Exclusive: Domestic Violence Nonprofit NNEDV Orders Workers To Cut Resources for LGBTQ+ Survivors
Leaked emails reveal an executive at the NNEDV ordered workers to unpublish mentions of LGBTQ domestic violence victims. Some (but not all) pages for immigrant survivors were also removed.
This article is part of my series on government LGBTQ+ censorship.
On Friday January 31st, 2025, Assistant Vice President of “Women’s Law & Legal Affairs” Stacey Sarver relayed an order via email to several developers who work with the nonprofit with the subject “scrubbing website.” She asked the workers to unpublish all of their webpages that mention LGBTQ+ victims of domestic violence.1 The organization completely shut down their website for days as they made the changes in the backend.
Unlike other nonprofits like RAINN who have removed materials, they also removed information about lesbian, gay, and bisexual victims of domestic violence, which appears to go beyond the scope of the OPM memo that Sarver cites in the email. As an independent organization, NNEDV has no legal obligation to comply with the executive order, but they may risk losing federal funding if they don’t comply.
Due to this memo, and the alternate universe we now find ourselves in, NNEDV shut down the website so we can scrub it of any mentions of anything gender related, like unpublishing the LGBTIA page and also erasing text that links to it.
The emails and other information in this article were provided by an individual who has worked with Women’s Law for several years, but has requested to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from the nonprofit. The source said that they were told over a video call that the nonprofit would find other developers if the source refused to remove the webpages. The source mentioned that Michelle Robles, an attorney whose job title is listed as “WomensLaw Legal Director” on LinkedIn, was also involved in this process.
The emails have been independently verified as legitimate by MadyCast News, and readers can verify the webpages have been taken down with information in this article. Stacey Sarver, who is a licensed attorney, told one person to “take down the banner that says We serve all genders,” a change reflected on the homepage of the website as seen in the headline image of this article.
She told another:
“I know how to unpublish a page but is it the same to unpublish the whole LGBTQIA section? If not, can you unpublish that section? … can we do a find and replace to take out any sentence that links to the LGBTQIA section? Also, we could unpublish the question in the RO section for each state about “Can I get an order against a same sex partner?” We can search for the term same-sex and same sex in the title and unpublish those?”
The last order she told another person:
..in the surveys we just published for chat and hotline, can you please remove the option for non-binary? The memo literally says we can only say “male” or “female” as the options, clearly violating our free speech.
Sarver admits that the order is clearly violating the organization’s free speech, but still demands employees to remove the information. Lambda Legal and several nonprofits filed suit against the Trump administration to block the “gender ideology” executive order just this week, alleging violations of free speech and equal protection.
Another email from one of the people ordered to remove pages lists pages with LGBTQ+ content that were unpublished, as shown below. Unfortunately, only some of these pages had archives available on the Wayback Machine, but all of these pages existed in the past.2
What forms of abuse are unique to LGBTQ victims? [No Archive]
What forms of abuse are unique to transgender victims? [No Archive]
What are the unique barriers to finding help that LGBTQ victims may face? [No Archive]
Are there other barriers to finding help that transgender victims may face in particular? [No Archive]
Can I get a restraining order against my same-sex partner? [No Archive]
What forms of abuse are unique to intersex victims? [No Archive]
What forms of abuse are unique to asexual victims? [No Archive]
The parent organization of Women’s Law, the NNEDV, also has removed most of the resources from their website altogether. Compared to an archive on the Wayback Machine from 12/2024, three sections of their website are no longer available: “Get Involved”, “Policy Center”, and “Resource Library.” A search on Google shows that the website once hosted the following LGBTQ-related webpages that are no longer available:
Making a difference for transgender survivors [No Archive]
National Sign on Letter of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Trafficking Organizations and Programs in Support of Full and Equal Access to Services and Shelter for Transgender Survivors [Wayback Machine]
Building Our Capacity to Serve LGBTQ Survivors-Webinar [Wayback Machine]
Several letters from the organization opposing anti-trans legislation and a few amici curiae briefs in support of LGBTQ+ people in court cases were also removed from the website.3
NNEDV didn’t stop with just LGBTQ people. Since nearly all resources are no longer available on the main website, no webpages are found with the tag “immigrant.” Some pages about immigration from womenslaw.org were also removed. It is unclear which executive order these removals are meant to comply with, and the organization did not respond to a request to explain these removals in the statement they provided.
nnedv.org removed most or all pages mentioning immigrants. A preview of a removed PDF from NNEDV on Google mentions that “Immigrants are particularly vulnerable to domestic abuse and other gender-based crimes. NNEDV has a strong interest in ensuring that immigrant victims have….[cut off]”4
Women’s Law removed the following pages (and possibly more):
Am I eligible for public benefits if I am an immigrant? [Wayback Machine]
The Quick Guide for U-Visas was removed from their listing of guides. U-Visas are given to victims of violent crimes such as domestic violence, making this information invaluable to immigrants. [Wayback Machine]
Video guides for U-Visas were kept available, but the source said that “they had to fight to keep it.” Activists may want to download these videos to archive them before they can be taken down.
Other Women’s Law pages that were not removed include pages for various immigrant organizations (example), as well as some pages with legal information for documented immigrants (example). The source told me that they didn’t have details on the exact process for these changes, but they speculated based on conversations they had with leadership that the changes could be based on the terminology “undocumented immigrant” in particular.
NNEDV has not scrubbed their social media. A post from Transgender Day of Visibility is still visible on their Instagram, for now. NNEDV’s “Contact Us” page lists several ways to contact the organization’s leadership.
After I reported this week that RAINN and NSVRC had removed mentions of trans people from their websites, the Sexual Violence Center, an organization based in Minnesota, posted a strong condemnation of RAINN to their social media pages. The organization notes that the choice to remove these webpages by RAINN (and therefore other similar nonprofits like NNEDV) was “not required by law but is a deliberate choice by their leadership.” The RAINN story was also covered by The Washington Post and Metro UK, with the latter outlet publishing some important comments I provided.
Many survivors on social media expressed their feelings of betrayal from RAINN after the reporting, and many have pledged to move their donations elsewhere. LGBTQ+ people are highly disproportionately impacted by sexual violence, a harrowing statistic that was initially documented by the very same organizations.
You can learn how to donate to the Sexual Violence Center here. The nonprofit lists a 24-hour Crisis Line at 612-871-5111. Another highly rated sexual violence organization that focuses on serving LGBTQ+ survivors is The Network/La Red.
Leadership at other nonprofits should be aware that journalists will continue to report on these issues and ensure that their private donors are aware of whether the organizations are capitulating to Trump’s policies without a fight. Instead, nonprofits may want to consider joining lawsuits fighting illegal executive orders to defend their funding, such as the one filed by Lambda Legal and others this week.
In a statement to MadyCast News, NNEDV President & CEO Stephanie Love-Patterson said that the nonprofit’s mission hasn’t changed and they still commit to supporting all survivors. In regards to the removals of information from the website, she said:
“We are aware of recent executive orders that will impact our federally funded work, and we are assessing our website content to ensure compliance with both federal funding and longstanding statutory language.”
It’s unclear what “longstanding statutory language” would require a nonprofit organization to self-censor mentions of LGBTQ+ people and immigrants. The First Amendment bars the government from legally requiring any private organization to censor speech.
The organization did not respond to a request for an explanation of why lesbian/gay/bisexual pages were removed without any relevance to the EO, or why some immigrant pages were removed.
Bonus material for paid subscribers: a behind the scenes look of what an email chain between a journalist and an organization like NNEDV looks like. No unique information is included, but it may be interesting to people who are interested in what goes into investigating a piece like this.
If you are an employee who works at a nonprofit which has removed mentions of LGBTQ+ people or immigrants and want to speak out, please send me tips at madycast.com@gmail.com or on Signal at madye2.39 (more secure).
Call To Action: Help Archive LGBTQ+ Resources.
In the process of reporting on these important issues, I have discovered that many webpages unfortunately do not have proper archives on the Wayback Machine. You can help prevent this by archiving pages mentioning LGBTQ+ people that have not been removed from any local or national nonprofit of your choice.
Create an archive.org account. Then, find the webpages mentioning trans people using a query such as below on Google. You can repeat the search with other terms like “LGBTQ” and so on.
site:<nonprofitwebsite> “trans”
Navigate to https://web.archive.org/ and paste the URL into “Save Page Now.” Click the boxes to save outlinks, error pages, and a screenshot. Advanced users can bulk save webpages using Google Sheets using the guide here.
If you find any links from your query in step 1 that no longer work, please send them to me along with the nonprofit name on Signal at madye2.39 (or my email above).
Finally, if you appreciate our work please consider subscribing for free or paid. MadyCast News is not-for-profit and all paid subscription revenue goes directly to LGBTQ+ people. We’ve already committed 50% of our revenue through March for LGBTQ+ LA wildfire victims, and an additional 25% of revenue generated from this article by subscribing with the links below will be donated to The Network/La Red.
It’s unknown whether besides Sarver made the final call to remove these webpages, but Sarver sent the email described in the article that enforced the removal of webpages.
The second email included links that look like “https://womenslaw.org/node/69729,” which still redirect to the pages that are down. In addition, Google still has cached some of these webpages in search results. You can find links to the pages by searching for the title of the webpages.
Immigration pages removed from nnedv.org include:
NTF Letter re: Impact of Proposed Asylum and Immigration Policy Changes on Immigrant Survivors of Gender-Based Violence [Wayback Machine]
QUICK REFERENCE SHEET Requirements for Serving Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence [Wayback Machine]
NGO letter re anti-imm House legislation 118th session [Wayback Machine]
Make the Road NY v Cuccinelli Amicus Brief [Wayback Machine]