Did the U.S. Supreme Court refuse to hear a case about "sexual orientation discrimination" involving Rachel Levine, the Biden Administration's assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)? No, that's not true: The Supreme Court website did not show any record of such a decision. The story originated from an account on Facebook linked to a network with a satire label that warns, "Nothing on this page is real."
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published on May 5, 2025. It opened:
GREAT NEWS: The Commander-in-Chief has won his battle and the war against Rachel Levine.
The court wrote: 'The law in military matters comes from the Commander-in-Chief, not Congress. The President can discharge the admiral at his pleasure and without reason.'
And thus the saga of the DEI Admiral ends. Levine will be administratively discharged at the end of the week.
An image shared in the entry continued:
Admiral Rachel Levine has lost the battle...and the war.
The Supreme Court refused to hear her case against the government, in which she claims discrimination based on sexual orientation, a violation of her civil rights.
The Court wrote: 'The law in military matters comes from the Commander-in-Chief, not Congress. The President can discharge the admiral at his pleasure and without reason.'
And thus the saga of the DEI Admiral ends. Levine will be administratively discharged at the end of the week.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
Dr. Rachel Levine, who was trained as a pediatrician and achieved the rank of an admiral, led (archived here) the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps as the assistant secretary for health under the Biden administration.
As seen in the screenshot above, the entry reviewed in this fact check relied on a screenshot of America's Last Line of Defense -- a network of social media websites with a satire label known for publishing made-up stories run by a self-described liberal troll Christopher Blair, also known as Busta Troll.
The claim indeed originated (archived here) from the ALLOD account on Facebook where it was first published on May 3, 2025, and that page's self-description (archived here) reads:
The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash.
Nothing on this page is real.
A search for credible reports about the purported story on Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) showed no confirmation that the Supreme Court issued such a statement, as of May 6, 2025:
(Source: Google News screenshot by Lead Stories)
Furthermore, the website of the Supreme Court showed no documents mentioning Rachel Levine, as of this writing:
(Source: Supreme Court screenshot by Lead Stories)
About ALLOD
The "America's Last Line of Defense" network utilized visible satire disclaimers everywhere. They mostly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Every site in the network has an About page that reads (in part):
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who omit the satire disclaimer and other hints the stories are fake. One of the most persistent networks of such sites is run by a man from Pakistan named Kashif Shahzad Khokhar (aka "DashiKashi") who has spammed hundreds of such stolen stories into conservative and right-wing Facebook pages in order to profit from the ad revenue.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning the U.S. Supreme Court can be found here.
