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7th Circuit Panel Rejects Lesbian Professor’s Title VII Claim

Posted on: July 29th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on July 28 that a lesbian professor could not sue the local community college in South Bend, Indiana, for sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, rejecting her argument that anti-gay discrimination is a form of sex discrimination in violation of that law.  Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 13746, 2016 Westlaw 4039703.

 

Weighing in on a question that has taken on renewed vitality since last July, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency that enforces Title VII, ruled that David Baldwin, a gay air traffic controller, could bring an employment discrimination claim against the U.S. Transportation Department, the court, while describing the existing precedents in the 7th Circuit as “illogical,” nonetheless concluded that it was bound by those precedents.

 

Kimberly Hively began teaching part-time at Ivy Tech Community College in 2000. She applied six times for full-time positions for which she claimed to be qualified, but she was always turned down and her part-time contract was not renewed in July 2014.  By then, she had already filed a complaint with the EEOC on December 13, 2013, representing herself.  This was about 18 months before that agency changed its long-standing position and began to approve gay Title VII claims in the air traffic controller case.   The EEOC’s position, however, is not binding on federal courts.

 

Hively did not file a complaint with the South Bend human rights agency. Although that city’s anti-discrimination law was amended in 2012 to include sexual orientation, the city does not have jurisdiction to legislate about personnel practices at state-operated educational institutions, and they are explicitly exempted from coverage by the local law.  There is no Indiana state law forbidding sexual orientation discrimination.

 

After the EEOC concluded that it did not have jurisdiction, it sent Hively a “right to sue” letter. She filed her claim in federal court on August 15, 2014.  The college filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that sexual orientation discrimination claims are not covered under Title VII.  Hively, citing the advances of gay rights in the courts, urged that the college should not be allowed to discriminate based on sexual orientation.  On March 3, 2015, U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano granted the college’s motion.   Citing a 7th Circuit decision from 2000 and a 2010 decision by the federal district court in Indiana, Judge Lozano wrote, “While this Court is sympathetic to the arguments made by Hively in her response brief, this Court is bound by Seventh Circuit precedent.  Because sexual orientation is not recognized as a protected class [sic] under Title VII, that claim must be dismissed.”

 

Hively also alleged a violation of 42 U.S.C. Section 1981, which Judge Lozano had to dismiss as well, because the Supreme Court interprets that 19th-century statute to apply only to race discrimination claims.  HiverlyivelyHi also asked to amend her complaint to push a claim for breach of contract, seeking enforcement of the college’s published non-discrimination policy, but that claim would arise under Indiana state contract law, and federal courts usually refuse to address state law claims when they have determined that the plaintiff has no federal law claim.

 

The fate Hively suffered in the district court shows the perils of individuals trying to navigate the complexities of federal employment law without legal representation. A well-versed lawyer might have found a way to construct a 14th Amendment Equal Protection claim on her behalf, which could be directed against individual school officials if she could allege sufficient facts to suggest that they refused to consider her applications because she is a lesbian, although there would be no guarantee of success because the Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether sexual orientation discrimination claims against public officials are entitled to heightened or strict scrutiny.

 

Attorney Gregory Nevins from Lambda Legal’s Atlanta office represented her on appeal to the 7th Circuit, where oral argument took place on September 30 and a long wait began for the court’s opinion.  The wait seemed surprising, because the three-judge panel would most likely easily conclude, as had Judge Lozano, that circuit precedent would dictate affirmance.  But the court took nine months to release its decision.  (By contrast, the 7th Circuit issued its marriage equality decision in 2014 less than two weeks after oral argument.)

 

Judge Ilana Rovner’s opinion obviously took so long because the majority of the panel was not content just to issue a pro forma dismissal in reliance on circuit precedent. The first, shorter, part of Rovner’s opinion, performing that function, was joined by Senior Judges William Bauer and Kenneth Ripple.  But the second, much longer, part, joined by Judge Ripple, provides a lengthy and detailed discussion of how the  EEOC’s Baldwin decision has led to an intense debate in the district courts around the country about how those old precedents are clearly out-of-step with where the country has moved on LGBT rights.

 

Judge Rovner (or, more likely, Lambda Legal in its appellate brief) collected district court decisions from all over the country – particularly from circuits where there were no adverse appeals court rulings – in which judges have decided to follow the EEOC’s reasoning and find that discrimination because of sexual orientation is “necessarily” sex discrimination.

 

The logical pathway to that conclusion runs through the Supreme Court’s 1989 ruling, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, which accepted the argument that discrimination against an employee because that employee fails to meet their employer’s sex-stereotypical views about how employees present themselves, is evidence of sex discrimination. That case involved a woman who was denied a partnership because she was perceived as inadequately feminine in her dress and conduct by partners who voted on the partnership decision.

 

Since 1989 some district courts have extended protection under Title VII to LGBT plaintiffs who could plausibly allege that they encountered discrimination because of sex stereotypes, but other courts have refused to take such cases, criticizing them as attempting to “bootstrap” coverage for sexual orientation into Title VII against the intent of Congress. What has emerged is a hodgepodge of decisions, resulting in the odd situation that, at least in some circuits, a gay plaintiff who is also obviously gender-nonconforming in terms of dress and speech may be protected under Title VII using the stereotyping theory, but a “straight-acting” gay plaintiff would have no protection.  Judge Rovner pointed out the irrationality of this, but, unfortunately, the 7th Circuit precedents seemed inescapable to this panel.

 

After discussing how various courts have pointed out the difficulties of distinguishing between a sex-stereotyping case and a sexual orientation case, she observed that the difficult is not necessarily impossible. “There may indeed be some aspects of a worker’s sexual orientation that create a target for discrimination apart from any issues related to gender,” she wrote.  “Harassment may be based on prejudicial or stereotypical ideas about particular aspects of the gay and lesbian ‘lifestyle,’ including ideas about promiscuity, religious beliefs, spending habits, child-rearing, sexual practices, or politics.  Although it seems likely that most of the causes of discrimination based on sexual orientation ultimately stem from employers’ and co-workers’ discomfort with a lesbian woman’s or a gay man’s failure to abide by gender norms, we cannot say that it must be so in all cases.  Therefore we cannot conclude that the two must necessarily be coextensive unless or until either the legislature or the Supreme Court says it is so.”

 

In this case, she pointed out, Kimberly Hively had not made any specific allegations of gender non-conformity, other than the implicit contention that being a lesbian, as such, was gender non-conforming in that she was attracted to women rather than men. Although a few district courts, especially after the Baldwin ruling, have found that to be enough to squeeze into coverage under the sex stereotype theory, the 7th Circuit hasn’t gotten there yet, and this panel did not feel empowered to extend circuit precedent to accept that argument.

 

While noting the significant advances in LGBT rights at the Supreme Court from Romer v. Evans (1996) through Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), Judge Rovner pointed out that in none of those cases has the Supreme Court said anything that would deal directly with the question whether anti-gay discrimination must be treated as a form of sex discrimination under Title VII. But she did observe the stark legal anomaly created by last year’s marriage equality decision.

 

“The cases as they do stand, however, create a paradoxical legal landscape in which a person can be married on Saturday and then fired on Monday for just that act,” she wrote. “For although federal law now guarantees anyone the right to marry another person of the same gender, Title VII, to the extent it does not reach sexual orientation discrimination, also allows employers to fire that employee for doing so.  From an employee’s perspective, that right to marriage might not feel like a real right if she can be fired for exercising it.  Many citizens would be surprised to learn that under federal law any private employer can summon an employee into his office and state, ‘You are a hard-working employee and have added much value to my company, but I am firing you because you are gay.’  And the employee would have no recourse whatsoever – unless she happens to live in a state or locality with an anti-discrimination statute that includes sexual orientation.  More than half of the United States, however, do not have such protections.”

 

She pointed out the additional oddity that even a “straight” employee who was discharged because her employer mistakenly thought she was a lesbian would have no protection, unless she could show her overt violation of gender stereotypes aws the reason for the discrimination. Straight people are not protected from “mistaken” sexual orientation discrimination!

 

Judge Rovner observed that this state of the law “leads to unsatisfying results.” It also is inconsistent with Title VII race discrimination cases that impose liability when an employer fires a white employee because he or she is dating or marrying a person of a different race.  It is now well-established that it is race discrimination to single out somebody because of their interracial social life.  Why not, as a logical matter, prohibit discriminating against somebody because of their same-sex social life?  The logic seems irrefutable.  “It is true that Hively has not made the express claim that she was discriminated against based on her relationship with a woman,” wrote Judge Rovner, “but that is, after all, the very essence of sexual orientation discrimination.  It is discrimination based on the nature of an associational relationship – in this case, one based on gender.”

 

Rover found it “curious” that “the Supreme Court has opted not to weigh in on the question of whether Title VII’s prohibition on sex-based discrimination would extend to protect against sexual orientation discrimination” and that even in “the watershed case of Obergefell” the court “made no mention of the stigma and injury that comes from excluding lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons from the workforce or subjecting them to un-remediable harassment and discrimination.” But, frustratingly, the Supreme Court has yet to tackle head-on the direct issue of anti-gay discrimination in a way that would provide guidance to lower federal courts and state courts, and has so far consistently denied review in cases presenting this question.  “In addition to the Supreme Court’s silence,” she observed, “Congress has time and time against said ‘no’ to every attempt to add sexual orientation to the list of categories protected from discrimination by Title VII.”

 

Ultimately the judge was very critical of the 7th Circuit’s precedent.  “It may be that the rationale appellate courts, including this one, have used to distinguish between gender non-conformity discrimination claims and sexual orientation discrimination claims will not hold up under future rigorous analysis,” she wrote.  “It seems illogical to entertain gender non-conformity claims under Title VII where the non-conformity involves style of dress or manner of speaking, but not when the gender non-conformity involves the sine qua non of gender stereotypes – with whom a person engages in sexual relationships.  And we can see no rational reason to entertain sex discrimination claims for those who defy gender norms by looking or acting stereotypically gay or lesbian (even if they are not), but not for those who are openly gay but otherwise comply with gender norms.  We allow two women or two men to marry, but allow employers to terminate them for doing so.  Perchance, in time, these inconsistencies will come to be seen as denying practical workability and will lead us to reconsider our precedent.”  She then quoted Justice Kennedy’s Obergefell decision, pointing out how “new insights and societal understandings” could lead to changes in the law.

 

Rovner concluded that it was “unlikely” that society would tolerate this anomalous situation for long. “Perhaps the writing is on the wall,” she wrote.  “But writing on the wall is not enough.  Until the writing comes in the form of a Supreme Court opinion or new legislation, we must adhere to the writing of our prior precedent, and therefore, the decision of the district court is affirmed.”

 

This conclusion is not totally accurate.  The full 7th Circuit, considering this issue en banc, could decide to overrule the prior precedent within the circuit without waiting for passage of the Equality Act (which would amend Title VII to add sexual orientation and gender identity) or for a Supreme Court ruling.  Judge Rovner’s extended critique implies receptivity to rethinking the precedent, so perhaps a motion for rehearing en banc could find favor with a majority of the judges of the circuit.

 

A little “circuit math” suggests the possibility: There are nine active judges on the 7th Circuit, with two vacancies for which President Obama has made nominations that are stalled in the Senate.  Only one of the active judges was appointed by President Obama, David Hamilton, and two were appointed by President Clinton, Chief Judge Diane Wood and Ann Williams.  All the other judges are appointees of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.  (There is no appointee of George W. Bush sitting on the 7th Circuit.)

 

The three-judge panel in this case consisted entirely of Republican appointees: Judge Rovner by the first President Bush, Senior Judges Bauer and Ripple by Presidents Ford and Reagan. Interestingly, Ripple and Rovner, both Republican appointees with long service on the court, agree that the precedent is “illogical” and not “rational.”  Unfortunately, Judge Ripple, as a Senior Judge, would not participate in an en banc rehearing.  But perhaps despite the strong 6-3 overall Republican tilt of this circuit, a full nine-member bench might find a majority for granting en banc rehearing and changing the circuit precedent.  That would require at least one more Republican appointee to join Rovner and the three Democratic appointees to make a 5-4 majority.

 

One of the other Republican appointees, Richard Posner, could be the prime candidate for that. He wrote the 7th Circuit’s magnificent marriage equality decision, which reflected his strong receptivity to reconsidering his views on LGBT issues, a point he has subsequently reiterated in a law review article musing about his changing understanding of LGBT issues since he was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

 

On the other hand, it is possible that this opinion took so long to get out because some attempt was made within the judges’ chambers to provoke a spontaneous en banc reconsideration , but it was unsuccessful.  Who knows?  Mysterious are the inner workings of our courts.

Federal Trial Courts Divided Over Title VII Sexual Orientation Discrimination Claims

Posted on: June 21st, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

Last July the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), reversing its position dating back fifty years, issued a ruling that a gay man could charge a federal agency employer with sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for denying a promotion because of his sexual orientation. The Baldwin v. Foxx decision is an administrative ruling, not binding on federal courts, and federal trial judges are sharply divided on the issue.

During May and June, federal district judges in Virginia, New York, Illinois, Mississippi and Florida issued rulings in response to employers’ motions to dismiss Title VII claims of sexual orientation discrimination.  In each case, the employer argued that the plaintiff’s Title VII claim had to be dismissed as a matter of law because the federal employment discrimination statute does not forbid sexual orientation discrimination.

Title VII was enacted as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although the House committee considering the bill took evidence about sex discrimination, it decided to send the bill to the House floor without including “sex” as a prohibited basis for discrimination, because this was deemed  too controversial and might sink the bill. During the floor debate, however, a southern representative, Howard Smith of Virginia, a conservative Democrat who was opposed to the proposed ban on race discrimination, proposed an amendment to add “sex” to the list of prohibited grounds.  Most historical accounts suggest that Smith’s strategy was to make the bill more controversial, thus ensuring its defeat.  More recent accounts have suggested that Smith, although a racist, was actually a supporter of equal rights for women and genuinely believed that sex discrimination in the workplace should be banned.  (His amendment did not add “sex” to the other titles of the bill addressing other kinds of discrimination.)  The amendment passed, and ultimately the bill was enacted, going into effect in July 1965.

Because “sex” was added through a House floor amendment, the Committee Report on the bill says nothing about it, and the subsequent debate in the Senate (where the bill went directly to the floor, bypassing committee consideration) devoted little attention to it, apart from an amendment providing that pay practices “authorized” by the Equal Pay Act of 1963 would not be outlawed by Title VII. As a result, the “legislative history” of Title VII provides no explanation about what Congress intended by including “sex” as a prohibited ground of discrimination.

During the first quarter century of Title VII, the EEOC and the federal courts consistently rejected claims that the law outlawed sexual orientation discrimination. In the absence of explanatory legislative history, they ruled that Congress must have intended simply  to prohibit discrimination against women because they are women or against men because they are men, and nothing more complicated or nuanced than that.  This interpretation was challenged in 1989, when the Supreme Court ruled in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that a woman who failed to conform to her employer’s sex stereotypes could bring a sex discrimination case under Title VII, adopting a broader and more sophisticated view of sex discrimination.

Since 1989, some lower federal courts have used the Price Waterhouse ruling to allow gay or transgender plaintiffs to assert sex discrimination claims in reliance on the sex stereotype theory, while others have rejected attempt to “bootstrap” sexual orientation or gender identity into Title VII in this way.   More recently, several federal appeals courts have endorsed the idea that gender identity discrimination claims are really sex discrimination claims, and a consensus to that effect has begun to emerge, but progress has been slower on the sexual orientation front.

Last summer the EEOC’s decision in Baldwin v. Foxx presented a startling turnabout of the agency’s view. The EEOC does not adjudicate discrimination claims against non-governmental and state employers, but it is assigned an appellate role concerning discrimination claims by federal employees.  In Baldwin v. Foxx, the EEOC reversed a ruling by the Transportation Department that a gay air traffic controller could not bring a sexual orientation discrimination claim under Title VII.  Looking at the developing federal case law since Price Waterhouse and seizing upon a handful of federal district court decisions that had allowed gay plaintiffs to bring sex discrimination claims under a sex stereotype theory, the agency concluded that a sexual orientation discrimination claim is “necessarily” a sex discrimination claim and should be allowed under Title VII.

Since that July 15 ruling, many federal district judges have had to rule on motions by employers to dismiss Title VII sexual orientation discrimination claims. The precedential hierarchy of the federal court system has required some of them to dismiss those claims because the circuit court of appeals to which their rulings could be appealed had previously ruled adversely on the issue.  In other circuits, however, the question is open and some judges have taken the EEOC’s lead.

On May 5, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne in Virginia found that he was bound by 4th Circuit precedent to reject a sexual orientation discrimination claim under Title VII, even though the plaintiff, an openly-gay administrative assistant at Virginia Union University, had alleged clear evidence of anti-gay discrimination by the university president.  Judge Payne found that a 1996 decision by the 4th Circuit, Wrightson v. Pizza Hut of America, was still binding.  Payne noted that other federal trial courts were divided about whether to defer to the EEOC’s Baldwin ruling, but in any event he felt bound by circuit precedent to dismiss the claim.

A district judge on Long Island, Sandra J. Feuerstein, reached a similar result in Magnusson v. County of Suffolk on May 17, dismissing a Title VII claim by an openly-lesbian custodial worker at the Suffolk County Department of Public Works, who alleged that her failure to comply with her supervisors’ stereotypes of how women should dress had led to discrimination against her. Relying on prior decisions by the New York City-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Feuerstein refrained from discussing more recent developments and dismissed the claim, asserting that the plaintiff’s “claims regarding incidents of harassment based on her sexual orientation do not give rise to Title VII liability.”

However, on May 31, a senior district judge in Illinois decided that prudence in light of the developing situation counseled against dismissing a pending “perceived sexual orientation” claim in the case of Matavka v. Board of Education. Judge Milton I. Shadur confronted the school district’s motion to dismiss a discrimination claim by  an employee at J. Sterling Morton High School, who alleged that “he experienced severe harassment from his coworkers and supervisors, including taunts that he was ‘gay’ and should ‘suck it,’ frequent jokes about his perceived homosexuality, and hacking of his Facebook account to identify him publicly as ‘interested in boys and men’, and an email stating ‘U. . . are homosexual.’”  Judge Shadur observed that the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals had in the past rejected sexual orientation discrimination claims under Title VII, which “would appear to bury” Matavka’s Title VII claim.  But, he noted, Baldwin v. Foxx, while not binding on the court, may prompt a rethinking of this issue, and that the 7th Circuit heard oral argument on September 30 of a plaintiff’s appeal from a different federal trial judge’s dismissal of a sexual orientation discrimination claim in the case of Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College.  “Should Hively follow recent district court decisions in finding Baldwin persuasive,” he wrote, “that finding plainly would affect the disposition of Morton High’s motion.  That being so, the prudent course at present is to stay this matter pending the issuance of a decision in Hively.”

The 7th Circuit has not issued a decision in Hively as of this writing.  Judge Shadur stayed a ruling on the motion until July 29, and said that if the 7th Circuit had not issued a ruling by then, he might stay it further.

The federal appeals courts are not bound by any rules about how soon after oral argument they must issue opinions. Sometimes the 7th Circuit moves quickly.  During 2014 it took just a week after the August 26 oral argument to rule affirmatively on a marriage equality case on September 4, giving the states of Wisconsin and Indiana time to petition the Supreme Court for review before the start of the Court’s October term.  The panel that heard the Hively argument has not ruled in more than eight months, suggesting that an extended internal discussion may be happening among the nine active judges of the 7th Circuit, to whom the panel’s proposed opinion would be circulated before it is released.  Panels may not depart from circuit precedent, but a majority of the active judges on the circuit can overrule their past decisions.  A 7th Circuit ruling reversing the district court’s dismissal of the Hively complaint would be a major breakthrough for Title VII coverage of sexual orientation claims.

Meanwhile, two decisions issued in June have taken opposite views on the question. In Brown v. Subway Sandwich Shop of Laurel, U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett of the Southern District of Mississippi bowed to prior 5th Circuit rulings rejecting sexual orientation claims under Title VII, and he even claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that the EEOC’s Baldwin decision did not support the plaintiff’s claim, stating that Baldwin “takes no position on the merits of the claim and resolves only timeliness and jurisdictional issues.”  While this may appear to be technically true, since the EEOC was ruling on an appeal from the Transportation Department’s dismissal of the claim and not ultimately on the merits, on the other hand the EEOC definitely did take a “position” on the question whether sexual orientation discrimination claims are covered by Title VII; it had to address this question in order to determine that it had jurisdiction over the claim.  The EEOC clearly stated in Baldwin that sexual orientation discrimination claims are “necessarily” sex discrimination claims.

By contrast, U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida, finding that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has not issued a precedential ruling on the question, refused to dismiss a “perceived sexual orientation” discrimination claim in Winstead v. Lafayette County Board of County Commissioners on June 20.  Pointing out that the 11th Circuit had ruled in 2011 in Glenn v. Brumby that a gender identity discrimination claim could be considered a sex discrimination claim under the Equal Protection Clause using a sex stereotyping theory, Judge Walker found that the Baldwin ruling, which also discussed sex stereotyping as a basis for a sexual orientation claim, was persuasive and should be followed.

Judge Walker rejected the argument made by some courts that using the stereotyping theory for this purpose was inappropriately “bootstrapping” claims of sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII. “These arguments seem to this Court to misapprehend the nature of animus towards people based on their sexual orientation, actual or perceived,” he wrote.  “Such animus, whatever its origin, is at its core based on disapproval of certain behaviors (real or assumed) and tendencies towards behaviors, and those behaviors are disapproved of precisely because they are deemed to be ‘inappropriate’ for members of a certain sex or gender.”

He concluded: “This view – that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is necessarily discrimination based on gender or sex stereotypes, and is therefore sex discrimination – is persuasive to this Court, as it has been to numerous other courts and the EEOC.” He also contended that it “follows naturally from (though it is not compelled by) Brumby, which is binding Eleventh Circuit precedent.  Simply put, to treat someone differently based on her attraction to women is necessary to treat that person differently because of her failure to conform to gender or sex stereotypes, which is, in turn, necessarily discrimination on the basis of sex.”

Ironically, Judge Walker turned to an opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, an outspoken opponent of LGBT rights, to seal the deal. He quoted from Scalia’s opinion for the Supreme Court in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, a 1998 decision that same-sex harassment cases could be brought under Title VII.  “No one doubts,” wrote Judge Walker, “that discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation was not ‘the principal evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII,’” quoting Scalia, and continuing the quote,  “’But statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.’”  Scalia was opposed to relying on “legislative history” to determine the meaning of statutes, instead insisting on focusing on the statutory language and giving words their “usual” meanings.

Judge Walker concluded that his decision not to dismiss the Title VII claim “does not require judicial activism or tortured statutory construction. It requires close attention to the text of Title VII, common sense, and an understanding that ‘in forbidding employers to discrimination against individuals because of their sex, Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes,’” a quote from a 1971 court of appeals ruling that had been cited by the Supreme Court.

Judge Walker’s decision provides the most extended district court discussion of the merits of allowing sexual orientation discrimination claims under Title VII, but it will not be the last word, as the EEOC pushes forward with its affirmative agenda to litigate this issue in as many federal courts around the country as possible, building to a potential Supreme Court ruling. So far, the Supreme Court has refused to get involved with the ongoing debate about whether sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination claims are covered under Title VII.  It refused to review the 11th Circuit’s decision in Glenn v. Brumby.  But it can’t put things off much longer.  An affirmative 7th Circuit ruling in Hively would create the kind of “circuit split” that usually prompts the Supreme Court to agree to review a case.  That may not be long in coming.

Federal Court Refuses to Dismiss Sexual Orientation Discrimination Claim Under Title IX

Posted on: December 16th, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

United States District Judge Dean D. Pregerson ruled on December 15 that two students at Pepperdine University could sue the school for sexual orientation discrimination under Title IX, a federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination by educational institutions that receive federal money.  Videckis v. Pepperdine University, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167672 (C.D. Calif.).  The ruling rejecting the school’s motion to dismiss the discrimination claims advanced by Haley Videckis and Layana White is the first under Title IX to acknowledge the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ruling last summer that sexual orientation discrimination claims should be treated as sex discrimination claims under Title VII, the analogous federal law that bans sex discrimination in the workplace.

Videckis and White are former members of the Pepperdine women’s basketball team.  Their lawsuit “arises out of allegedly intrusive and discriminatory actions that Pepperdine and its employees committed against Plaintiffs on account of Plaintiffs’ dating relationship,” wrote Judge Pregerson.  They allege that “in the spring of 2014, Coach Ryan [Weisenberg] and others on the staff of the women’s basketball team came to the conclusion that Plaintiffs were lesbians and were in a lesbian relationship.  Plaintiffs further allege that Coach Ryan and the coaching staff were concerned about the possibility of the relationship causing turmoil within the team.  Plaintiffs allege that, due to their concerns, Coach Ryan and members of the coaching staff harassed and discriminated against Plaintiffs in an effort to force Plaintiffs to quit the team.”

Pepperdine’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit argued that Title IX does not apply to sexual orientation discrimination claims, that the plaintiffs’ allegations would not support a sex discrimination claim based on “gender stereotype discrimination,” and that the Title IX claims “should be dismissed because they are uncertain and not legally cognizable.”  The school argued that the plaintiffs’ retaliation claim under Title IX should be rejected as well. The school also appeared to be arguing that since the women had been secretive about their relationship, they could not mount a sexual orientation discrimination or retaliation claim against the school.

Judge Pregerson had previously dismissed in part the plaintiff’s’ first amended complaint, stating then that “the line between discrimination based on gender stereotyping and discrimination based on sexual orientation is blurry, at best.”  At this point in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs have amended their complaint to include more factual allegations and legal arguments, so Pepperdine’s motion is actually addressed to their third amended complaint.  “After further briefing and argument,” wrote Pregerson, “the Court concludes that the distinction is illusory and artificial, and that sexual orientation discrimination is not a category distinct from sex or gender discrimination.  Thus, claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation are covered by Title VII and IX, but not as a category of independent claims separate from sex and gender stereotype.  Rather, claims of sexual orientation discrimination are gender stereotype or sex discrimination claims.”

After noting prior decisions by other federal courts pointing out the difficulties of line-drawing in terms of classifying such discrimination claims, Pregerson wrote, “Simply put, the line between sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination is ‘difficult to draw’ because that line does not exist, save as a lingering and faulty judicial construct.”  He pointed out that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, whose rulings are binding on the federal district courts in California, had ruled in sexual harassment claims that gay men could bring such claims under Title VII, regardless of their sexual orientation, and that “the cases upon which Pepperdine relies, for the most part, dismiss analogous sexual orientation-based claims in a cursory and conclusory fashion.  The Court rejects the reasoning of these cases, which do not fully evaluate the nature of claims based on sexual orientation discrimination.”

He continued, “In sexual orientation discrimination cases, focusing on the actions or appearance of the alleged victim of discrimination rather than the bias of the alleged perpetrator asks the wrong question and compounds the harm.  A plaintiff’s ‘actual’ sexual orientation is irrelevant to a Title IX or Title VII claim because it is the biased mind of the alleged discriminator that is the focus of the analysis.  This is especially true given that sexuality cannot be defined on a homosexual or heterosexual basis; it exists on a continuum.  It is not the victim of discrimination who should be forced to put his or her sexual orientation on trial.  We do not demand of a victim of alleged religious discrimination, ‘Prove that you are a real Catholic, Mormon, or Jew.’  Just as it would be absurd to demand that a victim of alleged racial discrimination prove that he is black, it is absurd to demand a victim of alleged sex discrimination based on sexual orientation prove she is a lesbian.  The contrary view would turn a Title IX trial into a broad inquisition into the personal sexual history of the victim.  Such an approach should be precluded as not only highly inflammatory and offensive, but also irrelevant for the purposes of the Title IX discrimination analysis.”

Pregerson concluded on this point that it “is impossible to categorically separate ‘sexual orientation discrimination’ from discrimination on the basis of sex or from gender stereotypes; to do so would result in a false choice.”  Thus, a sexual orientation discrimination claim under Title IX is a sex discrimination claim.

In addition to accepting the plaintiffs’ sexual orientation discrimination claim, Pregerson also accepted the alternative argument that they were targeted as a matter of sex stereotyping.  “Plaintiffs have state a claim for discrimination,” he wrote, “because they allege that Pepperdine treated them differently due to their perceived lack of conformity with gender stereotypes, and further that Pepperdine discriminated against them based on stereotypes about lesbianism.”

Finally, Pregerson would also treat this as a straightforward sex discrimination claim.  “Here,” he wrote, “Plaintiffs allege that they were told that ‘lesbianism’ would not be tolerated on the team.  If Plaintiffs had been males dating females, instead of females dating females, they would not have  been subjected to the alleged different treatment.  Plaintiffs have state a straightforward claim of sex discrimination under Title IX.”

Acknowledging the EEOC’s July 16 decision in Baldwin v. Foxx, 2015 WL 4397641, Judge Pregerson asserted that his conclusion “is in line” with that Title VII ruling.  “The EEOC concluded that ‘an employee could show that the sexual orientation discrimination he or she experienced was sex discrimination because it involved treatment that would not have occurred but for the individual’s sex; because it was based on the sex of the person(s) the individual associates with; and/or because it was premised on the fundamental sex stereotype, norm, or expectation that individuals should be attracted only to those of the opposite sex.’  For these reasons, as well as for the reasons stated in this Order, this Court agrees.”

Judge Pregerson also concluded that the plaintiffs had alleged a plausible retaliation claim, including that they were forced off the basketball team when they complained about their treatment by the coaches.  “Pepperdine argues that because Plaintiffs tried to hide their relationship status, they therefore never could have made a complaint about discrimination,” wrote Pregerson.  “This argument is without merit.  Plaintiffs clearly allege that they complained to the coaching staff and school officials about intrusive questioning and harassment to which they were subjected.  The fact that Plaintiffs may never have explicitly told school officials that they were dating is irrelevant to whether they complained that they were being harassed.  Again, requiring that Plaintiffs disclose their sexual orientation or relationship status improperly focuses the inquiry on the status of the victim rather than the bias of the alleged harasser, and imposes a burden that Title IX does not contemplate.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Jeffrey J. Zuber and Jeremy J. Gray of Zuber Lawler and Del Duca LLP, a Los Angeles law firm.

Federal Discrimination Agency Says Gays Are Protected Against Employment Discrimination

Posted on: July 19th, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, issued a decision on July 15 holding for the first time that Title VII’s ban on employment discrimination because of sex includes discrimination against somebody because they are gay, lesbian or bisexual.  This marks a complete turnaround by the EEOC from the position taken by the agency throughout all of its 50 year history.  The Commission, acting in its appellate capacity, overruled a 2013 agency decision that had rejected a discrimination claim by a man who had been denied a permanent Front Line Manager position by the Federal Aviation Administration.  As is customary with such administrative rulings by the EEOC, the decision does not give the name of the man, referring throughout to the “Complainant.”   Baldwin v. Foxx (Anthony Foxx, Secretary, Department of Transportation), 2015 WL 4397641 (EEOC, July 15, 2015).

 

The EEOC went into business in July 1965 when Title VII took effect.  That statute was the result of prolonged struggle in Congress, including a lengthy filibuster in the Senate led by southern conservative Democrats opposed to racial integration of the workplace.  Almost all of the attention around Title VII focused on the proposal for a federal ban on race discrimination in employment.  The bill originally introduced in the House of Representatives was limited to race or color, religion and national origin as prohibited grounds of discrimination.  The relevant House committees did study sex discrimination issues, but decided that the Equal Pay Act passed in 1963, which prohibited compensating men and women at different rates for the same work, was sufficient, and proponents of the bill feared that adding a general prohibition on sex discrimination would endanger the bill’s passage.  Nonetheless, on the floor of the House, Rep. Howard Smith of Virginia, a long-time proponent of equal legal rights for women, introduced an amendment to add sex, which was passed by an unlikely alliance of pro-feminist liberals and southern conservatives.  Some of the southerners probably supported the amendment hoping that this would make the final bill more difficult to pass.  Because “sex” was added as a floor amendment, the committee reports on the bill do not discuss it, and Smith’s amendment did not add any definition of sex to the definitional section of the bill, merely adding the word “sex” to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination wherever that list appeared in the bill.

After the bill passed the House, it went to the Senate under a deal worked out by the leadership to by-pass the committee process, in order to prevent it from being bottled up in committee by the conservative southern Democratic chair of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Eastland, who was a sworn opponent of the bill.  Instead the measure went directly to the Senate floor under a procedure that allowed little opportunity for amendments.  There was some brief discussion about the inclusion of sex but nothing really illuminating, apart from a floor amendment attempting to reconcile the bill with the Equal Pay Act, the meaning of which wasn’t settled until a Supreme Court ruling several years later.

Consequently, the “legislative history” provides no help in figuring out what kind of discrimination Congress intended to ban when it voted to add “sex” to the list of prohibited grounds of employment discrimination.  Without such guidance, the EEOC and the courts were left to their own devices in trying to figure out what this meant, and the conclusion they reached early in the history of Title VII was that it was intended to prohibit discrimination against women because they were women or against men because they were men.  As such, both the EEOC and many courts ruled beginning shortly after the Act went into effect that it did not apply to discrimination because of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, both concepts that were largely missing from American jurisprudence during the 1960s.  One commonsense reason usually raised by courts in rejecting such discrimination claims was that if Congress had intended to ban these forms of discrimination, there surely would have been some mention during the debates over the bill. They have also pointed to the fact that bills to add sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII or to enact a free-standing law addressing such discrimination have been frequently introduced in Congress since the early 1970s, but no such measure has ever been enacted.  Some courts have construed this history to reflect Congress’s view that Title VII does not already ban such discrimination.

A Supreme Court decision from 1989, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, initiated a changing landscape for sexuality issues under Title VII.  Ann Hopkins, rejected for a partnership at Price Waterhouse, won a ruling from the Supreme Court that sex stereotypes held by some of the partners who voted against her application violated her rights under Title VII.  Writing for a plurality of the Court, Justice William J. Brennan said that Title VII applied to discrimination because of gender, not just biological sex.  Later courts seized upon this to justify taking a broader view of sex discrimination under Title VII.  By early in this century, there was a growing body of federal court rulings suggesting that LGBT people might be protected to some extent under Title VII, depending on the nature of their case.  If the discrimination they suffered could be described in terms of sex stereotypes, or if they could show that they had been the victim of sexual harassment that turned in some way on their gender, they might be able to maintain a legal claim of discrimination.

Within the past few years, the EEOC has taken a leading role in making these developments more concrete, first by its treatment of discrimination claims within the internal investigative process, and then through its decision-making on discrimination claims brought against federal agencies, where the Commission plays an important appellate role reviewing rulings by federal agencies on internal employment grievances.  In 2012, the EEOC ruled in a case against the Justice Department that a transgender woman who was denied a position because of her gender identity had a valid claim under Title VII.  Macy v. Dep’t of Justice, 2012 Westlaw 1435995 (April 20, 2012).  This ruling echoed many then-recent federal court decisions, including some by courts of appeals, finding that discrimination because of gender identity almost always involves sex stereotyping by the discriminating employer.   Late last year, the agency and then the Justice Department concluded that all gender identity discrimination claims could be investigated and prosecuted under Title VII.  Pushing that position forward, the Justice Department has filed suit on behalf of the EEOC or joined ongoing private cases in federal court seeking to move the courts beyond the stereotyping theory to a straightforward acceptance that gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination.

The new July 15 ruling by the EEOC seeks to achieve the same thing for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals confronting employment discrimination.  While acknowledging the significance of the Supreme Court’s Price Waterhouse decision and sex stereotyping theory in widening the agency’s appreciation of the scope of sex discrimination, this ruling takes things a step further.  “In the case before us,” wrote the Commission, “we conclude that Complainant’s claim of sexual orientation discrimination alleges that the Agency relied on sex-based considerations and took his sex into account in its employment decision regarding the permanent FLM position.  The Complainant, therefore, has stated a claim of sex discrimination.  Indeed, we conclude that sexual orientation is inherently a ‘sex-based consideration,’ and an allegation of discrimination based on sexual orientation is necessarily an allegation of sex discrimination under Title VII.  A complainant alleging that an agency took his or her sexual orientation into account in an employment action necessarily alleges that the agency took his or her sex into account.”

The Commission amplified this conclusion with an extended discussion, grounding its conclusion in rulings by several federal courts and pointing especially to the well-established principle that discriminating against somebody because of the race of their sexual partner has long been deemed by the Commission and the courts to be race discrimination.  Logically, then, discriminating against somebody because of the sex of their sexual partners would be sex discrimination.  The Commission also referenced the recent marriage equality litigation, noting the Supreme Court’s statement in Obergefell v. Hodges that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage “abridge central precepts of equality.”  Of course, the Commission also explained that recent court rulings have made clear that stereotyped thinking about proper gender roles, as well as behavior, underlies much sexual orientation discrimination, thus providing a firm theoretical justification in the Supreme Court’s Price Waterhouse case.

What is the significance of this EEOC ruling?  It is likely to result in the agency initiating federal court litigation, enlisting the Justice Department, to push this interpretation of Title VII into the courts.  Although federal courts are not bound by an administrative agency’s interpretations of their governing statutes, the Supreme Court has frequently deferred to agency interpretations when they are seen as consistent with the statutory language and overall congressional purpose, and constitute a reasonable interpretation of the statute.  Here is where the EEOC’s past rulings may result in less deference than courts otherwise might give.  When an agency “changes its mind” about an issue, courts may be skeptical about whether the new ruling is more political than legalistic.  So it may be premature to assume that this ruling by the EEOC means that we have no need to enact explicit federal protection through a vehicle such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which has been pending in one form or another in Congress since 1993.

Ironically, this EEOC action comes at a time when LGBT political leaders have largely abandoned ENDA, finding it too narrowly focused on employment.  Objections have also been raised to the extremely broad religious exemption contained in ENDA.  One of the major lobbying victories last summer was persuading the Obama Administration not to include the broad ENDA-style religious exemption in President Obama’s executive order banning sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by federal contractors.  Lobbyists are now working with legislators on a broader, comprehensive LGBT civil rights bill, expected to be introduced this summer, that would go beyond employment to cover other areas traditionally covered by federal law, including housing, public services and public accommodations.  In the meantime, however, it will certainly be useful for the federal government’s primary civil rights enforcement agency, the EEOC, to be on record that sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination.  EEOC’s view may be influential with the agencies that enforce the Fair Housing Act and the other titles of the Civil Rights Act, and its analysis may prove persuasive to the courts, regardless of the level of deference it receives.

The vote on this decision is not indicated in the opinion (which was drafted by the Commission’s staff), but was reported in the press as a party-line vote of 3-2.  Under the statute, the five-member Commission may not have more than three commissioners who are members of the same political party.  The two Republicans on the Commission voted against this decision, but did not issue a written dissent.  A prime mover behind the EEOC’s expanded view of sex discrimination to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation claims has been Commissioner Chai Feldblum, the first openly gay member of the Commission, who was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate for a second term last year.