New York Law School

Art Leonard Observations

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Music Director Barred from Suing Catholic Church For Hostile Environment Harassment Under Anti-Discrimination Laws

Posted on: July 11th, 2021 by Art Leonard No Comments

A ten-judge bench of the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on July 9 by a vote of 7-3 that the religion clauses of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution give churches total immunity from hostile environment claims by their ministerial employees.  Demkovich v. St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 20410, 2021 WL 2880232 (7th Cir. en banc).

Rejecting a decision by a three-judge panel of the court that Sandor Demkovich, the gay former Music and Choir Director and Organist at St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in Calumet City, Illinois, could bring a hostile environment claim against the church under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the en banc court held that allowing such claims would violate the religious autonomy of the church protected by the religion clauses of the 1st Amendment.  Judge Michael Brennan, appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote the court’s opinion.

The 7th Circuit is among the most Republican-dominated of the federal appeals courts.  Of the eleven active members of the Court, eight were appointed by Republican presidents (four by Trump).  President Joseph Biden’s first appointee to the court, Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, was only recently confirmed by the Senate and did not participate in this case.  One of President Trump’s appointees recused himself, and a senior (retired) judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, Joel Flaum, who was the dissenter on the three-judge panel, was entitled under 7th Circuit rules to participate.

Judge David Hamilton, appointed by Barack Obama, wrote the panel decision and the dissenting opinion, joined by Judge Ilana Rovner, a moderate appointed by George H. W. Bush in 1992, who was the other member of the three-judge panel majority.   Judge Diane Wood, appointed by Bill Clinton, joined the dissent.

Demkovich was hired in September 2012.  His supervisor was Reverend Jacek Dada, a priest who is the church’s Pastor.  According to Demkovich, who has various physical disabilities, Dada was constantly subjecting him to verbal abuse because of his sexual orientation and his disabilities, adversely affecting his physical and mental health.  In 2014, after Illinois had legislated to allow same-sex marriages, Demkovich let the church know that he planned to marry his same-sex partner.  Dada told him that he had to resign from the church because his marriage would violate Catholic doctrine.  When Demkovich refused to resign, Dada fired him.

Demkovich sued the St. Andrew church and the Archdiocese of Chicago under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming that his discharge was unlawful discrimination because of his sexual orientation and disabilities.  The church moved to dismiss the case, citing the “ministerial exception” under the 1st Amendment, and the district court granted the motion, determining that Demkovich was a “ministerial employee” under the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171.  In Hosanna-Tabor, an ADA case involving a school teacher, the Supreme Court ruled that it would violate the 1st Amendment to allow a ministerial employee to challenge their discharge in a federal court, because religious institutions have an absolute right under the Free Exercise Clause to decide whom to employ as ministers without any interference from the courts.  Under Hosanna-Tabor, the district court’s decision to dismiss Demkovich’s unlawful discharge claims was undoubtedly correct.

Demkovich came back to court with an amended complaint, alleging that he was unlawfully subjected to a hostile environment by Dada, his supervisor, because of his sexual orientation and disabilities.  Again, the church invoked the “ministerial exception” and moved to dismiss. District Judge Edmond E. Chang decided that Hosanna-Tabor, a discharge case, did not necessarily apply to a hostile environment claim, drawing a distinction, as the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had previously done in a similar situation, between tangible and intangible employment actions, finding that the exception applied only to the former.

Judge Chang held that the proper approach in a hostile environment case was to balance the church’s religious freedom concerns with the employee’s statutory anti-discrimination rights, taking into account the nature of the employer’s conduct and the reasons for it.  Based on this “balancing of rights,” Chang dismissed the sexual orientation claim but refused to dismiss the disability claim, distinguishing between hostility that could be motivated by religious doctrine and hostility that had no basis in religious doctrine.  Demkovich v. St. Andrew, 343 F. Supp. 3d 772 (N.D. Ill. 2018).

But Chang then certified a request by the church to have the court of appeals consider the issue before the case went further.  Last summer, the Supreme Court issued another ministerial exception decision, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020), which took a broader view of the definition of a ministerial employee in the context of religious schools. This case also involved two teacher discharges, allegedly in violation of the ADA and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

The three-judge 7th Circuit panel ruled in 2020 that Demkovich should be allowed to litigate both of his hostile environment claims, finding that the reasoning behind Hosanna-Tabor did not require a dismissal in a case such as this, following the lead of the 9th Circuit.  See 973 F. 3d 718 (7th Cir. 2020).  The church then petitioned the 7th Circuit for rehearing en banc.  The 7th Circuit vacated the panel decision, heard arguments before a panel of 10 judges earlier this year, and issued its July 9 decision holding that Judge Chang should have dismissed the case completely.

In his opinion for the court, Judge Brennan, while acknowledging that the Supreme Court’s two precedents, Hosanna-Tabor and Guadalupe, both involved discharges of religious school teachers, found various statements in those decisions that he said could be construed to have embraced more general principles that the courts should not be interfering in any personnel-related disputes between religious institutions and their ministerial employees.  He drew two “principles” from the Supreme Court’s decisions: “The protected interest of a religious organization in its ministers covers the entire employment relationship, including hiring, firing, and supervising in between.  Second, we cannot lose sight of the harms – civil intrusion and excessive entanglement – that the ministerial exception prevents.  Especially in matters of ministerial employment, the First Amendment thus ‘gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations,’” quoting from Hosanna-Tabor.

Brennan pointed out that in a hostile environment case, discovery could be wide-ranging, and would involve an inquiry into the reasons why, in this case, the priest in charge was treating the music director – both ministerial employees because of the role they play in the religious life of the church – in a particular way. To the majority of the en banc court, this would raise the specter of judicial interference in matters of religion, regardless whether the claim arose under Title VII or the ADA.  The court found that a central theme of the Supreme Court and lower federal court rulings involving discrimination claims by ministerial employees was that churches must enjoy autonomy in making personnel decisions about their ministerial employees, whether they could be characterized as tangible or intangible actions.

“Demkovich’s hostile work environment claims challenge a religious organization’s independence in its ministerial relationships,” wrote Brennan.  “A judgement against the church would legally recognize that it fostered a discriminatory employment atmosphere for one of its ministers.”  While the employment discrimination statutes have been interpreted to hold employers liable for fostering a discriminatory employment atmosphere, Brennan wrote that the Supreme Court’s ministerial exception cases “teach that ministerial employment is fundamentally different.”  And, he continued, “Just as a religious organization ‘must be free to choose those who will guide it on its way,’ so too must those guides be free to decide how to lead a religious organization on that journey,” once again quoting from the Hosanna-Tabor opinion.

Judge Hamilton’s dissent began by noting that the Supreme Court’s ministerial exception cases all involved discharge decisions, not hostile environment claims, and that federal circuit court and state courts are “split on the question before us,” noting not only the 9th Circuit’s prior rulings, but also several district court decisions.  He insisted that “the majority’s rule draws an odd, arbitrary line in constitutional law,” and argued that “the line between tangible employment actions and hostile environment fits the purposes of the ministerial exception.”

He accused the majority of departing “from a long practice of carefully balancing civil law and religious liberty,” and pointed out the severe consequence of holding that religious employers would be immune from any liability for mistreating their employees under anti-discrimination laws.  “We know that people who exercise authority within churches can be all too human,” he wrote.  “Casebooks and news reports tell us of cases of sexual harassment by ministers, sometimes directed at parishioners, sometimes at non-ministerial employees, and sometimes at other (typically less senior) ministers.  In briefs and oral argument, defendants have acknowledged that a religious employer could be held civilly liable for a supervisor’s criminal or tortious conduct toward a ministerial employee. . .  Such cases would not violate the supervisor’s or the employer’s First Amendment rights.  If criminal or tort cases do not, then it is hard to see why a statutory case based on the same conduct would necessarily violate the First Amendment, whether or not the supervisor claims a religious motive.”

“The hostile environment claims before us present a conflict between two of the highest values in our society and legal system: religious liberty and non-discrimination in employment,” wrote Hamilton.  “The Supreme Court has not answered this question, nor does the First Amendment itself.  Circuits and state courts are divided.  For the reasons explained above and in the panel majority, I submit that the majority’s absolute bar to statutory hostile environment claims by ministerial employees is not necessary to protect religious liberty or to serve the purposes of the ministerial exception.”

The next step for Demkovich could be to file a petition for review with the Supreme Court.  Depending on the details of his factual claims, he might try to pursue a state court tort suit for intentional infliction of emotional distress against Jacek Dada individually, but it is possible that it would be barred by the state statute of limitations, since all the conduct at issue took place in 2012-2014.

 

Nevada Supreme Court Holds Obergefell Requires Retroactive Recognition of Out-of-State Same-Sex Marriages (but Not Civil Unions) for Community Property Purposes

Posted on: December 31st, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Supreme Court of Nevada unanimously ruled on December 23 that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), must be applied retroactively in determining the commencement date of the marital “community” for purposes of dividing assets in a divorce, but such constitutionally-demanded retroactivity extends only to marriages, not to civil unions.  LaFrance v. Cline, 2020 WL 7663476, 2020 Nev. Unpub. LEXIS 1209.

Mary Elizabeth LaFrance and Gail Cline, Nevada residents, went to Vermont to have a civil union ceremony in 2000, returning home to Nevada.  In 2003, when same-sex marriage became available in Canada, they went there and got married, then returned to their home in Nevada.  In 2014, they decided to break up their marriage and filed for judicial dissolution.  That was the year that a lawsuit brought marriage equality to Nevada, in Latta v. Otter, 771 F.3d 456 (9th Cir. 2014).  Nevada is a community property state, and it became necessary for the trial court to decide what property and assets were part of the “community” for purposes of division of assets.  Responding to LaFrance’s argument as of 2018 when the Clark County 8th Judicial District Court had to decide, Judge Mathew Harter concluded that pursuant to Obergefell he should find that the community came into effect when the parties entered into their civil union in 2000, and divided property accordingly.  LaFrance appealed, contending that for purposes of Nevada law, their marital community didn’t come into effect until the Latta decision in 2014.

The Nevada Supreme Court decided that both parties were incorrect.  Under Nevada law as of the time the petition for dissolution was filed, a civil union from Vermont could be recognized for these purposes but only if the parties had registered their civil union as a domestic partnership with the Nevada Secretary of State, and these women had not done so.  Thus, the court held in an opinion by Chief Justice Kristina Pickering, Judge Harter erred in dating the community from 2000.

On the other hand, the court ruled, the 2003 Canadian marriage should be deemed the date when the community was formed.  Even though it was not recognized in Nevada at that time, the court found that it must be retroactively recognized pursuant to Obergefell.

“In 2015, before the parties’ divorce was finalized, the United States Supreme Court decided Obergefell,” wrote Chief Justice Pickering.  “The Court in Obergefell held that ‘the right to marry is a fundamental right,’ and that each state must ‘recognize a lawful same-sex marriage performed in another State.’  Although the Supreme Court has not opined on the retroactive effects of its Obergefell holding, the Supreme Court has ‘recognized a general rule of retrospective effect for [its] constitutional decisions,’” citing Harper v. Virginia Department of Taxation, 509 U.S. 86, 94 (1993).  Since the parties’ divorce was not finalized until after Obergefell was decided, the court concluded that “the Supreme Court’s constitutional decision in Obergefell, requiring states to recognize same-sex marriages, applies retroactively to the parties’ 2003 Canadian marriage.”  Thus, 2003 is the commencement date for the marital community.

LaFrance protested that this was unfair, arguing that she and Cline had been operating all those years under the assumption that they did not have any legal rights as a couple in Nevada throughout the period of their Canadian marriage.  (Recall that Latta was not decided until the year they initiated their divorce proceedings, the year prior to Obergefell.)  No matter, said the court.  “Nevada must credit the parties’ marriage as having taken place in 2003 and apply the same terms and conditions as accorded to opposite-sex spouses.  These conditions include a presumption that any property acquired during the marriage is community property, NRS 123.220, and an opportunity for spouses to rebut this presumption by showing by clear and certain proof that specific property is separate.”

Thus, the property division issue was remanded to Judge Harter “to apply community property principles, including tracing, to the parties’ property acquired after their 2003 Canadian marriage.”

Justice Abbi Silver recused herself from the case voluntarily.  The version of the opinion issued on Westlaw and Lexis as of the end of December did not list counsel for the parties.

Transgender Teen’s Mother Asks Supreme Court to Recognize a Parent’s Due Process to Control Her Child’s Life

Posted on: July 27th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

Anmarie Calgaro is one angy mama!  Despite being defeated at every turn in the lower courts, and despite her child having reached age 18 and thus no longer being subject to her parental control as a matter of law, she is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse decisions by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, and to establish that governmental and private entities should not be allowed to shut out a parent from continuing to control her transgender teen, even after the teen has left home and is living on her own.

 

The decisions in the lower courts are Calgaro v. St. Louis County, 2017 WL 2269500 (D. Minn. 2017), affirmed, 919 F. 3d 1054 (8th Cir. 2019), petition for certiorari filed, July 26, 2019, No. 19-127.  The Respondents have a filing deadline of August 26.

 

Calgaro is suing St. Louis County, Minnesota; St. Louis County Public Health and Human Service’s former director, Linnea Mirsch; Fairview Health Services and Park Nicollet Health Services, non-governmental health care providers; St. Louis County School District; Principal Michael Johnson of the Cherry School in that district; and, not least, her child, identified in court papers as E.J.K.

 

The Petition filed with the Supreme Court in Calgaro v. St. Louis County, No. 19-127 (docketed July 26, 2019), presents a factual narrative that differs a bit from that provided by the lower court opinions.  The Petition refers to E.J.K. by male pronouns, despite E.J.K.’s female gender identity, and tells the story from the perspective of a mother confronting misbehaving adults who were wrongfully treating her child, male from her perspective, as if he was emancipated and could make decisions on his own without notice to or approval by his mother.  She was particularly concerned that these adults (governmental and non-governmental) were assisting her child in gender transition without giving her an opportunity to object.

 

The gist of the story is that the teen, identified as male at birth but who came to identify as female, was living with her mother and younger siblings, but decided at age 15 to move out to live with her biological father for reasons not articulated by the courts or the Petition, but one can imagine them.  (From the court’s reference to “biological father,” one hypothesizes that E.J.K.’s biological parents were not married to each other.)  She stayed with her father only briefly, then staying with various family and friends, refusing to move back in with Calgaro, who claims that she has always been willing to provide a home for E.J.K.

 

After leaving her mother’s home, E.J.K. consulted a lawyer at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid.  The lawyer “provided her with a letter that concluded she was legally emancipated under Minnesota law,” wrote District Judge Paul A. Magnuson.  E.J.K. never sought or obtained a court order declaring her to be emancipated.  But this letter, which by itself has no legal effect, was used effectively by E.J.K. to get government financial assistance payments that ordinarily would not be available to a minor who is not emancipated, to persuade two health care institutions to provide her with treatment in support of her gender transition, and to persuade her high school principal to recognize her gender identity and to treat her as emancipated and to refuse to deal with her mother’s requests for information and input about E.J.K.’s educational decisions.  All of these steps were achieved by E.J.K. without notice to Anmarie Calgaro, who claims to have been rebuffed at every turn in her attempt to find out what was going on with the child to whom she referred as her “son.”

 

The essence of Calgaro’s claim is that in the absence of a court order declaring that E.J.K. was emancipated from her parents, none of these things should have happened.  Relying on  cases finding that parents have Due Process rights under the 14th Amendment concerning the custody, control and raising of their minor children, she claims that each of the defendants violated her constitutional rights by failing to give notice to her of what was happening, failing to afford her some kind of hearing in which she could state her position, and shutting her out from information about her child.

 

She had specifically requested from Cherry School Principal Johnson to have access to E.J.K.’s educational records, but was turned down.  She asked the government agency and the health care institutions for access to E.J.K’s records concerning her health care and her government assistance, but was turned down again.  Who knew a Legal Aid lawyer’s opinion letter could be so powerful!

 

District Judge Magnuson dismissed Calgaro’s lawsuit on May 23, 2017.  As a practical matter, E.J.K. was then less than two months from turning 18, at which point she would become a legal adult and emancipated as a matter of law, so Calgaro’s request for injunctive relief would quickly become moot.

 

The trial court rejected Calgaro’s argument that the county, the school district, the health care institutions, or the individual named plaintiffs had violated Calgaro’s constitutional rights by declaring her child to be emancipated, for, the judge concluded, the defendants “did not emancipate E.J.K. and Calgaro continues to have sole physical and joint legal custody of E.J.K.”  The question remaining is what flows from the fact that until turning 18, E.J.K. continued to be a minor in the custody of Calgaro, even though she was no longer living at home and was effectively managing her own life without parental guidance.

 

Turning first to the health care institutions, the court pointed out that they are not “state actors” but rather private, non-profit entities, so the Due Process Clause does not impose any legal obligations on them, and they could rely on the Legal Aid lawyer’s letter and act accordingly without accruing any liability under the federal constitution.

 

As to the school district, the court found that the district could not be held liable for actions of its employees, only for its own policies or customs, and there was no evidence that the school district had any particular policy or custom regarding how to deal with transgender students or their parents.  “Calgaro fails to provide any facts that the School District executed a policy or custom that deprived Calgaro of her parental rights without due process,” wrote Magnuson.

 

As to Principal Johnson, the court found that he enjoyed “qualified immunity” from any personal liability for the actions he took as principal of Cherry School, so long as he was not violating any clearly-established constitutional right of Calgaro, and the court found no support in published court opinions for a constitutional rights of parents to have access to their child’s school records.

 

The judge also rejected Calgaro’s argument that the County violated her rights by providing financial assistance to E.J.K. without Calgaro’s consent or participation.  The County was providing assistance based on its interpretation of a Minnesota statute that allows payment of welfare benefits to some who does not have “adequate income” and is “a child under the age of 18 who is not living with a parent, stepparent, or legal custodian” but “only if: the child is legally emancipated or living with an adult with the consent of an agency acting as a legal custodian,” with “legally emancipated” meaning “a person under the age of 18 years who: (i) has been married; (ii) is on active duty in the uniformed services of the United States; (iii) has been emancipated by a court of competent jurisdiction; or (iv) is otherwise considered emancipated under Minnesota law, and for whom county social services has not determined that a social services case plan is necessary, for reasons other than the child has failed or refuses to cooperate with the county agency in developing the plan.”

 

Judge Magnuson pointed out that under this statute, the county was not necessarily required to give E.J.K. financial assistance – it was a discretionary decision by the local officials – but that as with her suit against the school district, Calgaro failed to identify a policy or custom that would subject the county to liability.  The court found the county could not be held liable for violating Calgaro’s Due Process rights based on the decision by county officials to provide benefits to E.J.K., and that the head of the county welfare agency, also named a defendant, could not be sued because there was no evidence she had anything to do with the decision to provide the benefits.

 

Furthermore, Calgaro could not sue E.J.K. “Calgaro stops short of making the absurd argument that E.J.K. deprived Calgaro of her parental rights without due process while acting under color of state law,” wrote Magnuson, who found that as all of Calgaro’s other claims had to be dismissed, any claim against E.J.K. had to fall as well.

 

Calgaro appealed to the 8th Circuit, which issued a brief decision on March 25, 2019, affirming the district court in all particulars.  Furthermore, noting the passage of time, Circuit Judge Steven Colloton wrote, “Calgaro’s remaining claims for declaratory and injunctive relief against the several defendants are moot.  E.J.K. has turned eighteen years old, ceased to be a minor under Minnesota law, and completed her education in the St. Louis County School District.  There is no ongoing case or controversy over Calgaro’s parental rights to make decisions for E.J.K. as a minor or to access her medical or educational records.”

 

Calgaro tried to argue that because she has three minor children other than E.J.K., she has a continuing interest in establishing as a matter of law that the various defendants should not be able to override her parental rights with respect to her remaining minor children, but the court found that “Calgaro has not established a reasonable expectation that any of her three minor children will be deemed emancipated by the defendants.”

 

Calgaro is represented by the Thomas More Society, a religious freedom litigation group, which is trying to use this case to establish the rights of parents, presenting two questions to the Supreme Court: first, whether parents’ Due Process rights to custody and control of their minor children “apply to local governments and medical providers” such that these entities cannot invade “parental rights, responsibilities or duties over their minor children’s welfare, education and medical care decisions without a court order;” and, second, in a rather long and convoluted question, whether the Minnesota statute defining emancipation is unconstitutional to the extent that it might be construed to authorize entities in the position of the defendants to do the things they did in this case.

 

Although the Petition does not stage this case as a religious free exercise case, the advocacy of Thomas More Society suggests that religious objections to transgender identity and transitional care underlie its interest in the case, and that if the Court were to grant the Petition, many religious organizations would be among those arguing that a parent should be able to prevent schools, government agencies, and health-care providers from assistant minors who identify as transgender from effectively freeing themselves from parental control as they seek to live in the gender with which they identify.

 

The National Center for Lesbian Rights provided legal representation to E.J.K. in the lower courts, and continues to represent E.J.K. as one of the named respondents in this Petition.

 

The odds against this Petition being granted are long, but the Court’s recent trend of taking an expansive view of religious free exercise rights suggests that it would not be totally surprising were the Court to take this case for review.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals Rules on Same-Sex Common Law Marriage Claim

Posted on: May 6th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

“Brian Gill and Rodney Van Nostrand were in a romantic relationship and cohabited for several years beginning in 2004,” begins Judge Phyllis Thompson’s opinion for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Gill v. Van Nostrand, 2019 WL 1827998, 2019 D.C. App. LEXIS 159 (April 25, 2019).  “After their romantic relationship waned, and a few months after Mr. Van Nostrand had a ceremonial wedding in Brazil to another man he had met while on a lengthy work assignment in that country, Mr. Gill filed a complaint for legal separation from Mr. Van Nostrand, alleging that the two men are parties in a common law marriage that began in 2004.”  Van Nostrand’s denial that the men were common-law married led to a trial in D.C. Superior Court, resulting in a decision by Judge Robert Okun rejecting Gill’s claim.  Gill’s appeal of that ruling is the subject of the Court of Appeals’ April 25 ruling.  The District of Columbia Court of Appeals is the equivalent of a state supreme court for the District of Columbia.  Its rulings can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Judge Thompson’s opinion goes to considerable length to explain why the court affirmed Judge Okun’s ruling, and to set out in some detail how District of Columbia trial courts should evaluate claims that same-sex couples had formed common law marriages prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015).  Although the District of Columbia legislated to allow same-sex marriage several years prior to Obergefell, the issue of whether same-sex couples could form such marriages in the District, one of a handful of U.S. jurisdictions that still recognize same-sex marriages, depends on retroactive application of Obergefell’s holding that same-sex couples enjoy a fundamental right to marry as an aspect of liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause.  In the case of D.C., of course, the relevant Due Process Clause would be that in the 5th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, whereas the Due Process Clause upon which the Court relied in Obergefell was that in the 14th Amendment, binding on the states.

The D.C. Court of Appeals agreed with Judge Okun that the fundamental right identified by the Supreme Court in Obergefell did apply to the marital aspirations of same-sex couples at the time in question (2004).  The issue is how to decide whether a particular couple was in a common law marriage, when the District’s relevant case law was stated, in large part, in ways pertaining to different-sex couples whose right to marry at the time was legally recognized, as such a right was not then recognized for same-sex couples.  At an early stage in this case, Judge Okun refused Van Nostrand’s motion to dismiss the case, stating “that a party in a same-sex relationship must be given the opportunity to prove a common law marriage, even at a time when same-sex marriage was not legal.”  This led to the trial, in which Van Nostrand testified that he never considered himself to be married to Mr. Gill, and Mr. Gill testified about an exchange of rings, a pledge of monogamy, and his belief that they considered themselves effectively married, if not legally so.

Under District of Columbia precedents, “the elements of common law marriage in this jurisdiction are cohabitation as husband and wife, following an express mutual agreement, which must be in word of the present tense.”  Quoting Coleman v. United States, 948 A.2d 534 (D.C. Ct. App. 2008).  What that means is the people can’t just “drift” into a common law marriage in D.C.  There must be a mutual express agreement, and it can’t just be an agreement that sometime in the future the couple will get married; it must be a present statement of agreeing to live as a married couple, albeit without the formalities of a marriage license and ceremony by a governmentally authorized officiant.  Normally a preponderance of the evidence standard would apply, but depending on the circumstances the court might apply a “clear and convincing evidence” standard, which the court found applicable in this case, where Gill is trying to prove a common law marriage with a man who is legally married to another man.  (The court noted that the clear and convincing evidence standard has been used by D.C. courts in the past when somebody is trying to prove that they have a common law marriage with somebody who is legally married to somebody else.)

“We shall assume arguendo that serious constitutional issues would arise if the trial court’s analysis of common-law marriage operated to the peculiar disadvantage of Mr. Gill and Mr. Van Nostrand as a same-sex-couple, i.e., required them to meet expectations that they as a same-sex couple could meet only with more difficulty than opposite-sex couples would encounter,” wrote Judge Thompson.   “Such an approach is arguably warranted in order to accord same-sex couples who have chosen to share their lives in a union comparable to traditional marriage ‘the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage,” quoting Strauss v. Horton, 46 Cal. 4th 364 (Cal. 2009), a decision in which the California Supreme Court ruled that marriages of same-sex couples who were married in California prior to the passage of Proposition 8 would have exactly the same status as all legally-contracted marriages in that state.

The trial court focused on six factors in its analysis in concluding that Gill and Nostrand did not have a common law marriage.

First was the failure of either man, but particularly Mr. Gill, to remember the date on which Gill claimed they exchanged rings that they agreed to wear for the duration of their relationship.  Gill testified that he “decided to surprise Mr. Van Nostrand by purchasing two rings and presenting them to Mr. Van Nostrand along with M& M candies inscribed with “Will you marry me?”  Gill testified that he got down on one knew and proposed to Mr. Van Nostrand, who said yes and allowed Gill to slip one of the rings on his finger.  Van Nostrand denied various particulars of this testimony, and there was no testimonial agreement about the date on which this purportedly occurred. The court found Gill’s testimony, which goes to the crucial question of whether there was an express agreement to be married, as “exceptionally vague,” although, by contrast, Gill remembered precisely both their first date and the first time they had sex with each other.  “The court reasoned that ‘the date on which parties agree to be married surely would be at least as memorable [as], if not more memorable . . . than the date on which’ the parties first had sexual relations ‘or first had a “real date” at a restaurant,’” wrote Thompson.  Gill criticized the judge’s “overreliance” on this factor, but the appeals court did not consider this “unfairly prejudicial” or improperly expecting the parties “to meet expectations of traditional marriage that they, as a same-sex couple, could meet only with difficulty.”  Since the date in question is the date when Gill claims to have proposed marriage, proffered a ring, and received an affirmative response from Von Nostrand, the court found failure to remember the date was not an “unreasonable factor to consider,” taking into account that it was not the only or dispositive factor, merely one of several.

Secondly, the trial court found that neither of the men “told their friends or family about the alleged marriage (or perhaps more correctly, the alleged ‘entry into a commitment comparable to marriage’) and the couple did not commemorate it with a ceremony or celebrate it by going on a honeymoon.”  The court did find that at that time both parties’ families had “harsh anti-gay views” which could explain why there was no contemporaneous communication to them about this topic, and the court acknowledged that “same-sex couples, prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage, might have been less likely to have a public ceremony or honeymoon,” but, pointed out Thompson, the question was “how these parties and their friends in the gay community marked or signified important events in their romantic lives,” and evidence was lacking as to that.  Traditionally, “holding out” as married to one’s relevant community is an important signifier of common law marriage, and there was nothing stopping a same-sex couple from taking a honeymoon trip to celebrate their new relationship.  Gill attempted to show that a European trip the men took in 2005 was their “honeymoon,” but Van Nostrand testified to the contrary.

Furthermore, there was evidence that Van Nostrand was partial to “celebrating events in a flamboyant manner,” as shown by his marriage to Weller da Silva, the Brazilian man whom he legally married in April 2014.  Related Thompson, “Mr. Van Nostrand delivered the proposal while the pair were in a hot-air balloon over the Serengeti, created an album commemorating the proposal, told family members and friends, med Mr. da Silva’s family, and, after the two were married, went on a honeymoon trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.”  (Sounds fab!!)  The trial court credited Van Nostrand’s testimony that “he would not have entered into a marriage with [Gill] without commemorating such an event with … pomp and circumstance” and the evidence showed that Van Nostrand had the financial ability to sustain such activities, as shown by the “shared history of foreign travel” of the two men during their relationship.

The third factor was that the parties “never inscribed their rings,” a step that Van Nostrand credibly testified they would have done had they considered themselves married.  The court also noted that when marriage became available in Massachusetts, Van Nostrand asked Gill whether he wanted to go there to get married and Gill said no.  He also testified that he asked Gill about having their rings inscribed, but Gill declined, and also declined to enter into a registered domestic partnership, which became available in D.C.  Furthermore, D.C. enacted marriage equality in 2010, but the men did not take the step of formalizing their relationship as a marriage then.  Gill criticized the trial court’s reliance on this factor, but the court found that Van Nostrand credibly testified that these were “the steps he would have taken to symbolize and validate that the parties’ relationship had advanced to a mutual commitment comparable to marriage.”  Here, the court referred to a ruling last year by the Colorado Court of Appeals, Hogsett v. Neale, 2018 WL 6564880, which placed some weight on the failure of a lesbian couple to go out of state to get married as a factor in determining that they did not have a common law marriage under Colorado law.

The fourth factor was that “the parties maintained largely separate finances.”  The house in which they lived together from 2005 was only in Van Nostrand’s name, they had no joint bank accounts or credit card accounts, and even though they discussed creating wills, powers of attorney, and so forth, only Van Nostrand made and executed such documents.  The trial court observed that “although [Gill] was supposed to draft documents giving [Van Nostrand] these same benefits and responsibilities, he failed to do so.”  By contrast, shortly after Van Nostrand married da Silva, they established joint bank accounts and executed wills, powers of attorney and the like.  (A docket search shows that sometime after his marriage to da Silva, Van Nostrand sought to evict Gill from the D.C. home, resulting in litigation in which Gill sought, without success, injunctive relief against the eviction, before a different D.C. trial judge. There is no published opinion, and Judge Okun’s decision in this case is apparently not published, either.)

The fifth factor was Gill’s failure to object or to claim he was in a common law marriage with Van Nostrand when he was informed that Van Nostrand planned to marry da Silva in Brazil.  Gill’s response to this news was not to state that they needed to get divorced first in order for that marriage to take place.  He raised the issue “only after realizing that this would affect” his beneficiary status in terms of Van Nostrand’s employee benefits.  As the court pointedly notes, he seemed to have sprung into action when he was removed from coverage under Van Nostrand’s employment-related health insurance.  He went to an attorney and apparently first learned about the possibility of claiming a common law marriage at that point.  “Mr. Gill asserts that he reacted as he did because he was not aware that the parties’ relationship gave him legally enforceable rights vis-à-vis Mr. Van Nostrand,” observed the court.  The court of appeals found this to be “understandable” as the parties are not lawyers, and the trial court did not deem this as a determinative factor in the analysis.  However, wrote Thompson, “we think the trial court exercised reasonable skepticism in light of Mr. Gill’s financial incentive to claim that the parties had a common-law marriage.  Courts have long ‘regarded common-law marriage as a fruitful source of fraud and perjury,’” quoting In re Estate of Danza, 188 App. Div. 2d 530, 591 N.Y.S. 2d 197 (1992).

Finally, the sixth factor concerns the growing body of court decisions about retroactive common law marriage claims, and particularly a case in which a Pennsylvania trial court did find a common law marriage, In re Estate of Carter, 159 A.3d 970 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2017).  Carter presented ideal facts to find a same-sex common law marriage.  There was a marriage proposal and a diamond ring that Mr. Hunter gave Mr. Carter on Christmas Day 1996, a day easy to remember and prove. Mr. Carter then gave Hunter an engraved diamond ring on February 18, 1997, with the date inscribed, and the men faithfully observed that date as their anniversary for 16 years until Carter’s death.  They had joint banking and investment accounts, owned their home together with a joint mortgage, had mutual wills and powers of attorney, and referred to each other as spouses.  While Judge Okun disclaimed requiring that all these factors be satisfied in order to find a common law marriage for a same-sex couple formed prior to the legalization of same-sex marriages, he reasoned that Gill’s “failure to prove any of these factors substantially undercuts his effort to prove the existence of a common law marriage.”  In this case, Judge Okun found that the men had at best “an agreement to get married at some point in the future.” Wrote Thompson, “We cannot say that the trial court’s reliance on Carter as persuasive authority and its resultant analysis were legally or factually erroneous.”

In conclusion, wrote Thompson, “For all the foregoing reasons, we are satisfied that the evidence did not compel the trial court to conclude that the parties had an express mutual agreement to be permanent partners with the same degree of commitment as the spouses in a ceremonial marriage.  The evidence permitted the court to conclude, as it did, that the parties never expressly agreed to be married, in the present tense.”  And that decides the case consistent with D.C. case law.

Gill is represented by Aaron Marr Page and Christopher J. Gowen.  Jack Maginnis represents Van Nostrand.  As noted, this ruling could be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  Federal question jurisdiction is not required for an appeal from the D.C. local courts on questions of D.C. common law, but if it were, this case arguably presents an underlying constitutional question concerning the jurisdiction’s obligation to recognize the fundamental rights of same-sex couples to enter into common law marriages, and the question whether the trial court’s analysis did not adequately respect that right could still be argued on appeal.  However, Judge Thompson took great lengths to reiterate the D.C. Court of Appeals’ view that the court had to take account of contemporary circumstances pre-Obergefell in avoiding unfairly prejudicing the question by imposing unreasonable expectations on how same-sex couples intended to form a common law marriage would have acted in 2004, and that the trial court had done that adequately in this case.

Court Orders New York State to Pay Brooklyn Woman $125,000 for Using Her Photo in HIV Discrimination Ad Campaign

Posted on: December 14th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

New York Court of Claims Judge Thomas H. Scuccimarra has decided that the State of New York should pay Avril Nolan $125,000 for using her photo in an HIV Discrimination Advertising Campaign without a disclaimer that the person in the picture was a “model.” The November 8 ruling came after the Appellate Division court in Brooklyn ruled last January that the use of the photo in print and on-line advertisements, in which the statement “I AM POSITIVE (+)” appeared next to the photo, was defamatory as a matter of law, and sent the case back to the Court of Claims for a determination of damages. Ms. Nolan is not HIV-positive.

The case is Nolan v. State of New York, 2018 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 5887, 2018 N.Y. Slip Op 51789(U) (Ct. Claims, Nov. 8, 2018).

According to Judge Scuccimarra’s opinion, “Jena Cumbo, the photographer, had taken the photograph as part of a ‘street-style’ photography piece for Soma magazine, briefly profiling those photographed about their musical interests.” Cumbo did not have Nolan sign a release and, without asking her permission, sold the photograph to Getty Images, a company that compiles and sells stock photos for use in publications, advertisements, and so forth.

The State Division of Human Rights, which enforces the New York Human Rights Law’s ban on discrimination, was planning an advertising campaign to educate the public that it is illegal to discriminate against people because they are living with HIV. Instead of finding people living with HIV who might be willing to be photographed for such advertising, the DHR contacted Getty Images and bought the right to use Nolan’s photograph. Getty mistakenly represented to SDHR that Nolan had signed a general release for use of her photograph.

The Court of Claims hearing about damages to be awarded to Nolan focused on how she heard about the advertisement, her subsequent contacts with AM New York, which ran the ad, and the DHR, and the impact its publication had on her life.

Nolan, an Irish immigrant who was working for a public relations company in the fashion industry when the ad was published, learned about the ad on the morning of April 3, 2013, when she arrived at work and saw a notice an acquaintance had posted on her Facebook page, asking whether she had been in that morning’s issue of AM New York. She later received a private message from the same acquaintance with an image of the advertisement. She testified that when she saw the image she “was completely shocked” and “confused,” seeing the “words, ‘I am positive,’ beside my face, I was devastated.” She testified that she felt her “world was just falling down around her,” especially because AM New York was a “big target” for two of her clients, including an important new one.

She got a copy of the newspaper, and testified that she felt “sick to the bottom of my stomach.” She feared for her career in the intensely competitive atmosphere of the office where she was working. On advice of a friend, she told her bosses that morning, showing them the newspaper. She testified that she was “very, very emotional” and “couldn’t stop crying” as she spoke to them. Although her bosses expressed shock, she says that they “calmly went into crisis PR mode,” assessing how it could have happened and whether any clients could have seen it. They did not fire her, as she had feared.

She contacted the photographer, her mother (a psychologist, in Ireland), some friends, and an aunt who had been her mentor when she arrived in New York. Her aunt said she would find a lawyer to represent her.

The photographer contacted AM New York, Getty and the DHR, and put Nolan in touch with a DHR employee by email, who informed her, “After speaking with a Getty representative we have been told we are not liable. We are acting in good faith to remove the image based on the model’s request.” The DHR spokesperson asked Nolan to send them an email stating she would not hold DHR liable and said, “We need the email sooner rather than later as a number of publications are on deadline and are scheduled to move forward with the campaign with Ms. Nolan’s image.” Nolan responded, “Discussing this matter to get further advice but please remove my image from the advertisements. This has already caused enough problems and embarrassment.”

After her email to DHR, Nolan heard nothing further from the State to discuss the ad, but publication was quickly discontinued. Nolan testified to suffering considerable emotional distress, but over the next few months the constant thoughts about who might have seen the ad and how it might affect her subsided, although she claimed it took “a couple years” to rebuild her confidence. It was not until the discovery process for this lawsuit that she found out that the ad had been used in four print publications and three online publications, which triggered again her concerns about how many people might have seen it. Despite a few incidents, the issue generally did not come up or have any substantial effect on her work.

When she was asked during the hearing about what this “association with HIV” meant to her, she testified that while unfortunate, there is “so much stigma around it. . . It’s not like I was in an ad for cancer treatment” where sympathy would be elicited. “There’s a lot of negativity around it,” she testified, “and there’s a lot of associations that people jump to incorrectly about your lifestyle. People think you’re easy, or you’re promiscuous. There’s a lot of just questions around your sexual behavior and your sexual activity. It makes people really think about something so personal to you. It also brings up drug use and just all of these things that I did not want to be associated with and was very embarrassed to be associated with. This goes much deeper, and it really calls into question you as a person and your lifestyle.”

Wrote Judge Scuccimarra, “On cross-examination, claimant confirmed that she did not lose her job nor did she miss any time from work when the advertisement came out. She did not lose any friends. No one other than the acquaintance who first told her about the ad, her Pilates teacher and the outside producer [from an ad shoot] ever informed her that they recognized her as the person depicted in the ad. Indeed, when claimant conducted an online search that day she was unable to see a copy of the advertisement.”

The judge reviewed testimony by several witnesses about the psychological impact of the ad on Nolan, leading to the conclusion that she had been tense and nervous in the period following the publication, but the effects dissipated with time and eventually returned to normal.

As the Appellate Division had ruled back in January, for the purposes of defamation liability falsely labelling somebody as HIV positive fell into the “loathsome disease” category, in spite of changing public attitudes about HIV/AIDS, in which some injury is presumed and the plaintiff is entitled to damages without any requirement to show financial harm. However, the amount to award is up to the discretion of the court, taking into account all the circumstances, and courts will engage in comparisons with the amounts awarded in other cases, comparing the factual situations on some rough scale of fair compensation. Judge Scuccimarra wrote, “the court credits Ms. Nolan’s assessment of a culture of competition at her job, and in the public relations field generally, that left her particularly vulnerable as a young woman to the extreme anxiety and distress she suffered upon publication of the defamatory material. The court also credits the increased anxiety she experienced when imagining how many people could potentially see the ad and make judgments about her that she feared. By all accounts, Ms. Nolan was sensitive, but had learned to hide her feelings somewhat in her two years in the competitive world of New York fashion public relations. This event credibly triggered a setback for her in her confidence and outward demeanor, but she appears to have come out of the experience. She did not lose friends or beaux, and ultimately moved on from her job and succeeded in a new venture.”

The judge decided that based on the “humiliation, mental suffering, anxiety and loss of confidence suffered by this young woman at the beginning of her career, and at the beginning of her growing independence, the vast extent to which the defamatory material was circulated – albeit for the laudatory purpose of getting public service information out to as many people as possible – and all the circumstances herein,” a reasonable compensation would be $125,000, with appropriate interest from the date of the determination of liability on June 18, 2015, which was the date when Judge Scuccamarra had first ruled in her favor prior to the state’s appeal, as well as a refund to her of the fees for filing her lawsuit in the Court of Claims.

Nolan was represented by attorney Erin E. Lloyd of the firm Lloyd Patel LLP. Assistant Attorney General Cheryl M. Rameau of the Attorney General’s Office represented the State of New York.

California Judge Issues Unprecedented Ruling in Favor of Baker Who Declined to Make Wedding Cake for Same-Sex Couple

Posted on: February 8th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

Breaking a consensus among courts that has developed over the past several years that people with religious or moral objections to same-sex weddings are not entitled to exempt their business from selling goods or services for such events, Kern County (California) Superior Court Judge David Lampe ruled on February 5, 2018, in Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Miller, BCV-17-102855, that Cathy Miller, owner of Cathy’s Creations, Inc., doing business as Tastries Bakery in Bakersfield, California, is entitled to a First Amendment exemption from complying with California’s law that bans sexual orientation discrimination by businesses.  Judge Lampe is the first to rule in favor of a business in such a case.

Miller refused to make a wedding cake for Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, who came to her bakery in August 2017 to plan for a celebration to take place in October.  They had selected a design of a cake in the display case, but since their celebration would not be until October, the transaction would be for Miller to prepare a cake specifically for their event.  “The couple did not want or request any written words or messages on the cake,” wrote the judge in his opinion.  Nonetheless, Miller refused to make it because of her religious objections to same-sex marriage, and offered to refer them to another bakery in town that was happy to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.

Eileen and Mireya filed an administrative complaint, charging Miller and her business with a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California’s law that prohibits discrimination by businesses.  The Department of Fair Employment and Housing, with is charged with enforcement of the law, filed suit against the bakery, asking the court to issue an injunction requiring that Miller’s business not refuse to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.

Miller’s defense relied on two provisions of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, one forbidding laws that abridge freedom of speech, and the other forbidding laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion.   Judge Lampe decided that this case could be resolved most easily by reference to the free speech provision, and did not render a ruling on whether the free exercise of religion clause would protect Miller in this case.

The judge accepted Miller “cake artist” argument, the same argument that Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado is making in his case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.  Miller and Phillips argue that when they are contracting to produce a cake for a specific event, they are engaging in a creative effort that communicates a message of endorsement for that event.  Under this theory of symbolic speech, they argue, requiring them to make the cake when they do not approve of the event is compelling them to voice a particular message.

They rely on past decisions in which the Supreme Court has found that government officials had violated free speech rights by compelling people to voice particular messages with which they disagree, such as the famous “flag salute” cases first decided during World War II and most recently reiterated in  Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977), in which the Court famously reversed direction on this issue, overruling its own prior precedent to find that the government cannot compel a student to recite the pledge of allegiance.  Although there are circumstances where the courts have held that government requirements did not impose a substantial burden on free speech, the compelled speech argument has taken on particular weight in several important LGBT-related rulings.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557 (1995), for example, that Massachusetts civil rights authorities could not compel the organizers of the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade to include an LGBT rights contingent in the parade with a banner proclaiming their identity.  The court said this would unconstitutionally compel the parade organizers to include a message in their event that they did not want to include.  Similarly, although more controversially, the Court later ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 US 640 (2000), that the BSA was not required to allow an openly gay man to service as an adult leader, because that would be compelling them to implicitly send a message of endorsement for homosexuality which they did not want to communicate to their members or the public.  Unlike the unanimous parade decision, however, the Court split 5-4 in the Boy Scouts case, with a minority rejecting the contention that the BSA’s free speech rights would be unconstitutionally burdened.

Despite these rulings, the Court concluded that Congress did not unconstitutionally burden the free speech rights of law schools when it required them to allow military recruiters equal access to their facilities, reasoning that the schools were free to communicate their disagreement with the anti-gay policies then followed by the Defense Department and that hosting the recruiters was not necessarily sending a message of agreement with their policies.  Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47 (2006).  And the Court concluded that a state university law school was not violating the free speech or free exercise rights of conservative Christian students when it required a Christian Legal Society chapter to allow gay students to be members if CLS wanted to be an officially recognized student organization.  Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 130 S. Ct. 2971 (2010).

It is difficult to follow a consistent thread of reasoning through these cases, each of which presents a slightly different factual context, which is why there is some suspense about how the Supreme Court is going to decide the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.  So far, however, lower courts have been unanimous in ruling that bakers, florists, photographers, videographers, non-religious wedding venues are all required to comply with public accommodations laws (in states where they exist) and provide their services and goods to same-sex couples celebrating their unions.

Judge Lampe, the first to depart from this consensus, accepted Miller’s compelled speech argument.  “No public commentator in the marketplace of ideas may be forced by law to publish any opinion with which he disagrees in the name of equal access,” wrote the judge.  “No baker may place their wares in a public display case, open their shop, and then refuse to sell because of race, religion, gender, or gender identification.”

But, he wrote, this case is different. “The difference here is that the cake in question is not yet baked.  The State is not petitioning the court to order defendants to sell a cake.  The State asks this court to compel Miller to use her talents to design and create a cake she has not yet conceived with the knowledge that her work will be displayed in celebration of a marital union her religion forbids.  For this court to force such compliance would do violence to the essentials of Free Speech guaranteed under the First Amendment.”

Judge Lampe acknowledged that there was a clash of rights here, and no matter which way he ruled, somebody would feel insulted. “The court finds that any harm here is equal to either complainants or defendant Miller, one way or the other. If anything, the harm to Miller is the greater, because it carries significant economic consequences.  When one feels injured, insulted, or angered by the words or expressive conduct of others, the harm is many times self-inflicted.  The most effective Free Speech in the family of our nation is when we speak and listen with respect.  In any case, the court cannot guarantee that no one will be harmed when the law is enforced.  Quite the contrary, when the law is enforced, someone necessarily loses.  Nevertheless, the court’s duty is to the law.  Whenever anyone exercises the right of Free Speech, someone else may be angered or hurt.  This is the nature of a free society under our Constitution.”

The judge acknowledged that the case is more difficult if it is treated as a free exercise of religion case, because the Supreme Court has ruled that neutral state laws of general application do not include within them a constitutional exemption for religious dissenters. “Whether the application of the Unruh Act in these circumstances violates the Free Exercise clause is an open question,” he wrote, “and the court does not address it because the case is sufficiently resolved upon Free Speech grounds.”

Interestingly, the judge’s approach mirrors that of U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case before the Supreme Court. In briefing and argument, the Solicitor General placed the government’s support for Jack Phillips’ right to refuse to make the wedding cake entirely on Free Speech grounds, and disclaimed taking any position on his right of free exercise of religion – despite the Trump Administration’s more general position, expressed in a “religious freedom” memorandum by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that religious free exercise rights should be treated as superior to just about any other legal claim.

Perhaps Judge Lampe’s decision is truly an outlier in the ongoing controversies stemming from the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2015 that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, but on the other hand it may be an accurate prediction of how the Supreme Court will deal with the issue, at least in cases where the goods or services at issue could be plausibly described in terms of expressive content.

Supreme Court Denies Review in Title VII Sexual Orientation Discrimination Case

Posted on: December 11th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on December 11 that it will not review a decision by a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on March 10 that a lesbian formerly employed as a security guard at a Georgia hospital could not sue for sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The full 11th Circuit denied a motion to reconsider the case on July 10, and Lambda Legal, representing plaintiff Jameka Evans, filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking review on September 7.  Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital, 850 F.3d 1248 (11th Cir. 2017), rehearing en banc denied, 7/6/2017, cert. denied, 2017 WL 4012214 (12/11/2017).

At the heart of Lambda’s petition was an urgent request to the Court to resolve a split among the lower federal courts and within the federal government itself on the question whether Title VII, which bans employment discrimination because of sex by employers that have at least 15 employees, can be interpreted to ban discrimination because of sexual orientation.

Nobody can deny that members of Congress voting on the Civil Rights Act in 1964 were not thinking about banning sexual orientation discrimination at that time, but their adoption of a general ban on sex discrimination in employment has been developed by the courts over more than half a century to encompass a wide range of discriminatory conduct reaching far beyond the simple proposition that employers cannot discriminate against an individual because she is a woman or he is a man.

Early in the history of Title VII, the Supreme Court ruled that employers could not treat people differently because of generalizations about men and women, and by the late 1970s had accepted the proposition that workplace harassment of women was a form of sex discrimination. In a key ruling in 1989, the Court held that discrimination against a woman because the employer considered her inadequately feminine in her appearance or behavior was a form of sex discrimination, under what was called the sex stereotype theory, and during the 1990s the Court ruled that a victim of workplace same-sex harassment could sue under Title VII, overruling a lower court decision that a man could sue for harassment only if he was being harassed by a woman, not by other men.  In that decision for a unanimous court, Justice Antonin Scalia opined that Title VII was not restricted to the “evils” identified by Congress in 1964, but could extend to “reasonably comparable evils” to effectuate the legislative purpose of achieving a non-discriminatory workplace.

By the early years of this century, lower federal courts had begun to accept the argument that the sex stereotype theory provided a basis to overrule earlier decisions that transgender people were not protected from discrimination under Title VII.  There is an emerging consensus among the lower federal courts, bolstered by rulings of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), that gender identity discrimination is clearly discrimination because of sex, and so the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled several years ago in a case involving a transgender woman fired from a research position at the Georgia legislature.

However, the idea that some variant of the sex stereotype theory could also expand Title VII to protect lesbian, gay or bisexual employees took longer to emerge.  It was not until 2015 that the EEOC issued a decision in the Baldwin case concluding that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, in part responding to the sex stereotype decisions in the lower federal courts.  And it was not until April 4 of this year that a federal appeals court, the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, approved that theory in a strongly worded opinion by a decisive majority of the entire 11-judge circuit bench, just a few weeks after the 11th Circuit panel ruling in the Jameka Evans case.  Writing for the 7th Circuit in the Hively  case, Judge Diane Wood said, “It would require considerable calisthenics to remove the ‘sex’ from ‘sexual orientation.’”

The 11th Circuit panel’s 2-1 decision to reject Jameka Evans’ sexual orientation discrimination claim seemed a distinct setback in light of these developments.  However, consistent with the 11th Circuit’s prior gender identity discrimination ruling, one of the judges in the majority and the dissenting judge agreed that Evans’ Title VII claim could be revived using the sex stereotype theory based on how she dressed and behaved, and sent the case back to the lower court on that basis.  The dissenting judge would have gone further and allowed Evans’ sexual orientation discrimination claim to proceed under Title VII.  The other judge in the majority strained to distinguish this case from the circuit’s prior sex stereotype ruling, and would have dismissed the case outright.

The 7th Circuit’s decision in April opened up a split among the circuit courts in light of a string of rulings by several different circuit courts over the past several decades rejecting sexual orientation discrimination claims by gay litigants, although several of those circuits have since embraced the sex stereotype theory to allow gay litigants to bring sex discrimination claims under Title VII if they could plausibly allege that they suffered discrimination because of gender nonconforming dress or conduct.  Other courts took the position that as long as the plaintiff’s sexual orientation appeared to be the main reason why they suffered discrimination, they could not bring a Title VII claim.

In recent years, several federal trial judges have approved an alternative argument: that same-sex attraction is itself a departure from widely-held stereotypes of what it means to be a man or a woman, and thus that discrimination motivated by the victim’s same-sex attraction is a form of sex discrimination under Title VII.  Within the New York-based 2nd Circuit, several trial judges have recently embraced this view, but three-judge panels of the Court of Appeals consistently rejected it.  Some progress was made last spring, however, when a three-judge panel in Christiansen v. Omnicom Group overruled a trial judge to find that a plaintiff whose sexual orientation was clearly a motivation for his discharge could bring a sex stereotype Title VII claim when he could plausibly allege behavioral nonconformity apart from his same-sex attraction.

More recently, however, the 2nd Circuit agreed to grant en banc reconsideration to the underlying question and heard oral argument in September in Zarda v. Altitude Express on whether sexual orientation discrimination, as such, is outlawed by Title VII.  That case involved a gay male plaintiff whose attempt to rely alternatively on a sex stereotype claim had been rejected by the trial judge in line with 2nd Circuit precedent.  Plaintiff Donald Zarda died while the case was pending, but it is being carried on by his Estate.  Observers at the oral argument thought that a majority of the judges of the full circuit bench were likely to follow the lead of the 7th Circuit and expand the coverage of Title VII in the 2nd Circuit (which covers Connecticut, Vermont and New York).  With argument having been held more than two months ago, a decision could be imminent.

Much of the media comment about the Zarda case, as well as the questioning by the judges, focused on the spectacle of the federal government opposing itself in court.  The EEOC filed an amicus brief in support of the Zarda Estate, and sent an attorney to argue in favor of Title VII coverage.  The Justice Department filed a brief in support of the employer, and sent an attorney to argue that the three-judge panel had correctly rejected the plaintiff’s Title VII claim.  The politics of the situation was obvious: The Trump appointees now running the Justice Department had changed the Department’s position (over the reported protest of career professionals in the Department), while the holdover majority at the EEOC was standing firm by the decision that agency made in 2015.  As Trump’s appointment of new commissioners changes the agency’s political complexion, this internal split is likely to be resolved against Title VII protection for LGBT people.

This is clearly a hot controversy on a question with national import, so why did the Supreme Court refuse to hear the case?  The Court does not customarily announce its reasons for denying review, and did not do so this time.  None of the justices dissented from the denial of review, either.

A refusal to review a case is not a decision on the merits by the Court, and does not mean that the Court approves the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision.  It is merely a determination by the Court, which exercises tight control over its docket, not to review the case.  Hypothesizing a rationale, one might note that the plaintiff here has not suffered a final dismissal of her case, having been allowed by the 11th Circuit to file an amended complaint focusing on sex stereotype instead of sexual orientation, so she can still have her day in court and there is no pressing need for the Court to resolve the circuit split in her case.  One might also note that Georgia Regional Hospital did not even appear before the 11th Circuit to argue its side of the case, and did not file papers opposing Lambda Legal’s petition until requested to do so by the Court.

On October 11, the Supreme Court Clerk’s office distributed the Lambda petition and some amicus briefs supporting it to the justices in anticipation of their conference to be held October 27. The lack of a response by Georgia Regional Hospital evidently sparked concern from some of the justices, who directed the Clerk to ask the Hospital to file a response, which was filed by Georgia’s Attorney General on November 9, and the case was then put on the agenda for the Court’s December 8 conference, at which the decision was made to deny review.  The responsive papers argued, among other things, that the Hospital had not been properly served with the Complaint that initiated the lawsuit. Those kinds of procedural issues sometimes deter the Court from taking up a case.

For whatever reason, the Court has put off deciding this issue, most likely for the remainder of the current Term. The last argument day on the Court’s calendar is April 25, and the last day for announcing decisions is June 25.  Even if the 2nd Circuit promptly issues a decision in the Zarda case, the losing party would have a few months to file a petition for Supreme Court review, followed by a month for the winner filing papers responding to the Petition.  Even if the Court then grants a petition for review, thus starting the clock running for filing merits briefs and amicus briefs, it is highly likely that once all these papers are submitted, it will be too late in the Term for the case to be argued, so it would end up on the argument calendar for Fall 2018.

Which raises the further question of who would be on the Court when this issue is finally before it? Rumors of retirements are rife, and they center on the oldest justices, pro-LGBT Ruth Bader Ginsburg and conservative but generally pro-gay Anthony Kennedy.  If President Trump gets to nominate successors to either of them, the Court’s receptivity to gay rights arguments is likely to be adversely affected.

Gender Identity Discrimination U.S. Appellate Decisions of the 21st Century (So Far)

Posted on: October 18th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

I am giving a talk at NY Law School under the auspices of the Justice Action Center tomorrow, Oct. 19, about the current controversy over Title IX and the rights of transgender students.  I’ve prepared a case table to distribute at the talk and thought I would post it here as a useful reference.  The table covers U.S. appellate rulings from 2000 to date on gender identity discrimination claims.  I count decisions by the EEOC on appeal from agency determinations to be appellate decisions for purposes of this table.  This table does not include prisoner litigation, benefits claims, name change claims, etc.  The focus is on Title IX, Title VII, other federal sex discrimination laws, and the Equal Protection Clause.

Transgender [Gender Identity] Discrimination Law – Important 21st Century Appellate Rulings:

 

Barnes v. City of Cincinnati, 401 F.3d 729 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1003 (2005) (allowing Title VII sex discrimination claim by transgender woman police officer discharged after transitioning).

 

Chavez v. Credit Nation Auto Sales LLC, 641 Fed.Appx. 883 (11th Cir. 2016) (“Sex discrimination [under Title VII] includes discrimination against a transgender person for gender nonconformity.”)

 

Doe v. Brockton School Committee, 2000 WL 33342399 (Mass. App. Ct. 2000) (unofficially published disposition) (junior high school administration preliminarily enjoined from barring transgender student from school based on student’s refusal to wear gender-appropriate clothing as defined by school).

 

Etsitty v. Utah Transit Auth., 502 F.3d 1215 (10th Cir. 2007) (gender identity is not a suspect classification for Equal Protection purposes).

 

Fowlkes v. Ironworkers Local 40, 790 F.3d 378 (2nd Cir. 2015) (Union violates duty of fair representation under National Labor Relations Act by discriminating against transgender woman in operation of hiring hall program).

 

G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 822 F.3d 709 (4th Cir. 2016), petition for certiorari pending (district court must defer to DOE/DOJ interpretation of Title IX sex discrimination provision allowing transgender high school student to use bathroom facilities consistent with his gender identity, because regulation is ambiguous and agency interpretation is reasonable). See also 136 S. Ct. 2442 (U.S. Supreme Ct., August 3, 2016), granting stay of preliminary injunction pending a decision on petition for certiorari, or if such petition is granted, pending ultimate disposition of appeal.

 

Glenn v. Brumby, 663 F.3d 1312 (11th Cir. 2011) (discrimination against a transgender woman because of her gender identity was sex discrimination for purposes of a 14th Amendment equal protection claim, invoking heightened scrutiny).

 

Hispanic Aids Forum v. Estate of Bruno, 16 A.D.3d 294 (N.Y. Appellate Division, 1st Dept. 2005) (landlord did not violate NYC Human Rights Law prohibition of gender identity discrimination by insisting that transgender patrons of commercial tenant use public hallway restrooms consistent with their biological sex rather than their gender identity).

 

Hunter v. United Parcel Service, 697 F.3d 697 (8th Cir. 2012) (granting summary judgment to employer on transgender employee’s Title VII claim because the employer’s decision-maker was unaware of the plaintiff’s gender identity and had a non-discriminatory reason for the discharge).

 

Lusardi v. McHugh, 2015 WL 1607756 (EEOC, April 1, 2015) (employer must allow a transgender employee to use the restroom consistent with the employee’s gender identity).

 

Macy v. Holder, 2012 WL 1435995 (EEOC 2012) (gender identity discrimination claims are actionable under Title VII as sex discrimination claims).

 

Rosa v. Park West Bank & Trust Co., 214 F.3d 213 (1st Cir. 2000) (bank discrimination against a transgender woman violates sex discrimination provision of federal Fair Credit Act).

 

Schwenk v. Hartford, 204 F.3d 1187 (9th Cir. 2000) (The Violence against Women Act [VAWA] covers violence against transgender women; the Act was subsequently amended to clarify that it covers violence against persons because of their gender identity).

 

Smith v. City of Salem, Ohio, 378 F.2d 566 (6th Cir. 2004) (allowing Title VII sex discrimination claim and equal protection claim [heightened scrutiny] by a transgender woman discharged as firefighter after transitioning).

Federal Court Issues Nationwide Injunction to Stop Federal Enforcement of Title IX in Gender Identity Cases

Posted on: August 22nd, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

A federal district judge in Wichita Falls, Texas, has issued a “nationwide preliminary injunction” against the Obama Administration’s enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act to require schools to allow transgender students to use restroom facilities consistent with their gender identity. Judge Reed O’Connor’s August 22 ruling, State of Texas v. United States of America, Civ. Action No. 7:16-cv-00054-O (N.D. Texas), is directed specifically at a “Dear Colleague” letter dated May 13, 2016, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Education (DOE) jointly sent to all the nation’s schools subject to Title IX, advising them of how the government was now interpreting federal statutes forbidding discrimination “because of sex.”  The letter advised recipients that failure to allow transgender students’ access to facilities consistent with their gender identity would violate Title IX, endangering their eligibility for funding from the DOE.

The May 13 letter was sent out shortly after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, had ruled in April that this interpretation by the Administration, previously stated in filings in a Virginia lawsuit, should be deferred to by the federal courts.  G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 822 F.3d 709.    That lawsuit is about the right of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, to use boys’ restroom facilities at his Gloucester County, Virginia, high school.  The ACLU had filed the case on Grimm’s behalf after the school district adopted a rule forbidding students from using single-sex-designated facilities inconsistent with their “biological sex” as identified on their birth certificates, a rule similar to that adopted by North Carolina in its notorious H.B.2, which is itself now the subject of several lawsuits in the federal district courts in that state.  After the 4th Circuit ruled, the federal district judge hearing that case, Robert Doumar, issued a preliminary injunction requiring that Grimm be allowed access to the boys’ restrooms while the case is pending, and both Judge Doumar and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stay that injunction.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-3 to grant the school district’s request for a stay on August 3.  Judge O’Connor prominently mentioned the Supreme Court’s action in his opinion as helping to justify issuing his preliminary injunction, commenting that the case presents a question that the Supreme Court may be resolving this term.

Underlying this and related lawsuits is the Obama Administration’s determination that federal laws banning sex discrimination should be broadly interpreted to ban discrimination because of gender identity or sexual orientation. The Administration adopted this position officially in a series of rulings by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency charged with enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.  This interpretation was in line with prior decisions by several federal circuit courts, ruling in cases that had been brought by individual transgender plaintiffs to challenge discrimination under the Violence against Women Act (VAWA), the Fair Credit Act (FCA), and Title VII.  These are all “remedial statutes” that traditionally should receive a liberal interpretation in order to achieve the policy goal of eliminating discrimination because of sex in areas subject to federal legislation.  Although the EEOC and other federal agencies had rejected this broad interpretation repeatedly from the 1960s onward, transgender people began to make progress in the courts after the Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that sex-stereotyping by employers – disadvantaging employees because of their failure to comply with the employer’s stereotyped view of how men and women should act, groom and dress – could be considered evidence of sex discrimination, in the case of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.  While some of these courts continue to reject the view that gender identity discrimination, as such, is automatically illegal under these statutes, they have applied the sex-stereotype theory to uphold lawsuits by individual transgender plaintiffs, especially those who are discharged in response to their announcement that they will be transitioning or when they begin their transition process by dressing in their desired gender.

The Education Department built on this growing body of court rulings, as well as on the EEOC’s rulings, when it became involved in cases where transgender students were litigating over restroom and locker room access. DOE first expressed this view formally in a letter it sent in connection with a lawsuit against an Illinois school district, participated in negotiating a settlement in that case under which the school district opened up restroom access, and then began to take a more active approach as more lawsuits emerged.  By earlier this year DOE and DOJ were ready to push the issue nationwide after the 4th Circuit’s ruling marked the first federal appellate acceptance of the argument that this was a reasonable interpretation of the existing regulation that allows school districts to provide separate facilities for boys and girls, so long as the facilities are comparable.  DOE/DOJ argue that because the regulation does not specifically state how to resolve access issues for transgender students, it is ambiguous on the point and thus susceptible to a reasonable interpretation that is consistent with the EEOC’s position on workplace discrimination and the rulings that have emerged from the federal courts under other sex discrimination statutes.  Under a Supreme Court precedent, agency interpretations of ambiguous regulations should receive deference from the courts if those interpretations are reasonable.

The May 13 letter provoked consternation among officials in many states, most prominently Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton took the lead in forming a coalition of about a dozen states to file this joint lawsuit challenging the DOE/DOJ position. Paxton aimed to bring the case in the federal court in Wichita Falls before Judge O’Connor, an appointee of George W. Bush who had previously issued a nationwide injunction against the Obama Administration’s policy of deferring deportation of undocumented residents without criminal records and had also ruled to block an Obama Administration interpretation of the Family and Medical Leave Act favoring family leave for gay employees to care for same-sex partners.  Paxton found a small school district in north Texas, Harrold Independent School District, which did not have any transgender students but nonetheless adopted a restrictive restroom access policy, to be a co-plaintiff in the case in order justify filing it in the Wichita Falls court.  Shortly after Paxton filed this case, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson put together another coalition of nine states to file a similar lawsuit in the federal district court in Nebraska early in July.

These cases rely heavily on an argument that was first proposed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the anti-gay “Christian” public interest law firm, in a lawsuit it brought in May on behalf of some parents and students challenging the settlement of the Illinois case, and a “copycat” lawsuit filed by ADF in North Carolina. The plaintiffs argue that the DOE/DOJ position is not merely an “interpretation” of existing statutory and regulatory requirements under Title IX, but rather is a new “legislative rule,” imposing legal obligations and liabilities on school districts.  As such, they argue, it cannot simply be adopted in a “guidance” or “letter” but must go through the formal process for adopting new regulations under the Administrative Procedure Act. This would require the publication of the proposed rule in the Federal Register, after which interested parties could submit written comments, perhaps one or more public hearings being held around the country to receive more feedback from interested parties, and then publication of a final rule, which would be subject to judicial review in a case filed in a U.S. Court of Appeals.  (This is referred to as the “notice and comment” process.) Neither DOE nor any other agency that has adopted this new interpretation of “sex discrimination” has gone through this administrative rulemaking process.  Additionally, of course, the plaintiffs contend that this new rule is not a legitimate interpretation of Title IX, because Congress did not contemplate this application of the law when it was enacted in the 1970s.

In his August 22 ruling, O’Connor concluded that the plaintiffs met their burden to show that they would likely succeed on the merits of their claim, a necessary finding to support a preliminary injunction. As part of this ruling, he rejected the 4th Circuit’s conclusion that the existing statute and regulations are ambiguous and thus subject to administrative interpretation.  He found it clear based on legislative history that Congress was not contemplating outlawing gender identity discrimination when it passed sex discrimination laws, and that the existing regulation allowing schools to provide separate facilities for boys and girls was intended to protect student privacy against being exposed in circumstances of undress to students of the opposite sex.  In the absence of ambiguity, he found, existing precedents do not require the courts to defer to the agency’s interpretation.  He found that the other prerequisites for injunctive relief had been met, because he concluded that if the enforcement was not enjoined, school districts would be put to the burden of either changing their facilities access policies or potentially losing federal money.  He rejected the government’s argument that the lack of any imminent enforcement activity in the plaintiff states made this purely hypothetical.  After all, the federal government has affirmatively sued North Carolina to enjoin enforcement of the facilities access restrictions in H.B.2.

Much of O’Connor’s decision focuses on the question whether the plaintiffs had standing to challenge the DOE/DOJ guidance in a district court proceeding and whether the court had jurisdiction over the challenge. He found support for his ruling on these points in a recent decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (which has appellate jurisdiction over cases from Texas) in a lawsuit that Texas brought against the EEOC, challenging a “guidance” about employer consideration of applicant arrest records in deciding whether to hire people.  Texas v. EEOC, 2016 WL 3524242.  Noting disparate enforcement of criminal laws against people of color, the EEOC took the position that reliance on arrest records has a disparate impact on people of color and thus potentially violates Title VII.  A 5th Circuit panel divided 2-1 in determining that the state had standing to maintain the lawsuit and that the district court had jurisdiction to rule on the case.   This suggests the likelihood that the Administration may have difficulty persuading the 5th Circuit to overrule O’Connor’s preliminary injunction on procedural grounds if it seeks to appeal the August 22 ruling.

The Administration argued in this case that any preliminary injunction by O’Connor should be narrowed geographically to the states in the 5th Circuit, even though co-plaintiffs included states in several other circuits, but O’Connor rejected this argument, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the injunction should be nationwide.  He emphasized the regulation allowing schools to have sex-segregated restroom facilities.  “As the separate facilities provision in Section 106.33 is permissive,” he wrote, “states that authorize schools to define sex to include gender identity for purposes of providing separate restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities will not be impacted” by the injunction.  “Those states who do not want to be covered by this injunction can easily avoid doing so by state law that recognized the permissive nature” of the regulation.  “It therefore only applies to those states whose laws direct separation.  However, an injunction should not unnecessarily interfere with litigation currently pending before other federal courts on this subject regardless of state law.  As such, the parties should file a pleading describing those cases so the Court can appropriately narrow the scope if appropriate.”  This reference is directed mainly to the plethora of lawsuits pending in North Carolina, in which the federal government is contending that H.B.2 violates Title IX and Title VII.