The Congressional Equality Caucus is urging the State Department (DOS) to restore data on LGBTQ+ and intersex people to its human rights report.

In August, DOS released a heavily edited version of its 2024 annual report on human rights around the world. The report did not include any mention of LGBTQ+ rights violations and other abuses.

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As NPR noted, this year’s congressionally mandated report, which was initially prepared under the Biden administration, was delayed for months so that the State Department could remove references to categories of human rights violations not “explicitly required by statute.”

Critics blasted the edits to the report, which is used by advocacy organizations, lawyers, and others to assess political developments in foreign countries, need-based aid programs, as well as asylum claims from refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries.

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Now, a letter spearheaded by the co-chairs of the Equality Caucus’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force – Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), and Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX) – slams Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the erasure.

“We strongly oppose your decision to remove the subsection on Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC Subsection) from the State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” opens the letter, which is signed by 61 members of Congress.

The authors added they are “deeply concerned about the broader rollback of the section on Discrimination and Societal Abuses, which has existed for many years,” and also that they “regret the State Department’s considerable delay in delivering these reports to Congress and the unprecedented lack of public and press engagement in the reports’ release.”

The letter urges Rubio to either restore the eliminated section on LGBTQ+ rights or “ensure it is integrated throughout each Human Rights Report.”

“For a decade and a half, the Human Rights Reports—and specifically the SOGIESC subsection of each—have been a critical source of information on human rights violations and abuses
against LGBTQI+ persons around the world,” it continues, emphasizing that this was also true during the president’s first administration.

The Equality Caucus members emphasized that anti-LGBTQ+ violence and criminalization “remains widespread” and, as a result, providing the information “is critical – not just for human rights advocates – but also for Americans traveling abroad.”

The lawmakers point out that during the president’s first term, he declared his support for ending the criminalization of homosexuality worldwide and “launched a global effort” to do so.

“Across both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, the United States has maintained the inherent right of all people to live free from violence and discrimination as a central tenet of its foreign affairs,” they write.

They also bring up Rubio’s own words from his time as a Senator, when he slammed the Chechen government’s anti-LGBTQ+ abuses and said the United States “should use our voice on the global stage to call attention to these horrifying acts and to ensure that they are condemned in an appropriate way.”

“As Secretary of State, you have an obligation [to] ensure the United States does not retreat from these efforts,” the letter concludes.

In March, both NPR and Politico reported on internal documents instructing State Department employees to cut from the report references to gender-based violence, environmental justice, restrictions on political participation, government corruption, sexual violence against children, and violations of the rights of LGBTQ+ and disabled people, among scores of other human rights categories.

“We weren’t going to release something compiled and written by the previous administration,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said during a Tuesday press briefing, according to the Washington Blade, adding that the report “needed to be changed” to fit the “view and vision” of the current president.

Rubio also declined to hold the usual public briefing on the report, a move that drew criticism from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“When he was a member of the Senate, he used to stand up and support an American foreign policy based on promoting democracy and human rights,” Van Hollen told NPR. “But ever since he was confirmed, he seems to have forgotten all that.”

During a conference call with reporters after the report was released, former Biden administration special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ+ and intersex rights and co-founder of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, Jessica Stern, said that while she and her colleagues expected the report to be “bad,” they were “shocked and horrified” by what the administration released.

“It is deliberate erasure,” she said.

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