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Federal Appeals Court Upholds Constructive Discharge of Teacher Who Mis-Gendered Trans Students

Posted on: April 11th, 2023 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three judge panel of the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on April 7 that the Brownsburg (Indiana) Community School Corporation did not violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it told a music teacher at the district’s high school that if he refused to comply with the district’s policy regarding names and pronouns for transgender students he should quit or would be fired.  Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corp., 2023 WL 2821871, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 8328 (7th Cir., April 7, 2023).

The teacher, John M. Kluge, protested the policy on religious grounds when it was first announced. He and three other teachers approached the high school’s principal, Dr. Bret Daghe, presenting a seven-page letter expressing their religious objections to “transgenderism,” arguing that the school “should not treat gender dysphoria as a protected status, and urged the school not to require teachers to refer to transgender students by the names or pronouns that the teachers deemed inconsistent with the students’ sex recorded at birth,” wrote Circuit Judge Ilana Rovner in her opinion for the majority of the panel.

The school maintained an official student database, called “Power-School,” which included names and gender markers, preferred pronouns and other data.  Kluge claims that Dr. Daghe told the teachers that he had resisted pressure to change the students’ names in Power-School, but that he “would make this change if it would resolve the teachers’ concerns regarding how to address transgender students,” Kluge later testified.  The other three teachers who had signed Kluge’s letter agreed to use the names and pronouns as shown in the Power-School database, but Kluge hanged tough, insisting that he had a right to assert his religious views and refuse to comply.  Somehow, Kluge walked away from the meeting thinking that he had Dr. Daghe’s permission to continue using students’ “legal names” and that “we would not be promoting transgenderism in our school.”

He was mistaken, according to Dr. Daghe, as the district leadership decided to require teachers to use the PowerSchool names and pronouns.  Transgender students could change their names and pronouns in PowerSchool by presenting two letters, one from a parent and one from a healthcare professional, regarding the need for changes.  Assistant Superintendent Dr. Kathryn Jessup explained in testimony that this fulfilled two goals: it established a clear rule for faculty members to follow, and “it afforded dignity and showed empathy toward transgender students who were considering or in the process of gender transition.”  The leadership considered it “important for transgender students to receive, like any other student, respect and affirmation of their preferred identity, provided they go through the required and reasonable channels of receiving and providing proof of parental permission and a healthcare professional’s approval.”

This policy was communicated to teachers by a guidance counselor using emails at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year, and Kluge was notified that that he would have two transgender students in his music classes.  He expressed shock, and interpreted the emails as being “permissive, not mandatory,” determined to use only “legal names” for his students.  He met with Dr. Daghe, once again raising his religious objections.  After consulting the Superintendent of Schools, Daghe told Kluge that he had three options:  comply with the policy, resign, or be suspended pending termination.  When he refused either to comply or resign, he was suspended and sent home.  When he came back to the school a few days later to meet with administrators, he was presented with a written directive requiring him to state either that he would or would not comply with the school’s rule.

Kluge responded by proposing an “accommodation” to his religious beliefs.  He wanted to be allowed to address all students by their last names and not use pronouns, and to have somebody else hand out the gender-specific uniforms for students in the orchestra.  This was agreed to, but in the long run, it didn’t work out because it became obvious to the students what was going on.  The transgender students felt demeaned and many of their classmates were upset as well.  Other teachers expressed concern.  Kluge slipped up at times and was inconsistent in his naming and pronoun practices.  The faculty advisor to the school’s “Equality Alliance Club” reported to Dr. Daghe that complaints about Kluge were frequently voiced at club meetings.  Parents of transgender students complained to the school in writing as well.  Non-transgender students reported that the way Kluge was acting was making them uncomfortable.  One transgender student was so upset that he ended up withdrawing from the orchestra program entirely.

This summary of what happened drastically truncates the lengthy and detailed narrative provided by Judge Rovner in her opinion, a factual record that led a majority of the appellate panel to conclude that the school had a legitimate basis to go back to Kluge at the end of the school year and inform him that the “accommodation” was not working, and that he would have to resign or he would be fired.  He resigned under protest and filed this lawsuit

Represented by lawyers from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative religious law firm, Kluge sued the Brownsburg school corporation in the Indiana federal district court, claiming violations of the Constitution and invoking the statutory ban on religious discrimination under Title VII.  District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson dismissed Kluge’s constitutional claims and various other state law claims, and ruled against Kluge’s claim that his forced resignation violated his rights under Title VII, either as outright discrimination or as retaliation for his protest against the school’s policy.

Kluge appealed only his Title VII discrimination and retaliation claims, so the 7th Circuit decision does not address the constitutional claims.   Title VII makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee because of his religion, and requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” an employee’s religious beliefs and practices.  The duty of reasonable accommodation is limited by Supreme Court precedents, however.  An accommodation that would impose an “undue hardship” on the employer’s business cannot be required.  The statute also prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee for engaging in activity protected under the statute.

The district court concluded that Kluge established a prima facie case of failure to accommodate his religious belief, but that the school had proven that Kluge’s naming/pronoun accommodation imposed an “undue hardship” on the school’s “business,” and the majority of the 7th Circuit panel agreed.

“As a public school,” wrote Judge Rovner, “Brownsburg’s ‘business’ is its constitutional and statutory charge to educate all students who enter its doors.”  The court described students as a “captive audience” because education is “compulsory.”  Students must attend public school unless their parents are willing to pay for private schools or make the time commitment for home schooling.  The court quoted from an earlier decision “noted in the First Amendment context”: “Children who attend school because they must ought not be subject to teachers’ idiosyncratic perspectives.”  It should be up to the politically accountable school boards (or in the case of this school district, the elected trustees of the education corporation), not the teachers, to determine issues about what goes on in the classrooms.  “At least the board’s views can be debated openly,” the court had written, “and the people may choose to elect persons committed to neutrality on contentious issues.  The Constitution does not entitle teachers to present personal views to captive audiences against the instructions of elected officials.”

Here, the school claimed that Kluge’s naming practices, including the so-called last name accommodation, had imposed two undue hardships on the school: first, it “frustrated” the school’s efforts to “educate all students” because it “negatively impacted students and the learning environment for transgender students and other students as well”; and second, it exposed the school district to potential loss of federal funding and damages if transgender students filed discrimination claims with the federal government under Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination because of sex against students at schools that receive federal funds.  At the time of this lawsuit, the 7th Circuit had recently ruled in a lawsuit by a transgender boy excluded from the boys’ restrooms in another Indiana school district, holding that this violated Title IX.  Thus, 7th Circuit precedent supported the school’s concern about potential liability if it allowed Kluge to continue his contested practices.

Judge Rovner declared, “A practice that indisputedly caused emotional harm to students and disruptions to the learning environment is an undue hardship to a school as a matter of law.”  The court also found that there was no other accommodation available in this case, because Kluge was the school’s only music teacher, so students could not be transferred to another classroom to be able to participate in the music program without having to deal with Kluge (and, the court commented, “if we assume that transfer to another classroom would not be equally stigmatizing”).

As to Kluge’s retaliation claim, the court found that he “failed to produce evidence that established a but-for causal link between protected activity and the adverse action, and so failed to make out a prima facie case of retaliation.”  The court found Kluge’s briefing on this point insufficient, failing to cite relevant evidence for his claim, for example, that he was subjected to a “hostile environment” because of his religious beliefs after he protested the naming policy during the summer of 2017.  And, of course, the school’s “undue hardship” defense would counter any liability for retaliation, because the court found that the school was justified in revoking the “accommodation” agreement, having correctly concluded that it was not working.

Judge Michael Brennan agreed with the majority of the panel on the retaliation claim, but he dissented from the ruling on direct Title VII liability, arguing that the religious accommodation claim “comes down to a fact-intensive inquiry: Did the School District demonstrate that Kluge’s gender-neutral accommodation of calling all student by only their last name causes undue hardship – that is, more than a de minimis cost?  The majority opinion says ‘yes,’ but it sidesteps Kluge’s countervailing evidence, failed to construe the record in his favor, and overlooks credibility issues on both sides, which are reserved for resolution by the factfinder.”  Brennan argued that there should have been a trial to determine whether Kluge’s “accommodation” had actually posed an undue hardship.  Judge Rovner’s opinion sharply disputed this, finding the record overwhelming supported the school’s decision to end the “accommodation agreement.”

This panel opinion may not be the last word on Kluge’s discrimination claim.  ADF has a practice of appealing any adverse ruling as far as they can take it, since it is a policy-driven organization that is dedicated to establishing maximum religious freedom through the courts.

This three-judge panel was made up entirely of judges appointed by Republican presidents.  Judge Rovner was appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, while both Judge Brennan and the other judge on the panel, Amy St. Eve, were appointed by President Trump.  ADF may seek reconsideration by the full ten-judge 7th Circuit bench, which tips 7-3 in Republican appointees. (There is one vacancy in this Circuit, and President Biden has not announced a nomination for the vacant seat.)

ADF might alternatively directly seek Supreme Court review.  This term the Court is reconsidering the issue of religious accommodation in another case.  If ADF were to file a petition with the Court, is likely that the Court would delay deciding whether to grant the petition until it releases an opinion in the other case and if, as widely expected, the Court’s decision strengthens the accommodation requirement, to then send this case back to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of the new standard.

 

Supreme Court May Address Parental Presumption for Children of Married Lesbians This Term

Posted on: November 26th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

Now that there is a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, it is possible that the Court will begin a process of cutting back on marriage equality.  This is at least one interpretation of the Court’s request for additional briefing on a cert petition filed by the state of Indiana in Box v. Henderson, No. 19-1385, seeking review of the 7th Circuit’s January 17, 2020, decision in Henderson v. Box, 947 F.3d 482, in which the court of appeals applied the Supreme Court’s rulings in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) and Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075 (2017), to rule that a state must apply the parental presumption regarding newborn children regardless of the sex of the birth mother’s spouse, if it always applies the presumption when the birth mother’s spouse is male.

When the petition was filed with the Court in June, the Respondents (same-sex mothers challenging the state’s policy) waived their right to file a response, apparently assuming that the Court would not be interested in revisiting an issue that it had decided per curiam with only three dissenting votes as recently as June 2017.   The petition was circulated to the justices for their conference of September 29, which would be held the week after the death on September 18 of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was part of the Pavan v. Smith majority.  Another member of that majority who is no longer on the Court is Anthony M. Kennedy, whose retirement led to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment.  By the time the Court was to hold its conference on  the 29th, it was clear that Trump would nominate a conservative replacement for Ginsburg and that the Senate would rush to confirm the nominee to fulfil Trump’s goal to ensure a 6-3 Republican conservative majority on the Court in case he sought to contest adverse election results.

Evidently the Box v. Henderson petition, lacking a responsive filing, caught the eyes of one or more of the conservative justices, who had the Clerk of the Court send a request to the plaintiffs to file a responding brief, which was filed on November 10.  On November 23, the state of Indiana filed a Reply brief, which provided a news hook for media to report on November 24 that the new conservative majority might take up the case as a vehicle to cut back on marriage equality by holding that a state may decide that it is not required to presume that the wife of a birth mother is the other parent for purposes of officially recording the birth.

An argument that has been persuasive to lower courts, apart from the “equal treatment” for same-sex marriages statements in Obergefell and Pavan, is that states have applied the presumption in favor of the husbands of birth mothers even when it was clear that the husband was not the biological father, as for example when donor sperm was used to inseminate the wife with the husband’s consent, or when the husband and wife were geographically separated when the wife became pregnant.  Thus, under existing policies in many states, the parental presumption has not been limited to cases in which it was rational to assume that the birth mother’s husband was the child’s biological father.  In this connection, even if Chief Justice Roberts, part of the per curiam majority in Pavan despite his dissent in Obergefell, sticks with his vote in Pavan, there are now five conservatives to vote the other way, two of whom joined Justice Neil Gorsuch’s dissent in Pavan asserting that the issue was not decided simply on the basis of Obergefell.

With the filing of the state’s reply brief, the Petition has been redistributed for the Court’s conference of December 11.  Sometimes the Court rolls over cert Petitions for many conferences before reaching a decision whether to grant review.  If the Court grants certiorari before the end of January, the case would likely be argued during the current term and decided by the end of June. A later grant would most likely be argued during the October 2021 Term.

Counsel listed on the Respondents’ Brief in Opposition include Karen Celestino-Horseman (Counsel of Record) of Austin & Jones, P.C., Indianapolis; attorneys from the National Center for Lesbian Rights (Catherine Sakimura, Shannon Minter, and Christopher Stoll), San Francisco; Douglas Hallward-Driemeier of Ropes & Gray LLP, Washington (who was one of the oral advocates in the Obergefell case); Joshua E. Goldstein, also of Ropes & Gray LLP, Boston office; Raymond L. Faust, of Norris Choplin Schroeder LLP, Indianapolis, William R. Groth of Vlink Law Firm LLC, Indianapolis; and Richard Andrew Mann and Megal L. Gehring, of Mann Law, P.C., Indianapolis.  Several same-sex couples joined in this case, resulting in several Indianapolis law firms being involved.

Unanimous Federal Appeals Court Rules Indiana Must List Lesbian Mothers on Birth Certificates

Posted on: January 20th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on January 17, 2020, in Henderson v. Box, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1559, 2019 WL 255305, that the state of Indiana must recognize the same-sex spouses of women who give birth as mothers, who should be listed on the birth certificates for their children.  Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote the opinion for the court.

The timing of this appeal made the outcome unsurprising.  In June and December 2016, District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt issued rulings in this case, ultimately holding unconstitutional various Indiana statutes upon which the state relied in refusing to list the same-sex spouses on their children’s birth certificates.  See Henderson v. Adams, 209 F. Supp. 3d 1059 (S.D. Ind., June 30, 2016); Henderson v. Adams, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 180330, 2016 WL 7492478 (S.D. Ind., Dec. 30, 2016).  Judge Pratt relied on her reading of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), which ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marry and their marriages must be treated the same for all purposes as the marriages of different-sex couples.  Just six months after Judge Pratt’s last ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court stated the same conclusion in Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075 (2017), ruling that Arkansas could not refuse to list such parents on birth certificates.

In light of the Pavan ruling, one would have thought that Indiana would desist from appealing Judge Pratt’s ruling to the 7th Circuit.  But the state’s lawyers insisted that the state had a right to make the initial birth certificate of a child a record solely of the biological parents of the child, so long as they would allow same-sex spouses to seek an amended birth certificate at a later date.  Judge Pratt had rejected this argument, and the Supreme Court’s Pavan ruling vindicated her reading of the Obergefell decision’s implications for birth certificates.

Describing Judge Pratt’s first ruling, issued on June 30, 2016, Judge Easterbrook wrote, “The district court issued an injunction requiring Indiana to treat children born into female-female marriages as having two female parents, who under the injunction must be listed on the birth certificate.  Because Indiana lists only two parents on a birth certificate, this effectively prevents the state from treating as a parent a man who provided the sperm, while it requires the identification as parent of one spouse who provided neither sperm nor egg.”  Pratt concluded that this was required by Obergefell, which, Easterbrook noted, was confirmed by the Supreme Court in Pavan.

Indiana argued on this appeal that “Obergefell and Pavan do not control,” explained Easterbrook.  “In its view, birth certificates in Indiana follow biology rather than marital status.  The state insists that a wife in an opposite-sex marriage who conceives a child through artificial insemination must identify, as the father, not her husband but the sperm donor.”

By contrast, the plaintiffs argued that Indiana’s statute is status-based, not based on biology, and in fact heterosexually-married women who give birth to children conceived through donor insemination routinely designate their husbands, contrary to Indiana’s rather strange argument that the worksheet the women are given to complete in order to get the birth certificate is intended to elicit the identity of the child’s biological father – in that case, the sperm donor.  Mothers are asked to name the “father” of their child, and the state contended that this means they should be listing the sperm donor if the child was conceived through donor insemination.

That the argument is complete nonsense certainly did not help the state’s case.  Indeed, the semantic games that attorneys from the Office of the Attorney General were playing makes for a curious opinion by Easterbrook, whose tone projects some bemusement.  “The district judge thought the state’s account of mothers’ behavior to be implausible,” he wrote.  “Some mothers filling in the form may think that ‘husband’ and ‘father’ mean the same thing.  Others may name their husbands for social reasons, no matter what the form tells them to do.  Indiana contends that it is not responsible for private decisions, and that may well be so – but it is responsible for the text of Indiana Code Section 31-14-7-1(1), which establishes a presumption that applies to opposite-sex marriages but not same-sex marriages.”  This is the presumption that the husband of a married woman who gives birth is the father of her child.  “Opposite-sex couples can have their names on children’s birth certificates without going through adoption; same-sex couples cannot.  Nothing about the birth worksheet changes that rule.”

The state argued that of course the same-sex spouse can then adopt the child and be listed on an amended birth certificate.  Thus, the same-sex couple will have a birth certificate naming both of them, and the state will retain on file the original birth certificate documenting the child’s biological parentage.  But why should a married same-sex couple, entitled under the Constitution to have their marriage treated the same as a different-sex marriage, have to go through an adoption to get a proper birth certificate?

The lawsuit also sought the trial court’s declaration that the children of the two couples who brought the suit were born “in wedlock,” not “out of wedlock” as a literal interpretation of the state’s statutes would hold.  Yet again, the state’s insistence on perpetuating the former legal regime was rejected.

Judge Easterbrook identified another way that the statutes on the books fail to account for reality. What if the child of a same-sex female couple has two “biological” mothers?  Easterbrook observed that “Indiana’s current statutory system fails to acknowledge the possibility that the wife of a birth mother also is a biological mother.  One set of plaintiffs in this suit shows this.  Lisa Philips-Stackman is the birth mother of L.J.P.-S., but Jackie Philips-Stackman, Lisa’s wife, was the egg donor.  Thus Jackie is both L.J.P.-S.’s biological mother and the spouse of L.J.P.-S.’s birth mother.  There is also a third biological parent (the sperm donor), but Indiana limits to two the number of parents it will record.”

“We agree with the district court,” wrote Easterbrook, “that, after Obergefell and Pavan, a state cannot presume that a husband is the father of a child born in wedlock, while denying an equivalent presumption to parents in same-sex marriages.”  Because the current statute does that, he continued, “its operation was properly enjoined.”

However, the court of appeals found that Judge Pratt went too far when she declared that all the relevant statutory provisions are invalid in their entirety and forbade their operation “across the board,” because “some parts of these statutes have a proper application.”  For example, the provision that allows for somebody who is not a husband to the birth mother to be identified as the biological father as a result of genetic testing, and, for another example, the provision that “provides that a child is born in wedlock if the parents attempted to marry each other but a technical defect prevented the marriage from being valid.”  Easterbrook asserted that neither of these provisions violated the constitution.  “A remedy must not be broader than the legal justification for its entry, so the order in this suit must be revised,” he wrote.

“The district court’s order requiring Indiana to recognize the children of these plaintiffs as legitimate children, born in wedlock, and to identify both wives in each union as parents, is affirmed,” the court concluded.  “The injunction and declaratory judgment are affirmed to the extent they provide that the presumption in Indiana Code Sec. 31-14-7-1(1) violates the Constitution.”

Circuit Judge Easterbrook was appointed by Ronald Reagan, as was Judge Joel Flaum.  The third judge on the panel, Diane Sykes, was appointed by George W. Bush.  Thus, the ruling is the work of a panel consisting entirely of judicial conservatives appointed by Republican presidents.  The clear holding of Pavan v. Smith was such that they could not honestly rule otherwise, regardless of their personal views about same-sex marriage and parentage.  After all, in Pavan the Supreme Court rejected exactly the same arguments that Indiana was making in this case.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs include Karen Celestino-Horseman, Raymond L. Faust, Megan L. Gehring, Richard Andrew Mann, and William R. Groth, all practicing in Indianapolis in several different law firms.  Amicus briefs were filed for a variety of groups by pro bono attorneys from Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., representing the Family Equality Council, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and 49 Professors of Family Law.

7th Circuit Ruling Creates Federal Precedent to Protect Older Gays in Residential Facilities

Posted on: August 27th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on August 27 that a lesbian resident of a rental facility for seniors in Illinois may seek to hold the management of the facility accountable for severe harassment against her by other residents due to her sexual orientation.  The ruling reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, a George W. Bush appointee, to dismiss her case.  The court of appeals decision marks an important appellate precedent for the protection of older LGBT people living in residential facilities.  The case is Wetzel v Glen St. Andrew Living Community, LLC, Case No. 17-1322 (7th Cir., Aug. 27, 2018).

Marsha Wetzel moved into Glen St. Andrew Living Community after her partner of 30 years died. Under the Tenant’s Agreement she signed with the facility, she is entitled to a private apartment, three meals daily served in a central location, access to a community room, and use of laundry facilities.  The agreement requires her (and all other tenants under their agreements) to refrain from “activity that [St. Andrew] determines unreasonably interferes with the peaceful use and enjoyment of the community by other tenants” or that is “a direct threat to the health and safety of other individuals.”  The Agreement also authorizes the facility to bring eviction proceedings against a tenant who violates the Agreement.

Wetzel was not closeted, speaking openly with staff and other residents about her sexual orientation when she moved in. “She was met with intolerance from many of them,” wrote Chief Judge Diane Wood in summarizing the allegations in Wetzel’s Complaint.  For purposes of ruling on the facility’s motion to dismiss her case, the court’s role is to accept Wetzel’s allegations as true and to decide whether those allegations, if proved at trial, would constitute a violation of her rights under the Fair Housing Act, which forbids discrimination because of sex.

Judge Wood’s summary of the Complaint makes horrific reading. “Beginning a few months after Wetzel moved to St. Andrew and continuing at least until she filed this suit (a 15-month period), residents repeatedly berated her for being a ‘fucking dyke,’ ‘fucking faggot,’ and ‘homosexual bitch.’  One resident, Robert Herr, told Wetzel that he reveled in the memory of the Orlando massacre at the Pulse nightclub, derided Wetzel’s son for being a ‘homosexual-raised faggot,’ and threatened to ‘rip [Wetzel’s] tits off.’  Herr was the primary, but not sole, culprit.  Elizabeth Rivera told Wetzel that ‘homosexuals will burn in hell.’”

The Complaint also describes incidents of physical abuse, focused on knocking Wetzel off the motorized scooter she depends upon to get around, spitting at her, and striking her from behind accompanied by anti-gay epithets.

When she complained to the staff, there was a “brief respite,” but soon the misconduct continued. Indeed, Judge Wood wrote, “the management defendants otherwise were apathetic.  They told Wetzel not to worry about the harassment, dismissed the conduct as accidental, denied Wetzel’s accounts, and branded her a liar.”  Furthermore, Wetzel alleges, they retaliated against her by relegating her “to a less desirable dining room location” after she notified them about one incident of physical harassment by another resident, “barred her from the lobby except to get coffee” and “halted her cleaning services, thus depriving her of access to areas specifically protected in the Agreement.”  They also false accused her of smoking in her room and one St. Andrews worker “slapped her across the face” when she denied having violated the no-smoking rule.

In what sounds like a transparent attempt to set her up for an eviction for non-payment, they failed to send her the customary rent-due notice sent to all tenants, but she remembered to pay on time, “but she had to pry a receipt from management.”

As a result of these management responses, Wetzel sharply curtailed her activities outside her room, staying away from common spaces including the dining room, and finally, fed up with this mistreatment, filed this lawsuit, alleging violations of the FHA as well as state laws. (Illinois laws forbid sexual orientation discrimination in housing and public accommodations.)

The facility did not argue in defense that the FHA does not ban sexual orientation discrimination. They could hardly raise such an argument in the 7th Circuit, because that court was the first appellate court to rule that sexual orientation claims are a subset of sex discrimination claims, under the similar anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Instead, the defendant argued that the landlord cannot be held liable for discrimination by other tenants under the FHA without a showing of discriminatory animus by the landlord. Furthermore, it argued that FHA deals with refusals to rent, and does not cover “post-acquisition harassment claims.”  In other words, as Judge Wood explained, once an apartment has been rented, the defendant argued that the FHA is no longer relevant to claims brought by “a tenant already occupying her home.”  The defendant countered Wetzel’s retaliation claim by arguing, once again, that it lacked an allegation that defendants were motivated by discriminatory animus.

District Judge Der-Yeghiayan agreed with the defendants’ FHA arguments and dismissed the case. The dismissal of the FHA claim removed the basis for federal jurisdiction, and the judge declined to keep the state claims alive, dismissing them for lack of jurisdiction, although federal courts do have discretion to continue to consider state law claims in such cases.

Writing for the appeals court, Judge Wood relied on cases of workplace harassment decided under Title VII for a standard to apply to a harassment case brought under the FHA, for which there was no precedent in the 7th Circuit.  “The harassment Wetzel describes plausibly can be viewed as both severe and pervasive,” she wrote, referring to the Title VII standard.  “For 15 months, she was bombarded with threats, slurs, derisive comments about her family, taunts about a deadly massacre, physical violence, and spit.  The defendants dismiss this litany of abuse as no more than ordinary ‘squabbles’ and ‘bickering’ between ‘irascible,’ ‘crotchety senior resident[s].’  A jury would be entitled to see the story otherwise.”

The question for the court was whether there was a basis to impute liability to St. Andrew for the hostile housing environment, a question new for the 7th Circuit.  Again, the court borrowed from principles established under another statute, this time focusing more on Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, under which schools have been held liable for harassment of students by other students, when the harassment was brought to the attention of school authorities and they failed to take appropriate steps to assure that the harassed students were not denied equal educational opportunity because of their sex.

The question was whether the facility management had “actual knowledge of the severe harassment Wetzel was enduring and whether they were deliberately indifferent to it. If so,” wrote the judge, “they subjected Wetzel to conduct that the FHA forbids.”  The court rejected St. Andrew’s argument that the landlord-tenant relationship is so different from the school-student relationship as to make such a test inappropriate.  The court, finding that the defendant had inaccurately described the court’s holding, responded: “We have said only that the duty not to discriminate in housing conditions encompasses the duty not to permit known harassment on protected grounds. The landlord does have responsibility over the common areas of the building, which is where the majority of Wetzel’s harassment took place.  And the incidents within her apartment occurred precisely because the landlord was exercising a right to enter.”

The court rejected St. Andrew’s argument that its ruling would unfairly hold St. Andrew liable for actions it was “incapable of addressing,” pointing out that the tenant Agreement signed by all residents imposed obligations on tenants not to engage in conduct that would constitute a “direct threat to the health and safety of other individuals” and to refrain from conduct that would “unreasonably” interfere with “the peaceful use and enjoyment of the community by other tenants.” This is, on its face, directly applicable to the conduct of other residents directed at Wetzel.  And the Agreement gives the facility the right to seek to evict tenants who violate these rules.  Yet, according to Wetzel’s Complaint, the facility took action against her for complaining rather than against her harassers for their misconduct.

The court also noted a rule published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 2016, providing that a landlord could be held liable under the FHA for failing to “take prompt action to correct and end a discriminatory housing practice by a third party” (such as a fellow resident in a rental building) if the landlord “knew or should have known of the discriminatory conduct and had the power to correct it.” The court said it did not need to rely on this rule, however, stating that “it is enough for present purposes to say that nothing in the HUD rule standings in the way of recognizing Wetzel’s theory” for landlord liability in her case.

The court also discounted St. Andrew’s argument that this case is just about “bad manners” by some residents. “It is important,” wrote Wood, “to recognize that the facts Wetzel has presented (which we must accept at this stage) go far beyond mere rudeness, all the way to direct physical violence.”  She noted that under Title VII courts have routinely had to distinguish between hostile environment harassment and mere incivility.

The court also decisively rejected St. Andrew’s claim that the FHA anti-discrimination provision does not apply once the apartment is leased to the tenant. The statute bans discrimination regarding “services or facilities,” and the court pointed out that “few ‘services or facilities’ are provided prior to the point of sale or rental; far more attach to a resident’s occupancy.”  In this case, Wetzel’s allegations included her virtual exclusion from the enjoyment of the common areas of the building, and denial of certain services to which she was entitled under the tenant Agreement.  “At a minimum, then,” wrote the court, “Wetzel has a cognizable post-acquisition claim because discrimination affected the provision of services and facilities connected to her rental.  Beyond that, the discrimination diminished the privileges of Wetzel’s rental.”

The court also rejected St. Andrew’s argument, which the district court had accepted, that the anti-retaliation provision of the statute required proof of the landlord’s discriminatory intent. “Indeed,” wrote Judge Wood, “if we were to read the FHA’s anti-retaliation provision to require that a plaintiff allege discriminatory animus, it would be an anomaly.  Like all anti-retaliation provisions, it provides protections not because of who people are, but because of what they do.”  The focus, thus, is on whether the landlord takes some adverse action after a tenant complains about violation of her rights under the FHA, not whether the landlord is biased against somebody because she is a lesbian.

In sending the case back to the district court, the Court of Appeals revived Wetzel’s FHA claim and also directed to the court to “reinstate the state-law claims that were dismissed for want of jurisdiction.”

Wetzel is represented by Lambda Legal and cooperating attorneys from Foley & Lardner LLP.