Tag Archive for "ADF" - Art Leonard Observations

Posts Tagged ‘ADF’

Alliance Defending Freedom Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in West Virginia Transgender Sports Case

Posted on: March 13th, 2023 by Art Leonard No Comments

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative religious litigation group, representing as intervening defendant a cisgender girl who claims it is unfair to require her to compete in track and field against a transgender girl, applied to the Supreme Court to reverse an order by a three-judge panel of the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing B.P.J., a transgender girl, to continue competing while the court of appeals considers her appeal of an adverse ruling by the federal district court. State of West Virginia v. B.P.J., No. 22A800 (23-1078).

The actual defendants in the case are the State of West Virginia, its State Board of Education, the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission, and the state Education Superintendent. ADF’s Application, addressed to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who receives such applications arising from courts within the 4^th Circuit, was docketed on March 13. Chief Justice Roberts ordered B.P.J. to respond by noon on March 20.

The Application was accompanied by two amicus briefs, from “67 Female Athletes, Coaches, Sports Officials, and Parents of Female Athletes” and from “Alabama, Arkansas, and 19 Other States.” ADF apparently acted quickly to round up support.

The 4^th Circuit’s February 22 Order, issued by a 2-1 vote of the panel, provided no explanation for its decision to reject District Judge Joseph Goodwin’s refusal to stay the Order that he had issued early in January, when he had concluded that B.P.J. was not likely to prevail on her claim that West Virginia’s Sports Act violated her federal constitutional and statutory rights. Goodwin issued an opinion on February 7 reiterating his refusal to stay his ruling, which prompted B.P.J. to seek quick relief from the 4^th Circuit before the spring track and field season commenced.

The ADF application is likely to draw the Supreme Court into one of the most hotly disputed issues in transgender law: whether federal law requires that transgender girls be treated as girls for purposes of athletic competition. According to ADF’s Application, 17 states have adopted these bans, and similar proposals are pending in more state legislatures.

The 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals recently announced that it was taking up the same question by the full bench of that court (13 active judges) in relation to Connecticut’s policy of letting transgender girls compete, thus vacating a 3-judge panel decision that had upheld the dismissal of a challenge to that state’s policy that was brought by three cisgender girls who had been beaten in competition by transgender girls. The plaintiffs in that case argued that the state’s policy violated their Equal Protection and Title IX rights.

When Judge Goodwin first encountered B.P.J.’s lawsuit, filed by Lambda Legal and the ACLU, in the context of a pretrial motion for a preliminary injunction, he granted the preliminary injunction early in 2021, allowing B.P.J. to fulfil her wish upon beginning middle school to be able to participate in spring girls’ track and field events based on her gender identity rather than what the state would refer to as her “biological sex,” which it defines as “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” She had identified as a girl since early childhood, but was told she would not be able to compete as a girl due to the recently enacted state law.

Judge Goodwin, Senior District Judge who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, narrowed his preliminary injunction to B.P.J. as an individual, reserving for later decision the question whether the state law is unlawful on its face. After refusing to dismiss B.P.J.’s complaint, and reviewing the voluminous record compiled through discovery, Judge Goodwin changed his mind and decided that for purposes of athletic competition transgender girls are not similarly situated with cisgender girls, and thus it was not unlawfully discriminatory for the state to exclude them from girls’ athletic competition. In that January 2023 ruling, he ordered the preliminary injunction dissolved and subsequently refused to “stay” that dissolution while B.P.J. appealed to the 4^th Circuit.

It is quite unusual for a court of appeals panel to issue an order without explanation to revive a preliminary injunction that had been ordered dissolved in a lengthy decision by the district court, and ADF played up this lack of explanation in its Application, suggesting that there was something suspect about it, as it was not accompanied by a detailed explanation of why two of the three panel judges disagreed with Judge Goodwin.

In order to issue a preliminary injunction against the application of a state law, a court has to find that the plaintiff’s challenge to the law is likely to succeed and to explain why, to justify upsetting the legal status quo established by the law. If the 4^th Circuit panel had added to their Order that they agreed with and incorporated by reference Judge Goodwin’s earlier explanation why a preliminary injunction was merited, ADF would not be in a position to make an argument that may be persuasive to the Supreme Court as providing a way to dispose of this Application without stating its own view on the merits of the case.

The 4^th Circuit has proved friendly in the past to the argument that excluding transgender students from equal access to all school programs and facilities violates their rights, most notably in its 2020 decision in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, in which it held that the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 required a public high school to allow a transgender boy to use the boys’ restroom facilities. Ultimately, however, Judge Goodwin concluded that sports competition presented distinctly different issues, and that biological sex was relevant in this context because, he was convinced, allowing a transgender girl to compete in girls’ sports presented unfair competition to cisgender girls.

ADF drove these points home in its Application, asserting that every time B.P.J. competed, she was depriving a cisgender girl of an opportunity to compete, and every time she beat cisgender girls in competition, she was depriving them of the victories they deserved. ADF pointed to the legislative history of Title IX, which at the time was described as an effort by Congress to provide more opportunities for girls to participate in sports, arguing that letting transgender women compete was undermining the original goal of the statute.

ADF sharply contested the argument that the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling from 2020, which interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make it unlawful for an employer to discharge an employee because of their transgender status, could be translated to Title IX without modification. ADF argued that a rule relevant to employee hiring and discharge was not appropriately applied to the issues in this case, especially noting that regulations under Title IX clearly allow for separate teams and competitions for boys and girls, based on a view that allowing “boys” to compete on girls’ teams would deprive girls of equal opportunity to engage in athletic competition.

B.P.J.’s argument is that a categorical exclusion is inappropriate, that each transgender student should be evaluated on an individual basis depending on the nature of their transition. ADF argued that this was a unworkable approach, that would mire school districts and courts in difficult and time-consuming determinations about whether a particular transgender girl should be allowed to compete. They also posed the disingenuous suggestion that any boy could just declare himself a girl to play on a girls’ team, a distortion of B.P.J.’s arguments.

In recent years, the Court has been increasingly deciding significant issues of law and policy in the so-called “shadow docket,” responding to motions and applications for relief from lower court decisions. These rulings are made without the full trappings of a plenary review, which would include full briefing and oral arguments, that accompanies a grant of certiorari and stretches out the process over a significant period of time. The “shadow-docket” rulings come quickly, and frequently without extensive written explanation.

ADF’s Application also couches its concerns in the language of federalism, urging the court to defer to the state legislature’s judgment in an area – regulation of public education – that is traditionally a state rather than a federal function. “This case implicates a question fraught with emotions and differing perspectives,” ADF writes. “The decision was the West Virginia Legislature’s to make. The end of this litigation will confirm that it made a valid one. In the meantime, the Court should set aside the Fourth Circuit’s unreasoned injunction and allow the State’s validly enacted law to go back into effect.”

8th Circuit Revives Videographer’s 1st Amendment Claim Against Having to Make Same-Sex Wedding Videos

Posted on: August 29th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8^th Circuit ruled by a vote of 2-1 on August 23 that a commercial videographer could assert a 1^st Amendment claim that it was privileged to refuse to make wedding videos for same-sex couples, as an exemption from compliance with Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, which expressly forbids public accommodations from discrimination because of a customer’s sexual orientation. Telescope Media Group v. Lucero, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 25320, 2019 WL 3979621. The court reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim, which had dismissed the videographer’s suit seeking a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief against Minnesota’s Department of Human Rights. See Telescope Media Group v. Lindsey, 271 F. Supp. 3d 1090 (D. Minn. 2017).

Circuit Judge David Stras, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote for the majority, which included Circuit Judge Bobby Shepard, an appointee of President George W. Bush. The dissent was by Circuit Judge Jane Kelly, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, and is the only Democratic appointee now sitting on the 8^th Circuit in either an active or senior capacity. District Judge Tunheim was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

Carl and Angel Larsen, who make commercial videos under the corporate name of Telescope Media Group, decided they wanted to expand their business into wedding videos, but because of their religious beliefs, they did not want to get into this line of work if they would be required to make videos for same-sex weddings. Anticipating that a refusal to make such videos would bring them into conflict with Minnesota’s Human Rights Law, the filed an action in federal district court seeking a ruling that they had a 1^st Amendment right to refuse such business. They argued that making wedding videos is an expressive activity protected by the Free Speech Clause, and that, although the Supreme Court has ruled that people are not excused from complying with neutral state laws of general application based on their religious beliefs, there was an argument that when a religious free exercise claim is intermingled with a claim based on another constitutional right (in this instance, free speech), the state may be required to accommodate the person claiming constitutional protection against enforcement of the state law.

Judge Tunheim rejected their constitutional arguments, dismissing their lawsuit, and they appealed to the 8^th Circuit. Their case presents a parallel to one of the earliest appellate rulings rejecting a constitutional exemption from complying with a state public accommodations law on similar facts: Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock, 309 P. 3d 53 (N.M. 2013), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 1787 (2014). In that case, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that a commercial wedding photographer who refused to make a photo album for a lesbian couple celebrating their commitment ceremony did not enjoy a 1^st Amendment free speech or free exercise exemption from a state law banning sexual orientation discrimination. That court also rejected the photographer’s claim under New Mexico’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, finding that complying with the state’s anti-discrimination law would not substantially burden the photographer’s freedom of religion. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Elane Photography’s petition to review the New Mexico court’s ruling.

Judge Stras’s opinion based its conclusion on a conflation of the Larsens’ business with the film studies that make movies for public exhibition. During oral argument, it was reported, the Larsen’s activities in making a video were likened to the work of prominent film producers/directors like Steven Spielberg. This was a specious comparison, not because Spielberg is a great filmmaker, but because the Larsen’s do not produce feature films or documentaries aimed at a public market, in which the content of the film is the speech of the filmmaker. Rather, they make films for hire, in order to communicate the message of the customer who hires them.

Stras wrote: “The Larsens . . . use their ‘unique skills to identify and tell compelling stories through video,’ including commercials, short films and live-event productions. They exercise creative control over the videos they produce and make ‘editorial judgments’ about ‘what events to take on, what video content to use, what audio content to use, what text to use . . ., the order in which to present content, whether to use voiceovers.” In other words, they exercise their professional judgment to make the films ordered by their customers, but the customers who are paying to have the films made ultimately determine what the message of the film will be. The Larsens’ role is to translate that message into an effect filmic presentation.

In describing their contemplated move into making wedding videos, they want these videos to “capture the background stories of the couples’ love leading to commitment, the [couples’] joy . . . the sacredness of their sacrificial vows at the altar, and even the following chapters of the couples’ lives.”

“The Larsens believe that the videos, which they intend to post and share online, will allow them to reach ‘a broader audience to achieve maximum cultural impact’ and ‘affect the cultural narrative regarding marriage.’” Presumably, they hoped to tap into the burgeoning on-line phenomenon of shared wedding videos, which seem to have a considerable audience. But their representation by Alliance Defending Freedom suggests an ulterior motive, that the Larsens have volunteered (or were recruited) to be plaintiffs as part of ADF’s strategy to get a case to the Supreme Court in hopes of broadening the rights of religious business owners to avoid complying with anti-discrimination laws, and perhaps even getting the Court to overrule its precedents denying religious free exercise exemptions from anti-discrimination laws, while at the same time creating a constitutional wedge issue for businesses whose goods or services might be characterized as “expressive.”

Even though the Larsens do not presently make wedding videos, and they do not claim that they have ever been approached to make a video of a same-sex wedding or threatened with prosecution for refusing to do so, the court first determined that they have standing to seek their declaratory judgment, because when the proposition was presented to officials of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, they made clear that a refusal to provide videography services to same-sex couples would be considered a violation of the state’s anti-discrimination law. Thus, the Larsens claimed to the satisfaction of the 8^th Circuit panel that they faced a credible threat of prosecution and had standing to bring the case.

Turning to the merits, Stras wrote, “The Larsens’ videos are a form of speech that is entitled to First Amendment protection. . . although the Larsens do not plan to make feature films, the videos they do wish to produce will convey a message designed to ‘affect public attitudes and behavior.’ According to their complaint, they will tell ‘healthy stories of sacrificial love and commitment between a man and a woman,’ depicting marriage as a divinely ordained covenant, and oppose the ‘current cultural narratives about marriage with which they disagree.’ By design, they will serve as a ‘medium for the communication of ideas’ about marriage. And like the creators of other types of films, such as full-length documentaries, the Larsens will exercise substantial ‘editorial control and judgment.’” He concluded, “The videos themselves are, in a word, speech.”

Stras insisted that applying the Minnesota Human Rights Act to the Larsens’ business “is at odds with the ‘cardinal constitutional command’ against compelled speech. The Larsens to not want to make videos celebrating same-sex marriage, which they find objectionable. Instead, they wish to actively promote opposite-sex weddings through their videos, which at a minimum will convey a different message than the videos the MHRA would require them to make.”

Stras insisted that this case fell into line with various U.S. Supreme Court precedents blocking the government from compelling a private actor to express a message they don’t want to express, citing, among other cases, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, where the Court recognized the Scouts’ 1^st Amendment right to ban gay men from serving as volunteer leaders of Scout troops. In that case, the Court said that requiring the Scouts to let out gay James Dale be an assistant scoutmaster would be compelling them to communicate a message of approval for homosexuality. The ruling in that case was by a vote of 5-4, overruling a 4-3 decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Stras also placed great weight on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hurley v. GLIB, holding that Massachusetts could not compel the Catholic veterans association that ran Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade to include a gay Irish organization marching with a banner proclaiming their identity, because that would be forcing a message on to the parade that the organizers did not want to communicate.

The consequence of Stras’s analysis was not only that the Larsens can assert their free speech claim, but that the court must subject the application of the MHRA to strict scrutiny, placing the burden on the state to prove that requiring the Larsens to made same-sex wedding videos is necessary to fulfill a compelling government interest.

The court also accepted the Larsens’ argument that they should be allowed to assert a free exercise of religion claim “because it is intertwined with their free speech claim,” constituting a so-called “hybrid rights claim.” The Supreme Court has mentioned that possibility in some cases, although it remains more theoretical than precedential at this point because most legal analysts have considered these mentions as not part of the holdings in the opinions where they appear. But Stras pointed out two 8^th Circuit decisions where that court has used the hybrid rights theory, making it fair game for litigation within the circuit. The Supreme Court had articulated it as a possible exception to the general rule in Employment Discrimination v. Smith, speculating that had the plaintiff been able to claim a violation of some other constitutional right in addition to free exercise of religion, he might have a valid claim. But Stras insisted that the Court’s comments actually related to the holdings in some prior cases. However, he noted, “it is not at all clear that the hybrid-rights doctrine will make any real difference in the end” because the Court was already holding that the Larsens’ free speech claim “requires the application of strict scrutiny.”

The court did reject the Larsens’ alternative theories of freedom of association and equal protection. The former claim, if recognized, would render anti-discrimination laws virtually unenforceable, and the latter defeated by the general application of the MHRA, which did not on its face single out any particular group for disfavored treatment. The court also rejected the Larsens’ argument that the law was unconstitutionally vague, or imposed unconstitutional conditions upon the operation of a business in the state.

The court sent the case back to the district with directions to “consider in the first instance whether the Larsens are entitled to a preliminary injunction, keeping in mind the principle that ‘when a plaintiff has shown a likely violation of his or her First Amendment rights, the other requirements for obtaining a preliminary injunction are generally deemed to have been satisfied.”

Judge Kelly’s dissent was several pages longer than the majority opinion. “No court has ever afforded ‘affirmative constitutional protections’ to private discrimination,” she wrote. “Indeed, caselaw has long recognized that generally applicable laws like Minnesota’s may limit the First Amendment rights of an individual in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public.” On this point, she cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion for the Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), in which the reluctant baker had refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In that opinion, Kennedy acknowledged that religious and philosophical objects to same-sex marriage enjoy First Amendment protection, but “such objections do not allow business owners . . . to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.” Judge Kelley observed, “That well-established principle should have easily disposed of this case.”

She contested Judge Stras’s attempt to “recharacterize Minnesota’s law as a content-based regulation of speech.” She argued that the law does not compel the Larsens to communicate any particular message about marriage. “What they cannot do,” she wrote, “is to operate a public accommodation that serves customers of one sexual orientation but not others. And make no mistake,” she continued, “that is what today’s decision affords them license to do.” She asserted that the conduct in which the Larsens wish to engage if they expand into the wedding video business would involve denying services based on the sexual orientation of customers. “That the service the Larsens want to make available to the public is expressive does not transform Minnesota’s law into a content-based regulation, nor should it empower the Larsens to discriminate against prospective customers based on sexual orientation.” The rest of her opinion takes much inspiration from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent from the Court’s holding in Masterpiece.

Pointing to an earlier ruling, she wrote, “The Supreme Court has already health that the MHRA is constitutional, in the process rejecting many of the same arguments that the court adopts today. Just recently, it reaffirmed that, although ‘religious and philosophical objections [to same-sex marriage] are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.’ The Supreme Court is free to revise or overturn its precedents,” she continued. “We are not. Rather than disturb bedrock principles of law, I would affirm the district court’s order in full.”

The state can seek review of this decision by the full bench of the 8^th Circuit, but that circuit has an overwhelmingly Republican/conservative tilt at present. Of the eleven active judges, only one, Judge Kelly, was appointed by a Democratic president. Trump has managed to place four judges on the court, where all but one of the other judges was appointed by George W. Bush, with the senior-most of the active judges having been appointed by the first President Bush. Clinton’s appointees have all died or retired. Perhaps the state should apply directly to the Supreme Court for review, but who is to say that Justice Kennedy’s comments, relied upon by Judge Kelly, would find majority support on the Court now that Neil Gorsuch has replaced Kennedy?

Federal Court Rejects Christian Agency’s Claimed Constitutional Right to Discriminate Against Same-Sex Couples Seeking to Adopt Children

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

U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino has rejected a Christian social welfare agency’s bid to be exempted from complying with non-discrimination regulations promulgated by the New York Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). Ruling on May 16 in New Hope Family Services, Inc. v. Poole, 2019 WL 2138355, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2138355 (N.D.N.Y.), the court rejected a variety of constitutional arguments advances by the plaintiff in support of its claim of a constitutional right to discriminate against same-sex couples seeking to adopt children.

The plaintiff, New Hope Family Services, is an “authorized agency” with the authority to “place out or to board out children” and “receive children for purposes of adoption” under the New York Social Services Law and regulations adopted by the Office of Children and Family Services. Under the law, the agency must “submit and consent to the approval, visitation, inspection and supervision” of OCFS, which must approve the agency’s certificate of incorporation. Pastor Clinton H. Tasker founded New Hope in 1958 “as a Christian ministry to care for and find adoptive homes for children whose birth parents could not care for them,” wrote Judge D’Agostino. Because of its religion beliefs, New Hope “will not recommend or place children with unmarried couples or same sex couples as adoptive parents,” it states in its complaint. New Hope’s “special circumstances” policy states: “If the person inquiring to adopt is single . . . the Executive Director will talk with them to discern if they are truly single or if they are living together without benefit of marriage… because New Hope is a Christian Ministry it will not place children with those who are living together without the benefit of marriage. If the person inquiring to adopt is in a marriage with a same sex partners . . . the Executive Director will explain that because New Hope is a Christian Ministry, we do not place children with same sex couples.”

Prior to 2010, New York’s Domestic Relations Law provided that authorized agencies could place children for adoption only with “an adult unmarried person or an adult husband and his adult wife.” In September 2010, New York amended the law to allow placements with “an adult unmarried person, an adult married couple together, or any two unmarried adult intimate partners together.” After New York adopted its Marriage Equality law in 2011, OCFS issued a letter on July 11, 2011, stating that the intent of its regulations “is to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the adopting study assessment process. In addition, OFCS cannot contemplate any case where the issue of sexual orientation would be a legitimate basis, whether in whole or in part, to deny the application of a person to be an adoptive parent.” In 2013, the adoption regulations were amended to prohibit outright discrimination “against applicants for adoption services on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, religion, or disability.” OCFS followed this up with an “informational letter” in 2016, advising authorized agencies to formalize their non-discrimination policies consistent with the regulations.

In its complaint challenging these developments, New Hope (represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-LGBT religious litigation group) claims, according to Judge D’Agostino, that the agency promulgated these regulations “purporting to require adoption providers to place children with unmarried and same-sex couples in complete disregard for the law, the scope of OFCS’s authority, and the rights of adoption providers.”

The lawsuit stemmed from action by OFCS, contacting New Hope early in 2018 to inform the agency that “under a new policy implemented in 2018, OFCS would be conducting comprehensive on-site reviews of each private provider’s procedures,” and following up in mid-July with an email to schedule New Hope’s program review, including a list of things that had to be reviewed, including New Hope’s “policies and procedures.” OFCS requested a copy of New Hope’s formal policies and procedures as part of this review. Later in 2018, after reading New Hope’s procedures, OFCS Executive Director Suzanne Colligan called New Hope, noting the “special circumstances” provision, and informing new Hope that it would “have to comply” with the regulations “by placing children with unmarried couples and same-sex couples,” and that if New Hope did not comply, it would be “choosing to close.” New Hope ultimately refused to comply after a series of email and letter exchanges with OFCS.

New Hope filed its complaint on December 6, 2018, claiming 1^st and 14^th amendment protection for its policies, claiming that OFCS’s interpretation of state law “targets, show hostility toward, and discriminates against New Hope because of its religious beliefs and practices” and also violates New Hope’s freedom of speech. The complaint also alleged an equal protection violation, and claimed that the state was placing an “unconstitutional condition” by requiring New Hope to comply with the non-discrimination policy in order to remain an “authorized agency.” The complaint sought preliminary injunctive relief against enforcement of the policy.

New Hope tried to escape the precedent of Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which holds that there is no free exercise exemption from complying with neutral state laws of general application, by relying on a statement in Hosannah-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171 (2012), in which the Supreme Court held that the 1^st Amendment protects religious institutions from government interference in their selection of ministerial personnel. New Hope argued that “cases teach that even a genuinely ‘neutral law of general applicability’ cannot be applied when to do so would interfere in historically respected areas of religious autonomy.” New Hope claimed that the state regulation was adopted “for the purpose of targeting faith-based adoption ministries” and thus was “not neutral or generally applicable as applied.”

Judge D’Agostino was not convinced, referring to a decision by the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia rejecting similar arguments by Catholic Social Services in that city in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 320 F. Supp. 3d 661 (E.D. Pa. 2019), which has been affirmed by the 3^rd Circuit Court of Appeals, 922 F.3d 140 (April 22, 2019). The judge observed that the courts in the Philadelphia case had found similar requirements under a Philadelphia anti-discrimination ordinance to be “facially neutral and generally applicable” and “rationally related to a number of legitimate government objectives.” And, she noted, “In affirming the district court, the Third Circuit rejected CSS’s claims that the application of the anti-discrimination clause is impermissible under Smith and its progeny.” Judge D’Agostino found the 3^rd Circuit’s ruling persuasive in this case.

“On its face,” wrote the judge, “18 N.Y.C.R.R. sec. 421.3(d) is generally applicable and it is plainly not the object of the regulation to interfere with New Hope’s, or any other agency’s, exercise of religion.” She found that the requirement to comply is imposed on all authorized agencies, “regardless of any religious affiliation,” and that it is neutral. “Nothing before the Court supports the conclusion that section 421.3(d) was drafted or enacted with the object ‘to infringe upon or restrict practices because of their religious motivation.” The adoption of the requirement was a natural follow-up to the legislature’s passage of a law that codified “the right to adopt by unmarried adult couples and married adult couples regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.” The purpose was to prohibit discrimination.

The court also rejected the argument that the regulations are not neutral because they allow agencies to take account of a variety of factors in evaluating proposed adoptive parents, including “the age of the child and of the adoptive parents, the cultural, ethnic, or racial background of the child and the capacity of the adoptive parent to meet the needs of the child with such background as one of a number of factors used to determine best interests.” As the 3^rd Circuit found in Fulton, there is a significant difference between a policy of outright refusal to place children with unmarried or same-sex couples and the application of an evaluative process focusing on the characteristics described in the regulations. “Further,” wrote D’Agostino, “nothing in the record suggests that OCFS has knowingly permitted any other authorized agency to discriminate against members of a protected class.”

New Hope also argued that the enforcement of the regulation was not neutral, instead evincing hostility against religious agencies such as itself. Rejecting this argument, the judge wrote, “The fact that New Hope’s conduct springs from sincerely held and strongly felt religious beliefs does not imply that OCFS’s decision to regulate that conduct springs from antipathy to those beliefs,” quoting key language from the 3^rd Circuit: “If all comment and action on religiously motivated conduct by those enforcing neutral, generally applicable laws against discrimination is construed as ill will against religious belief itself, then Smith is a dead letter, and the nation’s civil rights laws might be as well.”

The court also rejected New Hope’s argument that the regulation violates the Free Speech clause of the 1^st Amendment “insofar as it forces New Hope to change the content of its message” and to affirmatively recommend same-sex couples to be adoptive parents, in effect imposing an “unconstitutional condition” on New Hope. The essence of the analysis is that designating New Hope an “authorized agency” for this purpose is delegating a governmental function to New Hope, and any speech in which New Hope engages to carry out that function is essentially governmental speech, not New Hope’s private speech as a religious entity. “Therefore,” she wrote, “OCFS is permitted to ‘take legitimate and appropriate steps to ensure that its message,’ that adoption and foster care services are provided to all New Yorkers consistent with anti-discrimination policy set forth” in the regulation, “was and is ‘neither garbled nor distorted by New Hope.’” She concludes that “OCFS is not prohibiting New Hope’s ongoing ministry in any way or compelling it to change the message it wishes to convey. New Hope is not being forced to state that it approves of non-married or same sex couples. Rather, the only statement being made by approving such couples as adoptive parents is that they satisfy the criteria set forth by the state, without regard to any views as to the marital status or sexual orientation of the couple.”

The court similarly dismissed New Hope’s claim that applying the regulation violated its right of expressive association, rejecting New Hope’s argument that this case is controlled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000), where the court found that the BSA had a 1^st Amendment right to dismiss an out gay man from the position of Assistant Scoutmaster, based on the determination by 5 members of the Court that requiring the BSA to allow James Dale to serve would be a form of compelled endorsement of homosexuality. The Court deemed the BSA an expressive association that had a right to determine its organizational message. By contrast, found Judge D’Agostino, “New Hope has not alleged facts demonstrating a similar harm that providing adoption services to unmarried or same sex couples would cause to their organization. New Hope is not being required to hire employees that do not share their same religious values,” she wrote. “They are not prohibited in any way from continuing to voice their religious ideals.” And even if the regulation worked “a significant impairment on New Hope’s association rights,” she continued, “the state’s compelling interest in prohibition the discrimination at issue here far exceeds any harm to New Hope’s expressive association.”

The court also found no merit to New Hope’s Equal Protection claim based on a spurious charge of selective enforcement, finding no indication that OCFS was allowing other, non-religious agencies to discriminate while cracking down on New Hope. As to the “unconstitutional conditions” cause of action, the judge wrote that the court “views New Hope’s unconstitutional conditions claim as a mere repackaging of its various First Amendment claims and, therefore, the Court similarly repackages its resolution of those claims.”

Consequently, the court denied the motion for preliminary injunction, and granted OCFS’s motion to dismiss the case. ADF will undoubtedly seek to appeal this ruling to the 2^nd Circuit.

Supreme Court Takes a Pass on Hawaii B&B Discrimination Case

Posted on: March 21st, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on March 18 that it will not review a decision by Hawaii’s Intermediate Court of Appeals, which ruled in February 2018 that a small bed & breakfast operating in a private home in the Mariner’s Ridge section of Hawai’i Kai, violated Hawaii’s civil rights law by denying accommodations to an unmarried lesbian couple who were planning a trip to Hawaii to visit a friend. Hawaii’s civil rights law forbids businesses that are “public accommodations” from discriminating in providing their services based on the sexual orientation of customers. Cervelli v. Aloha Bed & Breakfast, 415 P.3d 919 (Int. Ct. App. Haw. 2018), cert. denied by Hawaii S. Ct., 2018 WL 3358586 (July 10, 2018), cert. denied, No. 18-451, 2019 WL 1231949 (U.S. Sup. Ct., March 18, 2019).

The key issues raised in the case were whether such an operation is covered by the public accommodations law, and whether the owner, Phyllis Young, who lives there and operates it personally, could successfully raise constitutional claims against being required to accommodate a lesbian couple in her home.

Young operates “Aloha B&B” out of her four-bedroom house, and has averaged between one hundred and two hundred customers a year. She advertises on her own website and some third-party websites. Diane Cervelli and Taeko Bufford, a “committed” lesbian couple, emailed to inquire about renting a room for their vacation trip. Young immediately responded by email that a room was available and explained how to make a reservation. Cervelli phoned two weeks later to book the room. As Young was taking down her information, Cervelli mentioned that she would be accompanied by another woman, and Young asked whether they were lesbians. When Cervelli said “Yes,” Young responded, “We’re strong Christians. I’m very uncomfortable in accepting the reservation from you.” Young refused the reservation and hung up on Cervelli.

Bufford then called and attempted to reserve the room, but again Young refused. Bufford asked her whether it was because she and Cervelli were lesbians, and Young said “Yes.” Young referred to her religious beliefs as the reason she was refusing the reservation. “Apart from Plaintiff’s sexual orientation,” wrote Judge Craig Nakamura for the court of appeals, “there was no other reason for Young’s refusal to accept Plaintiffs’ request for a room.”

The women filed a discrimination claim with the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, which concluded that they had a legitimate case. Then Cervelli and Bufford filed a lawsuit against Aloha B&B in the state circuit court, represented by Lambda Legal with local attorneys from Honolulu, and the Civil Rights Commission intervened in the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff. Attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the anti-LGBT religious litigation group, joined with local attorneys to defend the B&B.

Judge Edwin C. Nacino of the circuit court easily rejected the B&B’s argument that it was not a public accommodation, but rather a landlord that would not be covered by this law. The law on discrimination in real estate transactions prohibits sexual orientation discrimination in residential rentals, but doesn’t apply to facilities with four or fewer units. While the B&B has only four bedrooms, the evidence of 100-200 rentals per year made clear that Young’s business came within the “public accommodations” definition. Young admitted that she only rented rooms for short stays, so this was a transient rather than a residential facility.

Young claimed that requiring her to accommodate the lesbian couple in her home violated her constitutional right to privacy, freedom of intimate association and free exercise of religion. The circuit court rejected these defenses, and awarded summary judgment to the plaintiffs on the issues of liability and injunctive relief. Since the defendant was planning to appeal, the issue of damages was put on hold pending a final decision on the case.

The appeals court affirmed the trial judge on all points. Judge Nakamura wrote that “to the extent that Young has chosen to operate her bed and breakfast business from her home, she has voluntarily given up the right to be left alone,” thus rejecting her privacy claim. Opening up her residence to 100-200 paying guests a year is inconsistent with such a privacy claim. Furthermore, although Young lives there, the extent of commercial activity means that “it is no longer a purely private home.” And, furthermore, “the State retains the right to regulate activities occurring in a home where others are harmed or likely to be harmed,” and in this case “discriminatory conduct caused direct harm to Plaintiffs and threatens to harm other members of the general public.”

The court similarly rejected the intimate association claim, which, said the court, applies to family relationships and other small-group settings. “The relationship between Aloha B&B and the customers to whom it provides transient lodging is not the type of intimate relationship that is entitled to constitutional protection against a law designed to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations,” said the appeals court.

Finally, the court found Young’s federal constitutional religious freedom claim would be foreclosed by Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), where the U.S. Supreme Court held that “neutral laws of generally applicability need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest even when they have the incidental effect of burdening a particular religious practice,” wrote Nakamura, summarizing the holding. Fueled by ADF’s representation, Young tried to argue that the appeals court should impose a stricter test using the Hawaii Constitution’s protection of religious freedom, but the court refused to do so, stating that in its view Hawaii’s civil rights law would survive the most demanding constitutional test in any event.

“Assuming, without deciding, that Aloha B&B established a prima facie case of substantial burden to Young’s exercise of religion, we conclude that the application of [the Hawaii civil rights law] to Aloha B&B’s conduct in this case satisfies the strict scrutiny standard,” wrote Nakamura,” since “Hawaii has a compelling state interest in prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations,” as the legislature has declared “the practice of discrimination because of sexual orientation in public accommodations is against public policy.” The court concluded that the civil rights law “is narrowly tailored to achieve Hawaii’s compelling interest in prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations,” as the law “responds precisely to the substantive problem which legitimately concerns the State.”

The Hawaii Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal, so Young took the case to the Supreme Court, posing two questions: “Whether holding Mrs. Young liable without fair notice that her actions could be unlawful violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and whether the Commission’s efforts to punish Mrs. Young for exercising her religious beliefs in her own home violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause?”

The first question reflected Young’s belief that she was covered by the exemption for rental operations with four or fewer bedrooms, so, as she claimed, when she turned down Cervelli and Bufford she sincerely believed her business was not covered by the civil rights law, and it would be fundamentally unfair to impose liability on her. The court of appeals had easily rejected this argument, and it is not the kind of argument that the Supreme Court was likely to address as a failure of procedural due process of law.

The second question was intended to tempt members of the Court who have been calling for a reconsideration of the Employment Division v. Smith precedent, which was controversial when decided and actually led to the enactment of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) by Congress and similar laws by many state legislatures. Prior to that ruling, the Supreme Court had required the government to show a “compelling interest” when laws that burden free exercise of religion were challenged in court.

Employment Division was seen by many as a sharp departure from prior precedents, liberal Supreme Court justices dissented from the Court’s opinion by Justice Scalia, and a broad coalition spanning the political spectrum among religious organizations successfully lobbied Congress to pass RFRA, ultimately reimposing the “strict scrutiny” standard when federal laws impose a substantial burden or religious free exercise.

Despite calls for reconsidering Employment Division, most prominently by Justice Neil Gorsuch in his concurring opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop last June, this petition evidently did not tempt at least four members of the Court to use this case as a vehicle to expand the religious freedom of business owners to turn down customers whom they found objectionable based on the owners’ religious beliefs. The Court avoided such reconsideration last Term in Masterpiece Cakeshop by deciding that case on a different ground. Of course, if the Court wants to address these issues directly, they still have pending a petition to review an Oregon state court ruling against a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, 289 Or. App. 507, review denied by Oregon S. Ct., 363 Or. 224 (2018), so we continue to wait for another shoe to drop.

Meanwhile, unless a settlement is negotiated, Young faces a renewed proceeding in the Hawaii circuit court to determine what damages, if any, she will be ordered to pay to Cervelli and Bufford for unlawfully discriminating against them.

Liberty Counsel Revives Assault on New Jersey Conversion Therapy Ban

Posted on: February 12th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

Usually the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to review a lower court decision puts an end to the case, but Liberty Counsel, a right-wing religious group that represents psychologists in New Jersey who want to provide conversion therapy to “change” people from gay to straight, has seized upon an opening created by a U.S. Supreme Court decision from last June to revive their constitutional attack on New Jersey’s law prohibiting licensed professional counselors from providing such therapy to minors. On February 11, the organization petitioned the Supreme Court to effectively reopen the case. King v. Governor of New Jersey & Garden State Equality.

Governor Chris Christie signed the measure into law on August 19, 2013. Liberty Counsel promptly filed suit on behalf of two psychologists and their patients, as well as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), and the American Association of Christian Counselors, claiming that the measure violated the constitutional rights of plaintiffs.

U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson granted the state’s motion for summary judgment, finding no constitutional violation (see 981 F. Supp. 2d 296), and the plaintiffs fared no better before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3^rd Circuit, based in Newark, which upheld Judge Wolfson’s ruling on September 11, 2014 (see 767 F. 3d 216).

Wolfson found the measure to be a regulation of professional conduct, only incidentally affecting speech. As such, she held that the challenge should be rejected as long as the legislature had a rational basis for enacting the law. She found that the legislative record about the inefficacy and harm of such therapy was sufficient to meet the test.

On appeal, the three-judge panel disagreed with Judge Wolfson to the extent of finding that the ban as applied to “talk therapy” is a content-based regulation of speech, not just a regulation of conduct with an incidental effect on speech. But the appeals court unanimously rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the statute was consequently subject to the strict scrutiny test, under which it would be presumed to be unconstitutional unless New Jersey could prove that it was narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest.

Instead, wrote Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smith for the panel, the speech involved in providing conversion therapy is “professional speech,” subject to state regulation. As such, the court ruled, the state could prevail under the less demanding “heightened scrutiny” test by showing that the ban substantially advanced an important state interest, and that the legislative record was sufficient to uphold the law.

Liberty Counsel petitioned the Supreme Court for review. That petition was denied on May 4, 2015 (see 135 S. Ct. 2048). The Supreme Court also denied a petition to review a similar decision by the San Francisco-based 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case brought by, among others, Dr. David Pickup, in which that court rejected a similar challenge to California’s ban on conversion therapy. (Dr. Pickup is also a plaintiff in the case challenging a conversion therapy ban in Tampa, Florida, about which we blogged earlier.) Judge Wolfson relied on the 9^th Circuit’s ruling in finding that conversion therapy statutes can be upheld as within the traditional state power to regulate the conduct of licensed professionals.

More than a dozen jurisdictions have since passed such bans, and attempts to challenge them in the courts have similarly been unsuccessful. But the Supreme Court may have upset this trend by its ruling on June 26, 2018, in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra, 138 S. Ct. 2361. NIFLA challenged a California law that required licensed pregnancy-related clinics to inform their clients about the availability of publicly-funded family-planning services, including contraception and abortions, and non-licensed facilities to provide notices stating that they were not licensed by the state. The Supreme Court agreed with NIFLA that the statute violated the 1^st Amendment protection for freedom of speech by compelling the plaintiffs to speak the government’s message.

In defending the statute, California relied on the conversion therapy decisions from the 3^rd and 9^th Circuits. This provoked Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 5-4 majority, to reject the idea that “professional speech” in the context of regulated, licensed professions was entitled to any lesser constitutional protection than other speech. After summarizing these and other cases, Thomas wrote: “But this Court has not recognized ‘professional speech’ as a separate category of speech. Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals.’ This court has ‘been reluctant to mark of new categories of speech for diminished constitutional protection.’”

Thomas went on to write that there were only two circumstances in which the Supreme Court had provided lesser protection to “professional speech”: “First, our precedents have applied more deferential review to some laws that require professionals to disclose factual, noncontroversial information in their ‘commercial speech.’ Second, under our precedents, States may regulate professional conduct, even though that conduct incidentally involves speech.”

Thus, at least by implication, a majority of the Supreme Court ruled last June that states passing conversion therapy bans will have to meet the demanding strict scrutiny test when they are challenged under the 1^st Amendment. Unless, of course, they can show that this is really a regulation of professional conduct with incidental effect on speech, an approach that worked in the 9^th Circuit. Although Thomas’s comments in NIFLA suggest this may be a difficult task, it is not necessarily impossible.

Reacting to the Supreme Court’s NIFLA ruling, Liberty Counsel jumped into action to try to revive its challenge to the New Jersey law. First, it filed a Motion with the 3^rd Circuit Court of Appeals, demanding that it recall the Mandate it had issued to the District Court in 2014 to dismiss the challenge to the statute. Liberty Counsel argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling had “abrogated” the 3^rd Circuit’s decision, thus the 3^rd Circuit should acknowledge that its 2014 ruling was erroneous and correct the situation by “recalling” its Mandate. Although Liberty Counsel does not explicitly state what would come next, presumably this would mean reversing the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the state and resetting the case for argument under the strict scrutiny test. The 3^rd Circuit denied this Motion without a hearing or a written opinion.

Undaunted, Liberty Counsel then sought rehearing en banc (by the full 3^rd Circuit bench), which was also denied, on November 13, 2018.

Liberty Counsel petitioned the Supreme Court on February 11, arguing that the 3^rd Circuit “abused its discretion” by refusing to take action based on the Supreme Court’s “abrogation” of the 3^rd Circuit’s prior opinion. Liberty Counsel cites numerous cases in which it claims federal courts of appeals have “recalled” their mandates from lower courts after a Supreme Court decision in a similar case has rejected the reasoning underlying their earlier decision. Liberty Counsel argues that the current situation is particularly stark because the Supreme Court has not only rejected the reasoning of the earlier case, but has cited and quoted from the earlier decision while doing so.

On the other hand, Justice Thomas did not use the term “abrogate” and his opinion in NIFLA recognizes that there may be circumstances in which state regulation of professional speech may be constitutional. The 9^th Circuit’s reasoning in the Pickup case, focused on the regulation of professional conduct rather than speech, may be such an instance, and the 3^rd Circuit’s case could be reconsidered under such a standard. In this case, Liberty Counsel may be following the lead of West Publishing Company, which operates the Westlaw legal research system. If one finds the 3^rd Circuit’s decision in Westlaw, one sees, in bold red above the citation of the case, the phrase “Abrogated by National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, U.S., June 26, 2018” and the characterization “Severe Negative Treatment.”

Liberty Counsel’s petition, a bit disingenuously, assumes this means that the New Jersey law is unconstitutional, but all it really means is that the 3^rd Circuit applied too lenient a standard in ruling on the case and should have applied the strict scrutiny test to be in line with the Supreme Court ruling in NIFLA.

In its argument to the Supreme Court, Liberty Counsel contends that failing to grant the petition and to require the 3^rd Circuit to “recall” its mandate will have harmful rippling effects throughout the nation. It points to the steady progression of new state and local laws that have been enacted in reliance on the “incorrect” decisions by the 3^rd and 9^th Circuits, which it asserts will “chill” the ability of conversion therapy practitioners to “offer” this “cure” to their patients.

In January, U.S. Magistrate Judge Amanda Arnold Sansone relied on the Supreme Court’s NIFLA decision in her report recommending that the U.S. District Court issue a preliminary injunction against the application of the Tampa, Florida, conversion therapy ban to practitioners who provide “talk therapy.” The complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn last month by Alliance Defending Freedom, challenging New York City’s ordinance, is devised to raise the same arguments. And it is predictable that either ADF or Liberty Counsel will file suit in an attempt to block the new state law enacted last month in New York raising similar arguments.

Although Liberty Counsel couches its petition as an attempt to have the court settle a dispute among lower courts about the proper way to respond when one of their decisions is substantially undermined in its reasoning by a subsequent Supreme Court ruling in a similar case, it is at heart an attempt to relitigate the question whether conversion therapy practitioners have a 1^st Amendment right to ply their trade free of government restrictions. It is a blatant attempt to get the issue of conversion therapy back before the Supreme Court now that Trump’s appointments have solidified the conservative majority. And, at that, it is a test of science against homophobia and transphobia.

Alliance Defending Freedom Files Constitution Challenge to NYC Law Banning Conversion Therapy

Posted on: January 29th, 2019 by Art Leonard 3 Comments

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the anti-gay Christian legal organization based in Scottsdale, Arizona, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on January 23, challenging the constitutionality of New York City’s Local Law 22 of 2018, which prohibits the practice of conversion therapy in the City. The law was a project of the City Council, which enacted it on November 30, 2017. It was returned to the Council unsigned by Mayor Bill De Blasio within thirty days, and became law without his approval on January 5, 2018. The case is Schwartz v. The City of New York, Case 1:19-cv-00463 (N.Y. Dist. Ct., E.D. N.Y., filed Jan. 23, 2019).

The measure is probably the most broadly-sweeping legislative measure against conversion therapy to be enacted in the United States. State laws on the subject, including the one enacted in January in New York State, limit their bans to provision of such therapy to minors by licensed health care professionals, and designate the offense as professional misconduct that can subject the practitioner to discipline for unprofessional conduct. The City law, by contrast, applies to “any person” who provides such therapy for a fee to any individual, not just minors. The City law imposes civil penalties beginning with $1,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for a second violation, and $10,000 for each subsequent violation, which can be imposed by the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. Its enforcement has been assigned to the Department of Consumer Affairs.

For purposes of this law, “conversion therapy” is defined as “any services, offered or provided to consumers for a fee, that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or seek to change a person’s gender identity to conform to the sex of such individual that was recorded at birth.” The measure does not contain any express exemption for religious counselors or clergy, but presumably if they do not charge a fee for their services they are not subject to this law.

Legal challenges to the various state laws, of which there are now more than a dozen, have so far been unsuccessful, but it is not clear that the sweeping New York City law will benefit from some of the legal doctrines that states have successfully marshalled to defend their laws. Most importantly, the state laws fall comfortably within the traditional state role of regulating the provision of health care by licensed practitioners, and by being restricted to minors, they rest within the state’s traditional function of parens patriae, caring for the welfare of minors, which can mean at times defending minors from the well-meaning but harmful actions of their parents, such as refusing blood transfusions or medication for serious illnesses.

ADF is asking the court to issue a declaration that the law is unconstitutional and to issue an injunction against its enforcement by the City. The law does not authorize individuals to file suit against conversion therapy practitioners, but instead leaves enforcement to an administrative process, triggered by complaints to the Consumer Affairs Department.

ADF has found a seemingly sympathetic plaintiff, Dr. David Schwartz, a “counselor and psychotherapist practicing in New York City who has a general practice but who has regularly had, and currently has, patients who desire counseling that the Counseling Censorship Law prohibits.” The Complaint also describes him as a “licensed clinical social worker” who “resides and practices in Brooklyn.” When this writer first read the Complaint, he was alarmed to think that the New York City Council would title a measure “Counseling Censorship Law,” but upon retrieving a copy of the Local Law 22, saw that the title was an invention of ADF for the purpose of framing its 1st Amendment challenge, as the word “censorship” appears nowhere in the legislation, which does not have an official title.

According to the Complaint, Dr. Schwartz is an Orthodox Jew whose patients come mainly from the Chabad Lubavitch ultra-orthodox community. He avows that he provides counseling and psychotherapy attuned to the needs and desires of that community, and cites the late Lubavitcher Rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as an authority supporting the practice of conversion therapy. The description of his practice does not mention child patients, stating: “Dr. Schwartz works only with willing patients – patients who voluntarily walk into his office and talk with him because they want and value his counsel. And Dr. Schwartz does nothing to or with his patients other than listen to them and talk with them.”

Schwartz fears that the City law will be used against him, and the Complaint focuses on the $10,000 civil penalty like a sword of Damocles hanging over his head. ADF was smart to avoid mentioning minors, since it filed this lawsuit during the time between the state legislature’s approval of its conversion therapy ban and its signing into law on January 25 by Governor Cuomo. If Schwartz practices on minors as a licensed psychologist, he will be violating the state law, possibly setting up another lawsuit by ADF.

ADF has positioned this case primarily as a challenge to government censorship of free speech and free exercise of religion. The Complaint insists that the only therapy Schwartz provides is “talk therapy,” eschewing the bizarre and cruel practices that were describe in a New Jersey court a few years go in a case brought by emotionally damaged patients of JONAH, a Jewish conversion therapy organization that was found in that case to be in violation of the New Jersey consumer protection law. ADF has crafted the Schwartz Complaint to distinguish this case from the JONAH case, which involved Jewish parents effectively forcing their teenage children to subject themselves to bizarre “therapeutic” procedures to “change” their sexual orientation.

By contrast, without ever indicating the age range of his patients, the Schwartz Complaint says that he “does not view it as the psychotherapist’s role to rebuke patients or to tell them the direction they ‘ought’ to go.” The Complaint describes a practice in which patients come to Schwartz “with a very wide range of issues. However,” it continues, “his practice regularly includes a few individuals who experience undesired same-sex attractions. In some cases, patients come to Dr. Schwartz seeking his assistance in pursuing their personal goal of reducing their same-sex attractions and developing their sense of sexual attraction to the opposite sex.” Schwartz insists that he “does not attempt to increase opposite-sex attraction or change same-sex attraction in patients who do not desire his assistance in that direction. In working with patients who desire to decrease same-sex attraction or increase their attraction to the opposite sex, Dr. Schwartz never promises that these goals will be achieved.”

The Complaint also insists that “Dr. Schwartz engages in no actions other than talking with the patient, and offering ways of thinking about themselves and others that may help them make progress towards the change they desire. Dr. Schwartz does not use electro-shock therapy, he does not recommend that patients view heterosexual pornography or that they subject themselves to painful or other adverse stimulations in response to undesired sexual thoughts. Dr. Schwartz simply listens to what his patients share with him, and talks to them.” The Complaint concedes that some patients do not achieve the goal, and “some have chosen to stop pursuing it,” but claims that Schwartz has had success with an unspecified number of patients who have “over time” experienced “changes” that “have enabled Dr. Schwartz’s patients to enter into heterosexual marriage that they desired.”

The Complaint recites the traditional arguments put forward by conversion therapy proponents, about how patients who are “strongly motivated to change” can achieve their goal. Interestingly, the Complaint refers repeatedly to “reducing” same-sex attraction without ever asserting that Schwartz claims to have “eliminated” such attraction in his patients. And, of course, proponents shy away from any sort of formal documentation, insisting that patient confidentiality precludes providing concrete examples. It also cites no published scientific authorities supporting the efficacy of talk therapy in changing sexual orientation.

Several paragraphs are devoted to statements attributed to Rabbi Schneerson relating to this subject, without any citation of published sources.

ADF’s legal theory here is that the city’s “Counseling Censorship Law” is a content-based regulation of speech that is “aiming to suppress the dissemination of ideas and information about human sexuality and the human capacity for change in this area” and “does not adopt the least restrictive means to pursue a compelling government interest,” arguing that the government “has no cognizable interest at all – let alone a compelling interest – in preventing citizens from hearing ideas that those citizens with to hear in a counseling relationship.” The Complaint argues that the law both prohibits and compels speech, in the sense that it “effectively requires Dr. Schwartz to tell the patient that no change is possible, which Dr. Schwartz does not believe to be true.”

The Complaint also claims that the law is “unduly vague” in violation of the Due Process Clause, picking apart various phrases and terms and suggesting that their ambiguity make it difficult for a practitioner to know what he can or cannot say to a patient. The Complaint also argues that the law violates the 1st Amendment rights of patients who want to receive talk therapy to change their sexual orientation. And, of course, it focuses at the end on the Free Exercise Clause, arguing that Schwartz “has a right to use his professional skills to assist patients to live in accordance with their shared religious faith, including the religious mandates of the Torah and the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and other respected Orthodox Jewish authorities based on the Torah. The Counseling Censorship Law purports to be justified, in its legislative history, by a supposed finding that ‘changing’ sexual orientation is impossible. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, whose teachings inform the core of Dr. Schwartz’s religious convictions, taught exactly the opposite.”

The Complaint argues that because the Council enacted the law knowing that “it was hostile to and targeting practices particularly associated with persons and communities adhering to traditional religious beliefs,” it is “not a neutral law of general applicability,” even though it nowhere mentions religion. This is an attempt to establish that Schwartz’s 1st Amendment claim is not governed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding, in Employment Division v. Smith, that individuals do not have a right based on their religious beliefs to be exempted from “neutral” laws of “general applicability.”

Interestingly, all the attorneys listed on the complaint are staff attorneys of ADF based in Scottsdale, Arizona. No member of the New York bar is listed, although a footnote indicates that one of the attorneys, Jeana J. Hallock, will be applying for pro hac vice admission (admission for purposes of this case only) to the bar in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The lead attorney signing the Complaint is Roger G. Brooks. The defendants are The City of New York and Lorelei Salas, the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs, whose department has issued regulations on enforcement of the law, and who is sued only in her official capacity. The New York City Law Department will defend the City and Commissioner Salas in the case, which is likely to attract amicus briefs on both sides of the case.

Masterpiece Baker Phillips Wins a Round in New Lawsuit Against Colorado Civil Rights Officials

Posted on: January 9th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

Masterpiece Cakeshop baker Jack Phillips is back in court again, this time suing officials of Colorado’s Civil Rights agency and the state’s attorney general and governor to try to block the Commission from continuing a case against him for refusing to make a custom-designed cake to celebrate a transgender attorney’s celebration of the anniversary of her transition. On February 4, Senior U.S. District Judge Wiley Y. Daniel largely rejected a motion by defendants to dismiss the case, although he narrowed its scope somewhat.

For those coming in late to this ongoing drama: Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop were found by the Commission and the Colorado Court of Appeals to have violated the state’s public accommodations law when he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in 2012 because of his religious objection to same-sex marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed those decisions in a 7-2 ruling last June 4, based on the Court’s conclusion that the state had not afforded Phillips a “neutral” forum to consider his 1st Amendment defense.

Part of the Court’s conclusion that the Commission was “hostile” to Phillips on religious grounds rested on the Commission’s treatment of a provocateur named William Jack. While the discrimination claim by a gay couple was pending before the Commission, Jack approached three Colorado bakeries that custom-decorate cakes, asking them to make cakes for him that “conveyed disapproval of same-sex marriage, along with religious text,” quoting here from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the Supreme Court. All the bakers turned him down, stating that they “objected to those cakes’ messages and would not create them for anyone.” Jack filed discrimination charges against the bakeries, but after investigating his charges, the Colorado Civil Rights Division found no “probable cause” that the statute was violated, and the Commission affirmed that determination.

The Supreme Court seized upon the Commission’s response to Jack’s provocation, saying that the Commission’s hostility was evident in “the difference in treatment between Phillips’ case and the cases of other bakers who objected to a requested cake on the basis of conscience and prevailed before the Commission.” The Civil Rights Division ruled in Phillips’ case that “any message the requested wedding cake would carry would be attributed to the customer, not the baker,” while “the Division did not address this point in any of the other cases with respect to the cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism.” Justice Kennedy also critically noted that “the Division found no violation of the Act in the other cases in part because each bakery was willing to sell other products to the prospective customers” but the “Commission dismissed Phillips’ willingness to sell birthday cakes, shower cakes, cookies and brownies, to gay and lesbian customers as irrelevant.”

The Supreme Court had announced its decision to grant Jack Phillips’ petition for review on June 26, 2017 – an announcement that received widespread media coverage and apparently prompted Autumn Scardia, a transgender attorney, to take a leaf from William Jack’s book. She phoned Masterpiece and inquired about getting a cake with a blue exterior and a pink interior to “celebrate her transition from male to female.” Scardina said she wanted the cake for a birthday party she was planning. It was only when she described the color scheme and the reason for it that Phillips turned down the order, stating that he would not make a cake celebrating a gender transition for “any customer, no matter the customer’s protected characteristics.” In his current lawsuit, he alleges that he “offered to create a different custom cake for Scardina or to sell her any of the pre-make items available for purchase.” But she declined to order anything else.

Scardina filed a discrimination charge with the Division. Several weeks after the Supreme Court ruled on the first Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Division issued a probable cause determination against Phillips for violating the public accommodations law by refusing Scardina’s cake order. While noting the religious reasons cited by Phillips for specifically not making a cake designed to celebrate a gender transition, due to his religious belief that a person’s sex is “an immutable God-given reality,” the Commission nonetheless concluded that “the refusal to provide service to Complainant was based on her transgender status.”

On October 2, 2018, the Commission filed a formal complaint against Phillips based on the Division’s finding, and set the case for a hearing. Anticipating this move, Phillips filed a complaint in federal court on August 14, 2018, which the defendants promptly moved to dismiss. Phillips charges that the state is out to get him, characterizing its actions as “unconstitutional bullying.” After the defendants’ dismissal motion and the Commission’s formal complaint were filed, Phillips filed an amended complaint to take account of these developments. The Commission’s hearing. The hearing has not yet taken place.

Phillips claims that the defendants’ interpretation of the public accommodations law violates his First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. He also makes a Due Process vagueness claim against the statute, attacking it on several grounds, including a structural charge against the statutory criteria for the appointment of Commission members by the governor, which require, among other things, that several members of the Commission be representative of minority communities protected by the anti-discrimination law. He also asserted an equal protection claim, focused again on the differential treatment cited by the Supreme Court in noting the Commission’s refusal to prosecute the bakers who had turned down William Jack’s order for “anti-same-sex marriage cakes.”

Phillips sought injunctions against the state officials forbidding them from interpreting and enforcing the statute against him. He also sought a judicial declaration about the violation of his constitutional rights, and compensatory, punitive and nominal damages against the Civil Rights Division’s Director, Aubrey Elenis, and the seven members of the Commission.

In ruling on the motion to dismiss, Judge Daniel found that none of the “abstention doctrines” that the federal courts have developed to determine whether to allow federal lawsuits to interfere with state administrative proceedings should apply in this case, and that Phillips had standing to bring this lawsuit, not only because of the proceedings ongoing against him, but also because he wanted to post a policy statement on his business’s website about the basis on which they would refuse to make custom-cakes, but was inhibited from doing so because a section of the public accommodations law states that businesses cannot publish discriminatory policies.

However, Daniel did find that Director Elenis and the individual Civil Rights Commissioners enjoy absolute immunity from personal liability for damages, accepting their argument that they are acting as prosecutors and adjudicators. He wrote that it is “well-established that prosecutors are absolutely immune for activities which are intimately associated with the judicial process such as initiating and pursuing” a prosecution. He found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, whose rulings are binding on the district court in Colorado, has “extended absolute immunity to state administrative or executive officials serving in adjudicative, judicial, or prosecutorial capacities.”

Furthermore, the judge found that Governor John Hickenlooper should be dismissed as a defendant, since he played no direct role in enforcing the public accommodations law, so suit against him in his official capacity was barred by the 11th Amendment. Just in time, it seems, since Hickenlooper’s term ended a few days after the court issued it January 4 decision, with Governor Jared Polis taking office on January 8. This decision means that Polis, the state’s (and nation’s) first out gay man to be elected a governor, did not become a defendant in this lawsuit immediately on taking office!

However, the court refused to dismiss the Attorney General, Cynthia Coffman, from the case, finding that the attorney general’s role of representing the Commission in court did make that office potentially subject to injunctive relief. Once again, however, the timing was fortuitous, since Coffman’s term has also ended, as Phil Weiser took office as attorney general on January 8, and the defense of this case will be carried on by his office.

Of course, Phillips is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, the right-wing Christian litigation group that represented him in appealing the wedding cake decision to the Supreme Court. Not coincidentally, ADF also represents Harris Funeral Homes, seeking Supreme Court review of the 6th Circuit’s decision that Harris violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when it fired a transgender funeral director, as well as anonymous plaintiffs who are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 3rd Circuit’s decision rejecting a constitutional challenge to the Boyertown, Pennsylvania, school district’s transgender-affirmative facilities access policy. One of the best ways to keep up with some major cases in LGBT-related litigation is to periodically visit ADF’s website.

Supreme Court Orders “Further Consideration” by Washington State Courts in Wedding Flowers Case

Posted on: June 25th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

On June 25, the Supreme Court finally acted on a petition for certiorari filed last summer in Arlene’s Flowers, Inc. v. State of Washington, No. 17-108, in which Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) sought review of the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling that unanimously affirmed the Benton County Superior Court’s decision that Arlene’s Flowers and its proprietor, Barronelle Stutzman, had violated the state’s Law Against Discrimination and its Consumer Protection Act by refusing to sell wedding flowers to a same-sex couple. The Petition was docketed at the Supreme Court on July 14, 2017, after the Court had recently granted review in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. State of Colorado. The Court did not place this Petition on the agenda for any of its certiorari conferences until after rendering its decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop on June 4, 2018. Then on June 25, it granted the petition, vacated the lower court’s ruling, and sent the case back for “further consideration” in light of the Masterpiece ruling.

This case arose from an incident that occurred shortly after Washington began to issue same-sex marriage licenses as a result of the marriage equality litigation within the 9^th Circuit. Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed, a same-sex couple planning their wedding, went to Arlene’s Flowers to order floral decorations for what they planned to be a big event. Ingersoll had been a frequent customer of this business and had established a personal relationship with the proprietor, Barronelle Stutzman. When he asked her to provide the flowers for his wedding, however, she told him that she could not design flowers for his wedding because of her relationship with Jesus Christ. She gave him the names of three other florists, and claims he said he understood her decision and “they hugged before he left.” Ingersoll and Freed decided to scale down their wedding plans as a result of this and evidently talked about their experience to others, generating news reports that spurred the state’s Attorney General to action. Around the same time the state’s lawsuit was filed, Ingersoll and Freed, represented by the ACLU, filed their own suit, and the two cases were consolidated, resulting in State v. Arlene’s Flowers, 2015 WL 720213 (Wash. Super. Ct., Benton Co.), and State v. Arlene’s Flowers, 187 Wash. 2 804, 389 P.2d 543 (2017). (Washington State allows direct action to enforce the statutes in question without requiring exhaustion of administrative remedies, and the Washington Supreme Court accepted Arlene’s Flowers’ petition for direct review, bypassing the state’s intermediate appellate court.) The state courts found that the defendant had violated the statutes, and that she was not entitled to any 1^st Amendment defense.

Within days of the Masterpiece ruling, ADF had filed a supplementary brief in the Supreme Court on behalf of Arlene’s Flowers and Stutzman, urging the Court to grant certiorari, vacate the state court ruling, and remand for consideration in light of Masterpiece. The Respondents (State of Washington and Ingersoll and Freed) quickly filed responding briefs, arguing that certiorari should be denied because there was nothing in the history of this case that suggested anything like the grounds on which Masterpiece had been decided.

In its supplementary brief, ADF mounted several arguments in support of its contention that Masterpiece could require a reversal in this case because of “hostility” to religion by the State of Washington. First, ADF argued that the Attorney General’s action in filing suit against Barronelle Stutzman in both her professional and personal capacities, reacting to news reports and without the same-sex couple having filed their own discrimination claim, evinced hostility to religion. Second, ADF argued that the trial court’s reliance on and quotation from a case cited by the Attorney General in which the court ruled against a retail store that refused on religious grounds to serve African-Americans was, in effect, comparing Barronelle to the “racist” owner of the store, further evincing “hostility” to her religion. Based on this, ADF argued, “the State, in short, has treated Barronelle with neither tolerance nor respect,” quoting Justice Kennedy’s phrase from Masterpiece. ADF also pointed to the state’s failure to initiate litigation against a coffee-shop owner in Seattle who, according to a radio talk show, had “profanely berated and discriminated against Christian customers,” apparently seeking to draw an analogy to a situation described by Kennedy in Masterpiece, of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission dismissing charges against three bakers who had refused to bake anti-gay cakes in the wake of the Commission’s ruling against Masterpiece Cakeshop.

The State of Washington and the ACLU quickly filed responsive briefs, disputing the accuracy and relevance of ADF’s supplementary brief. For one thing, unlike Masterpiece Cakeshop, Arlene’s Flowers did not raise any issued in its original Petition about “hostility to religion” by the state and, Respondents argued, could not now introduce a new issue into the case. For another, they pointed out, a party to litigation citing a case that supports its legal position cannot be considered “hostility to religion.” After all, Justice Kennedy cited a similar federal case involving a restaurant that refused to serve African-Americans in his opinion in Masterpiece to support the point that it is well established that there is no general free exercise exemption from complying with public accommodations laws. This doesn’t show hostility to religion by the court. Furthermore, the A.G.’s filing of a discrimination complaint, in itself, is no evidence of animus or hostility, but merely doing his job, and the A.G. “played no adjudicatory role in the process of deciding this case.” What Masterpiece required was that the forum not be hostile religion, and the forum is the court, not the parties to the case.

Furthermore, the A.G.’s brief pointed out, there was doubt about the accuracy of the talk radio report cited by ADF, but notwithstanding that, even though nobody filed a discrimination claim against the coffee shop owner, the chair of the Washington Human Rights Commission “publicly announced that she would send a letter to the business owner explaining Washington law,” and the owner subsequently announced, unlike Barronelle Stutzman, that “he will no longer refuse service to the customers he initially turned away.” Contrast this with the situation in Masterpiece, where Justice Kennedy counted as evidence of hostility that the Colorado Commission had rejected discrimination claims against three bakers who declined to make anti-gay cakes while ruling against Jack Phillips for refusing to make a same-sex wedding cake. (As Justice Breyer explained in his concurring opinion joined by Justice Kagan, there was no inconsistency here as the two situations were clearly distinguishable.)

In any rate, a strong argument can be made that there is no basis for order “further consideration” of Arlene’s Flowers in light of Masterpiece. In the days following a Supreme Court decision, the Court usually moves quickly to dispose of petitions in other cases that had been “on hold” pending its ruling. It is not uncommon in such “mopping up” situations to send cases back to the lower courts for a determination whether the Supreme Court decision would require a different result. But it is also common to merely deny the petition if the lower court ruling is clearly consistent with the new Supreme Court decision. In this case, the Court’s action may be reacting to ADF’s assertion in its supplementary brief that there is evidence of hostility to religion in the proceedings in the Washington courts, and to a common practice by the Court of sending cases back for reconsideration if any member of the Court is troubled about possible inconsistency. On the other hand, it may signal some ambiguity about exactly what the Court was holding in Masterpiece, and a desire by the Court, ultimately, to consider the underlying legal questions on the merits without any complications involving the nature of the lower court proceedings.

The Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling is certainly cause for concern, since that ruling is totally consistent with what Justice Kennedy said about the free exercise and free speech arguments that ADF advanced in Masterpiece, and a careful reading of Kennedy’s opinion shows that the Court did not back away, at least overtly, from its prior precedents holding that there is not a free exercise exemption from complying with laws banning discrimination in public accommodations. Time will tell whether a firm majority of the Court is actually ready to reassert that position on the merits in an appropriate case. Meanwhile, opponents of religious exemptions can take some comfort from the actions by the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court (refusing to review a court of appeals ruling in another wedding cake case) in the weeks following the Masterpiece rule.

Third Circuit Rejects Challenge to Pennsylvania School District’s Policy Allowing Transgender Students to Use Facilities Consistent with Their Gender Identities

Posted on: May 26th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3^rd Circuit took the unusual step on May 24 of announcing about an hour after hearing oral argument that it would unanimously affirm U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith’s ruling from last summer denying a motion for a preliminary injunction by a group of parents and students seeking to stop the Boyertown (Pennsylvania) Area School District from continuing to implement a policy allowing transgender students to use locker rooms and bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities. Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, 2018 WL 2355999 (3^rd Cir., May 24, 2018), affirming 276 F. Supp. 2d 324 (E.D. Pa., August 25, 2017).

Later that day, the court issued a brief “Judgement” written by Circuit Judge Theodore A. McKee, so brief that it can be quoted in full here: “We agree Plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits and that they have not established that they will be irreparably harmed if their Motion to Enjoin the Boyertown School District’s policy is denied. We therefore Affirm the District Court’s denial of a preliminary injunction substantially for the reasons that the Court explained in its exceptionally well-reasoned Opinion of August 25, 2017. A formal Opinion will follow. The mandate shall issue forthwith. The time for filing a petition for rehearing will run from the date that the Court’s formal opinion is entered on the docket.” There was some suggestion in press reports that after hearing argument the court was concerned that the affirmance be effective immediately, since the school year would shortly end.

This is one of several similar cases filed around the country by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an organization formed to advance the freedom of Christians to assert the primacy of their beliefs over any conflicting obligations imposed by law. ADF is a staunch opponent of LGBT rights, battled on the ramparts to oppose marriage equality and to support the ability of businesses operated by Christians to refuse to sell their goods and services for same-sex weddings. ADF has inserted itself into the “bathroom wars” by filing lawsuits on behalf of parents and allegedly cisgender students who oppose allowing transgender students to use single-sex facilities consistent with their gender identities. When Judge Smith issued his decision last August, a federal magistrate judge in Illinois, Jeffrey T. Gilbert, had issued a report and recommendation to U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso, which recommended denying ADF’s motion for a preliminary injunction against a similar school district policy in Students & Parents for Privacy v. United States Department of Education, 2016 WL 6134121 (N.D. Ill., Oct. 18, 2016), and Judge Smith cited and relied on Judge Gilbert’s analysis at various points in his decision. Judge Alonso subsequently adopted Judge Gilbert’s Report and Recommendations, over the objections of ADF, on December 29, 2017, in Students & Parents for Privacy v. United States Department of Education, 2017 WL 6629520.

The plaintiffs in the Boyertown case argued three legal theories: first, that the district’s policy violates the constitutional privacy rights of non-transgender students under the 14^th Amendment; second, that the school district’s policy violates Title IX’s requirement, as fleshed out in Education Department regulations, to provide separate restroom and locker room facilities for boys and girls; and third, that the policy violates Pennsylvania’s common law tort of invasion of privacy by intruding on the right of seclusion of non-transgender students. Judge Smith found that the record compiled by the parties in response to the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction showed that the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail on any of these claims. The bulk of his lengthy opinion (which runs 83 pages, including about six pages of headnotes, in Lexis) is devoted to a careful delineation of the factual record upon which he based his legal analysis.

Judge Smith explored each of the three theories at length, rejecting ADF’s argument that high school students have some sort of fundamental constitutional right not to share restroom facilities with transgender students because of the possibility that a transgender student would see them in their underwear, and noting particularly that factual allegations by individual plaintiff students who had found themselves in restrooms with transgender students showed that even if such a “right” existed, it had not been violated in any instance.

As to the Title IX argument, plaintiff insisted that allowing transgender students to use the restrooms created a “hostile environment” for the non-transgender students, but Judge Smith, recurring to Judge Gilbert’s ruling in the Illinois case, observed that “the School District treats both male and female students similarly,” undercutting the argument that the District is discrimination in education opportunity “because of” the sex of the individual plaintiff students. “The practice applies to both the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms,” wrote Smith, “meaning that cisgender boys potentially may use the boys’ locker room and bathrooms with transgender boys and cisgender girls potentially may use the girls’ locker room and bathrooms with transgender girls. In addition, with regard to the transgender students, both transgender boys and transgender girls are treated similarly insofar as they, upon receiving permission from the School District, may use the locker rooms and bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity. Moreover, the School District is not discriminating against students regarding the use of alternative facilities if students are uncomfortable with the current practice insofar as those facilities are open to all students who may be uncomfortable using locker rooms or multi-user facilities… The School District’s similar treatment of all students I fatal to the plaintiffs’ Title IX claim.” Concluding on the Title IX point, Judge Smith wrote, “The plaintiffs have failed to cite to any case holding that a plaintiff can maintain a sexual harassment hostile environment claim when the allegedly sexually harassing party treats all individuals similarly and there is, as such, no evidence of gender/sex animus.” Simply put, the District was not “targeting” any student for particular adverse treatment because of his or her sex. Judge Smith also pointed out that the law of “hostile environment” as it has been developed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to which courts refer in Title IX cases, sets a very high evidentiary bar for establishing a hostile environment, which he concluded could not be met by the plaintiffs’ factual allegations in this case.

As to the tort of invasion of privacy claim, Judge Smith noted that there were no allegations that any of the named defendants had personally invaded the privacy of any of the plaintiffs, as the plaintiffs’ factual allegations all related to two transgender students, identified as Student A and Student B, whose presence in locker rooms or restrooms was the subject of individual plaintiffs’ angst. But, of course, Students A and B were only present in those facilities because the District’s policy allowed them to be. “The court does not deny that an individual seeks seclusion in a bathroom toilet stall from being viewed by other people outside of the stall,” wrote Judge Smith, pointing out that the cases cited by the plaintiffs in support of their common law privacy claims “involve alleged invasions of privacy in bathroom stalls,” usually involving police surveillance of public restrooms. “Here,” Smith pointed out, “there are no allegations and the plaintiffs presented no evidence that any transgender student invaded their seclusion while they were in a bathroom stall. And similarly, although the plaintiffs indicate that viewing a person while in a bathroom would be ‘considered “highly offensive” by any reasonable person,’ the case cited involved an intrusion into a single bathroom stall and not the presence of someone in the common area of a multi-user facility.” After noting how the plaintiffs’ factual allegations about particular incidents involving transgender students in restrooms fell short of supporting the plaintiffs’ contentions about unwanted exposure of their bodies, Smith wrote, “the court does not find that a reasonable person would be offended by the presence of a transgender student in the bathroom or locker room with them, despite the possibility that the transgender student could possibly be in a state of undress more significant than Student A was in this case when the male plaintiffs same him.” He concluded similarly regarding the other incidents described by the plaintiffs, and concluded they had not shown a likelihood that they would be able to establish liability under Pennsylvania’s invasion of privacy tort.

That could be the end of Smith’s analysis, since a finding that plaintiffs are likely to prevail would be necessary to ground a preliminary injunction against the District’s policy, but Smith, to be thorough, analyzed the irreparable harm factor that courts consider, concluding that because the District was providing single-user alternatives the individual plaintiffs would not be irreparable harmed if the policy was allowed to continue in effect. He concluded as well that because these two factors weighed against granting the injunction, there was no need to perform the “balance of harms” analysis that would necessarily follow if the plaintiffs had prevailed on the first two factors.

As noted above, the 3^rd Circuit’s brief Judgement issued on May 24 described Judge Smith’s opinion as “exceptionally well-reasoned,” so it is likely that the “formal opinion” to follow will run along similar lines and probably quote liberally from Judge Smith. Also, it would not be surprising were the court of appeals to give persuasive weight to decisions from other courts ruling on claims by transgender students to a right under Title IX and the 14^th Amendment to use facilities consistent with their gender identity. In the course of deciding those cases, the courts necessarily considered the same factual and legal issues presented by the Parents & Students cases. In light of the judicial rulings so far in these “bathroom wars” cases, a consensus seems to have emerged in the federal judiciary that is part of a larger movement in the law in the direction of recognizing transgender civil rights claims under both the Equal Protection Clause in constitutional law and the statutory bans on discrimination because of sex.

In addition to ADF’s attorneys and the attorneys defending the school district, the court heard from ACLU attorneys representing the interests of transgender students in the Boyertown School District, including lead attorney Leslie Cooper with the ACLU LGBT Rights Project, lead attorney Mary Catherine Roper with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, and cooperating attorneys from Cozen O’Connor, a Philadelphia law firm.

New York Law School

Art Leonard Observations

Posts Tagged ‘ADF’