared to nearly 30% of cisgender LGB employees.
The institute found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ employees aren’t out to their workplace supervisors and nearly 26% aren’t out to any of their co-workers. Out employees were three times more likely to report experiences of discrimination or harassment than closeted employees, the institute reported.
LGBTQ Nation reached out to Whole Foods for comment and this article will be updated if they respond.
