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A Flood of New Litigation on LGBT Rights

Posted on: May 10th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

May has brought a flood of litigation over LGBT rights in the federal courts. During the first few days of the month, half a dozen federal lawsuits were filed addressing either the transgender bathroom issue or continuing state-level resistance to marriage equality.

First out of the box was a lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago on May 4 by two right-wing litigation groups – The Thomas More Society and the Alliance Defending Freedom – challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s agreement with Township School District 211 that settled a lawsuit about transgender restroom access.   Under the settlement agreement the school district will allow transgender students to use restrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity.  The case stirred considerable local controversy, and the litigation groups were able to recruit five students and their parents, banding together as “Students and Parents for Privacy,” to challenge the settlement.  They argue that the students have a fundamental constitutional right of “bodily privacy” that is violated when transgender students show up in the restroom, that the settlement violates the parents’ fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children by exposing the children to such shocking things, and, perhaps most importantly, that the Education Department’s position that gender identity discrimination violates Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, a federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money, is a misinterpretation of that statute and was not validly adopted.

This last argument rests on a plausible reading of the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal statute that specifies procedures that federal agencies must follow when they adopt new regulations. While the Education Department has not adopted a regulation on the subject, the plaintiffs make a strong argument that its enforcement of its interpretation is tantamount to a regulation.  The plaintiffs argue that the Department is not free to take such a position without going through the formalities of the Administrative Procedure Act, because the Department is enforcing its view as if it was a regulation and because the position it is taking was consistently rejected for the first several decades of Title IX’s existence.  (The statute dates from the early 1970s.)  If the courts agree, the Department would have to go through a time-consuming process that could stretch out over many months in order to adopt a valid regulation, and then the regulation would be subject to challenge in the federal appeals courts, which could tie it up in litigation for years.

On the other hand, many of the plaintiffs’ arguments have already been rejected by the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, when it ruled on April 19 that a federal court in Virginia should have deferred to the Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX in a case brought by a transgender boy seeking appropriate restroom access in his Virginia high school.  That ruling turned on the court’s agreement with the Education Department that existing statutory provisions and regulations (which allow schools to maintain separate restrooms for males and females) were ambiguous as to how to treat transgender people, justifying the Department in adopting a position consistent with its view of the purpose of the law to provide equal educational opportunity.  The 4th Circuit held that the district court should defer to the Department’s judgment, since it was not a clearly erroneous interpretation of the statute and the existing regulations.  In the Chicago lawsuit, the plaintiffs argue that the statute and regulations are not ambiguous, but this rests on their assertion that the Congress that passed Title IX so long ago could not have intended any meaning for the term “sex” other than “biological sex” as determined at birth.  The 4th Circuit, by contrast, found that the term “sex” without any explanatory statutory definition could have a variety of meanings depend upon the context in which it was used, and is thus inherently ambiguous.

Chicago is in the 7th Circuit, so the 4th Circuit’s ruling is not binding on the lawsuit filed there.  More than thirty years ago, the 7th Circuit ruled in a case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that discrimination because of gender identity did not violate the sex discrimination provision and the federal court in Chicago may find itself constrained, if not directly bound, by that precedent under a different but parallel statute, although thirty years of developments in the courts have arguably rendered it obsolete.  Federal courts have generally held that the term “sex” in Title VII and Title IX should be given the same meaning, and that cases construing one of those statutes can be consulted when construing the other.

Just five days later, on May 9, there was a flurry of new litigation in the U.S. District Courts of North Carolina, focused on the bathroom provisions of H.B. 2. H.B. 2 was introduced in the state legislature, approved by both houses and signed by Governor Pat McCrory in one day, March 23.  It wiped out local government bans on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, quashed the right of North Carolinians to sue for any kind of discrimination in state courts, and prohibited localities from adopting their own rules on government contracting and minimum wages.  Most controversially, however, it provided that in all public facilities with restrooms, changing rooms, locker rooms and the like, multi-occupancy facilities must be segregated by biological sex, defined as the sex recorded on a person’s birth certificate.  The state’s attorney general, Roy Cooper, denounced the measure as discriminatory and said his office would not defend it.

Lambda Legal and the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in the Middle District of North Carolina on March 28, challenging portions of H.B. 2 under the 14th Amendment and Title IX, and subsequently one of the transgender plaintiffs in the case also filed charges of discrimination under Title VII with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (which had ruled last year that Title VII requires employers to allow transgender employees to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity).  Within a few weeks, the 4th Circuit’s April 19 ruling in the Virginia Title IX case placed the legality of the bathroom provisions in doubt.  The controversy surrounding H.B. 2, especially the bathroom provision and the preemption of local anti-discrimination ordinances, caused adverse reactions that echoed throughout the country as governors and mayors prohibited official travel to North Carolina, some major employers announced reconsideration of plans to locate facilities there, and conventions and major musical performers cancelled activities in the state.  But Governor McCrory and the Republican state legislative leaders rejected calls to rescind the statute.

The Justice Department weighed in early in May, when the Civil Rights Division sent a letter to Governor McCrory, who had been vigorously defending the law in national media, informing him that the Justice Department considered the bathroom provision to violate federal sex discrimination laws and demanding a response by May 9. Governor McCrory’s response was to file a lawsuit on May 9, seeking a declaration from the federal district court in the Eastern District of North Carolina that the bathroom provisions did not violate federal civil rights laws.  U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch then held a press conference at which she unveiled a new lawsuit by the federal government against North Carolina, filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, seeking a declaration that the bathroom provision violates federal law.  Lynch’s statement, which quickly went viral on the internet, promised transgender people that the federal government recognized them and was standing behind them, thus putting the full weight of the Justice Department on the line backing the Education Department and the EEOC in their interpretations of “sex discrimination” under their respective statutes.

Since North Carolina Attorney General Cooper was refusing to defend H.B. 2, Governor McCrory retained a private lawyer, Karl S. Bowers, Jr., of Columbia, South Carolina, who filed the complaint co-signed by the governor’s General Counsel, Robert C. Stephens, and local North Carolina attorneys from the Raleigh firm of Millberg Gordon Stewart PLLC.  Presumably they will also be conducting the defense in the Justice Department’s case.  Their argument, consistent with McCrory’s public statements, was that the state was not discriminating against transgender people, merely requiring them to use alternative facilities in order to protect the privacy rights of others.  The complaint echoed the governor’s “common sense privacy policy” argument, and insisted that federal courts have “consistently” found that Title VII “does not protect transgender or transsexuality per se.”  While the complaint lists half a dozen federal court rulings supporting that position, it conveniently fails to note numerous court decisions holding to the contrary, including decisions by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, and district courts in many different states.

The Justice Department will probably move to transfer McCrory’s case to the Middle District of North Carolina, where it can be consolidated with the Justice Department’s lawsuit and perhaps the pending Lambda/ACLU lawsuit. There was another lawsuit defending H.B. 2 filed on May 9 in the Eastern District court by North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland), but it is hard to conceive how they could have standing to bring a federal lawsuit on their own, so it is likely to be dismissed if the government makes a motion to that effect.

Meanwhile, there were also new litigation developments in Mississippi, challenging House Bill 1523, the so-called “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act.” HB 1523 was passed in response to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell marriage equality decision of last June 26.  Subsequent to Obergefell, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district court injunction against the state of Mississippi’s enforcement of its anti-gay marriage ban, and marriage equality came to the state.  State legislators quickly went to work undermining this by devising H.B. 1523, which essentially gives government officials, businesses, and religious believers permission to discriminate against same-sex couples, provided that the discriminators have a sincere religious belief that marriage should only involve one man and one woman.  The measure is scheduled to go into effect on July 1.

The ACLU lawsuit filed on May 9 in the federal court in Jackson, Mississippi, charges that H.B. 1523 violates the 14th Amendment “by subjecting the lawful marriages of same-sex couples to different terms and conditions than those accorded to different-sex couples.”  In effect, Mississippi has set up a “separate but equal” framework, which “imposes a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all married same-sex couples in Mississippi.”  The lawsuit names as defendant the Mississippi State Registrar of Vital Records, Judy Moulder.

Among its many discriminatory provisions, H.B. 1523 provides that government employees “who wish to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples” will be required to Moulder, and she will be required to maintain a list of officials who have recused themselves from providing same-sex couples with the services that are routinely provided to different-sex couples, and they will be excused from providing these services to same-sex couples. These recusant officials are also charged by the statute with a requirement to make arrangements to insure that same-sex couples do receive the services to which they are entitled, but the statute does not establish any mechanism to ensure compliance with this provision.

The ACLU lawsuit seeks a declaration from the court that H.B. 1523 is unconstitutional “on its face” and an injunction against it going into effect.   It was immediately followed by more court action, as New York attorney Roberta Kaplan, who represents the plaintiffs in the Mississippi marriage equality case, filed a motion in federal district court on May 10, asking Judge Carlton Reeves to reopen the case so they can name Judy Moulder as an additional defendant and modify his injunction to require the state to come up with the necessary procedures to ensure that same-sex couples who seek to marry will not encounter any delays due to recusals on religious grounds by state officials.  Indeed, she argues, anyone recusing themselves from serving same-sex couples should be disqualified from serving different-sex couples as well, as failure to do so would violate the obligations of all state officials to provide non-discriminatory service. The motion also asks that the list of recusant officials be posted on the website of the Registrar of Vital Records so that couples won’t have to subject themselves to the indignity of being turned away when they seek marriage licenses.

 

North Carolina H.B. 2 Draws ACLU/Lambda Lawsuit and Numerous Protest Actions

Posted on: March 31st, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

 

Within days of Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, signing into law H.B. 2, an “emergency measure” that passed with unanimous support of the Republicans in the North Carolina legislature to restrict public restroom access for transgender people and preempt localities from legislating on LGBT rights, the ACLU’s national LGBT Rights Project and its North Carolina affiliate in collaboration with the Atlanta office of Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, attacking the constitutionality of the measure. %Caracano v. McCrory%, No. 1:16-cv-236 (filed March 28, 2016).  The case was assigned to District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder.  North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy Cooper III, one of the named defendants in his official capacity, soon announced that he agreed with the plaintiffs that H.B. 2 was unconstitutional and so his office would not defend it.  Cooper is planning to run for governor against McCrory.

Social and political fallout responding to the new statute was swift. Governors from three states and mayors from several major cities had banned official travel by their employees to North Carolina within a week after the bill was signed, scores of corporate executives, including many from the state’s largest employers, signed letters to the governor deploring the measure, and talk had begun about professional sports leagues possibly shifting championship games out of the state.  Particular attention was focused on a large furniture trade fair held annually in North Carolina, organized by a gay couple, with the organizers reporting that many of the usual participants had indicated that they would not come this year due to passage of the law.  Efforts to put pressure on the state legislature through a tourism and business boycott were soon well under way. Governor McCrory dug in his heels, claiming that the law was not “discriminatory” and was intended to protect the private of public restroom users, charging that Attorney General Cooper’s announced refusal to defend the measure was a violation of his oath of office, a point that Cooper hotly disputed.  McCrory’s position was quickly undermined as Governor Nathan Deal, a fellow Republican, vetoed an anti-gay “religious freedom” measure in Georgia just days later, to be followed shortly by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Passage of H.B. 2 was provoked by a majority vote of the Charlotte City Council to add sexual orientation and gender identity to its local civil rights ordinance effective April 1, over protests by opponents that this would allow men pretending to be women to invade women’s restroom facilities, thus violating the privacy of their female users and posing a danger of sexual assaults. The claim was bizarre on its face, since scores of municipalities and counties, and many states, have banned gender identity discrimination in places of public accommodation, some for a decade or more, without any such incidents being reported.  Furthermore, somebody identified as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity would not likely attempt to use a woman’s restroom or locker room facility if they were not expressing their gender identity as female through dress and grooming and taking female hormones through a prescription written by a doctor who has diagnosed gender dysphoria, and such is the experience under such laws in other jurisdictions.  But Governor McCrory, running for re-election and seeking to energize his conservative (and presumably transphobic) base, had warned even before the Council voted that passage of the measure in the city where he had previously served as mayor would require a response from the state government.  Although McCrory did not call for the special session, which was initiated by Republican leaders in both houses, he signed the resulting bill with alacrity, probably setting speed records for a controversial measure being introduced, passing both houses, and being signed into law in a single legislative day.  Some state legislators protested that they did not even receive the text of the bill prior to the day’s floor debates.

Although the “provocation” focused on restrooms, the legislative response ran far beyond a simple overturning of the gender identity provision of the local ordinance as it pertains to public accommodations or more narrowly to specific kinds of facilities. Instead, the legislature affirmatively enacted a %requirement% that the public schools and other government facilities throughout the state restrict access to any “multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility” by designating each such facility as being for the exclusive use of males or females and providing that only persons identified on their birth certificates as male could use male-designated facilities and analogously  for women.  Since North Carolina requires proof of sex reassignment surgery before issuing new birth certificates to applicants seeking a change to reflect their gender identity, and many transgender people don’t undergo complete reassignment surgery for a variety of reasons, including the expense of a procedure not covered by their health insurance, many transgender people would be left in effect without ready access to appropriate restroom facilities.  Use of facilities consistent with their birth certificates could subject them to violent reactions, especially noting the gun culture of southern states like North Carolina.  (Imagine the danger to a transgender man coming into a female-designated restroom occupied by women with pistols!)  The legislature apparently gave no thought to how its restroom restrictions would be enforced in practice, an issue not addressed in the statute.  Indeed, the statute directs its mandate to “local boards of education” and government “agencies” to “establish” single-sex facilities and restrict their use, but does not explicitly impose penalties for failure to do so, and says nothing specifically about penalties, if any, imposed on persons apprehended using the “wrong” restrooms.  We are waiting for somebody to confront Gov. McCrory in a men’s restroom in the state capitol to demand that he prove his “biological sex,” presumably by exposing his penis to inspection.  But we digress. . . .

The legislature went even further. Not contenting itself with addressing the “bathroom” issue, it also passed a provision preempting local governments from forbidding discrimination in employment and public accommodations by declaring such issues as properly reserved to statewide resolution.  Just to drive the point home and to avoid arguments about broadly defining bans on sex discrimination, the preempting statute bans discrimination on the basis of “biological sex,” which is defined according to the individual’s sex as designated on their birth certificate.  The measure also eschews creating any private right of action for discrimination in employment or public accommodations, instead limiting enforcement to complaints to the Human Relations Commission, which is authorized to “investigate and conciliate” but not to legislate, the goal being to resolve all complaints from “amicable resolution.”  This effectively preempted and wiped out all local civil rights laws, and because of the limited list of categories covered in H.B. 2, incidentally eliminated some local protections for veterans.  While they were at it, the legislators threw into the bill a totally unrelated prohibition on local governments legislating on public contracting, wages and hours, child labor, and other subjects dealt with by the state’s wage and hours law, including prohibiting localities from establishing a minimum wage higher than the state’s rather low minimum.  The thread tying these provisions together was a purported bid for “statewide consistency” in employment regulation, contracting, and anti-discrimination policies, the “theory” being that allowing localities to legislate would make life too difficult for businesses and confusing for everybody else.

The lawsuit was brought in the name of two state university employees, Joaquin Carcano (a transgender man at UNC Chapel Hill) and Angela Gilmore (a lesbian at Northern Carolina Central University Law School) and a current student, Payton Grey McGarry (a transgender man at UNC Greensboro), as well as the ACLU of North Carolina (a legal membership organization) and Equality North Carolina (a political membership organization). The named defendants are Governor Patrick McCrory, Attorney General Roy Cooper III, the University of North Carolina and its Board of Governors, and the UNC Board’s chair, W. Louis Bissette, Jr.

The complaint proceeds along several lines, constitutional and statutory. The constitutional claim was that H.B. 2 violates the 14th Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, by imposing harms on transgender and lesbian/gay/bisexual residents of the state without sufficient justification to meet constitutional requirements.  The complaint asserts that heightened scrutiny judicial review applies to these sorts of discrimination, a point not yet expressly embraced by the Supreme Court but starting to make its way in the lower federal courts.  (For example, the 11th Circuit, in %Glenn v. Brumby%, 663 F.3d 1312 (2011), found that gender identity discrimination by a public employer was sex discrimination subject to heightened scrutiny.  The Obama Administration argued in the %Windsor% case that sexual orientation discrimination was subject to heightened scrutiny, a point embraced by the 2nd Circuit in that litigation.)  The Due Process Clause claim includes a privacy claim, arguing that the bathroom restrictions will require transgender people to “out” themselves, thus exposing themselves to danger, and that in light of the state’s demanding criteria for issuing new birth certificates, in effect dictating to transgender people that they must undergo surgical procedures to attain equal access to appropriate public facilities for their gender, another imposition upon individual choice and autonomy.  The complaint also asserts violations of Title IX of the federal Education Act Amendments, which forbid sex discrimination by educational institutions that get federal money.  This relies on recent decisions by the U.S. Department of Education that this provision requires educational institutions to allow transgender people to access restroom and locker room facilities consistent with their gender identity.

The complaint also attacks the preemption of local laws protective of LGBT rights, summoning an argument based on the Supreme Court’s 1996 decision in %Romer v. Evans%, which struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment prohibiting the state or its political subdivisions from outlawing anti-gay discrimination.  Unlike the Colorado amendment, H.B. 2 does not single out LGBT people for exclusion from protection on its face, excluding them instead by %not% mentioning them sexual orientation or gender identity as prohibited grounds of discrimination and preempting local governments from legislating on discrimination.  But the rationale of %Romer% seems to apply, in that the measure was adopted for the proclaimed purpose of excluding LGBT people from the protections afforded to other groups that suffer discrimination, with no rational basis articulated other than a desire to exclude.  Another argument that seems relevant here would be derived from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in %U.S. v. Windsor% striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.  The government sought to defend the refusal to recognize same-sex marriages contracted under state law by advancing the need for a national unified definition of marriage for purposes of federal rights and programs, similar to North Carolina’s argument for “statewide consistency” in anti-discrimination law.  The Supreme Court did not even find that justification significant enough to dignify it with discussion.

Since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans sex discrimination in employment, applies to state and local government workplaces, the restroom provisions likely violate Title VII consistent with the views of the EEOC, as expressed in %Lusardi v. McHugh%, Appeal No. 0120133395, 2015 WL 1607756 (EEOC, April 1, 2015, holding that the Department of the Army violated Title VII by refusing by restricting restroom access of a transgender civilian employee.  Title VII claims must be filed initially with the EEOC or designated state civil rights agencies, subject to an “exhaustion of administrative remedies requirement,” before they can be brought in federal court, so no Title VII claim was asserted in this challenge to H.B. 2.  However, it is possible that transgender state and local government employees will file such complaints, generating additional litigation as the %Carcano% case works its way through the federal courts. EEOC is busy litigating, directly and through amicus briefs in private litigation, to establish its position on the interpretation of “sex” under Title VII in non-federal employment cases in the courts, and a private “bathroom” case under Title IX is pending before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, %G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board%, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124905, 2015 WL 5560190 (E.D. Va. September 17, 2015). (Federal courts generally consider Title VII sex discrimination and Title IX cases under the same doctrinal rubric and freely refer to court decisions under both statutes.)  Indeed, the %G.G.% appeal has been argued before a circuit panel and a ruling is imminent. Such a ruling would be direct binding precedent on the district court in the case challenging H.B. 2.

The legal team representing plaintiffs includes Christopher A. Brook for the North Carolina Legal Foundation of the ACLU, Elizabeth O. Gill and Chase B. Strangio of the ACLU’s national LGBT Rights Project, and Tara L. Borelli, Peter C. Renn, and Kyle A. Palazzolo of Lambda Legal’s Atlanta office.

[Government officials from other states taking official action to ban state-funded employee trips to North Carolina included New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (Executive Order No. 155), New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, Seattle Mayor Edward Murray (Executive Order 2016-03), San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.]