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WASHINGTON (AP) — A gay rights activist is suing the Department of Defense to answer a simple question: Did Scouting America actually agree to ban transgender members in a deal with the Pentagon?
James Dale, who filed a complaint in a New York City federal court Thursday, alleges that both sides have provided conflicting answers, while the Pentagon is refusing to release a copy of its agreement with the organization.
The Pentagon made a deal with Scouting America in February that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said would refocus the organization away from diversity initiatives and other “woke” policies. Hegseth threatened to cease the military’s longtime support of the organization if it failed to comply in six months, which would be in late August.
Hegseth put heavy emphasis on Scouting America’s acceptance of transgender youth, saying the organization will require members to use their “biological sex at birth and not gender identity.”
But Scouting America, formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America, said then that the agreement did not change existing policies regarding transgender youth and that they are welcome.
“We have transgender people in our program and we’ll have transgender people in our program going forward,” Scouting America President and CEO Roger Krone told The Associated Press in February.
In his complaint seeking the agreement, Dale states that both accounts “cannot be true, and the stakes are of profound public importance.”
Hegseth had pledged in February to “vigorously review” the changes Scouting America has made, threatening to withdraw support.
“We hope that doesn’t happen, but it could,” Hegseth said at the time. “Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men. Maybe someday.”
The scouts and the military have had longtime ties, including the military providing logistical support for the National Boy Scout Jamboree and scouts meeting on or near bases. The military also has maintained a strong relationship with the Eagle Scouts, whose members often enlist.
Dale had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in late March to get the memorandum of understanding between Scouting America and the Pentagon regarding the changes.
“The Department has invoked no exemption, produced no record, and missed every deadline,” his complaint stated. “Mr. Dale brings this action to enforce the public’s right to know, before the Department’s August deadline expires.
When asked for comment on Dale’s lawsuit, the Pentagon said in a statement that it wouldn’t comment on ongoing litigation and referred to the video Hegseth released in February that outlined the changes he said the organization was making. Scouting America did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Dale raised another question in his complaint about the government’s ability to require the organization to accept or deny certain members.
In 1990, the Boy Scouts of America expelled Dale, then an Eagle Scout who had become an assistant scoutmaster, after discovering he was co-president of Rutgers University’s gay and lesbian organization. He sued in 1992, accusing the Boy Scouts of discrimination, and lost at the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the organization could maintain membership and leadership criteria that excluded homosexuals.
“Here, if the Department’s account is true, the federal government has now obtained by contract what the Court once held it could not command by law,” Dales lawsuit states. “And if it is not, then the Department has misled the public about what Scouting America has agreed to do.”
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Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.
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