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Michigan Supreme Court Extends Equitable-Parent Doctrine to Same-Sex Couples

Posted on: July 27th, 2023 by Art Leonard No Comments

A divided Michigan Supreme Court ruled on July 24 that the “equitable-parent doctrine” should be extended to allow standing for a same-sex partner to seek custody of a child conceived and born before the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.  Pueblo v. Haas, 2023 WL 4717119, 2023 Mich. LEXIS 1124. However, to qualify for standing, the claimant will need to prove they would have married had state law permitted them to do so.

Carrie Pueblo and Rachel Haas were in a “long-term committed relationship, or domestic partnership, from the early 2000s until the early 2010s,” wrote Justice Megan K. Cavanagh for the court.  Legal marriage was not available to them in Michigan.  They participated in a “private civil commitment ceremony in June 2007 that was presided over by a priest and involved the exchange of rings and vows to take one another as life partners.”  Shortly afterward, they decided to have a child, and Haas became pregnant through donor insemination, bearing a child in November 2008.  The women separated several years later.  Pueblo, who had been a de facto parent of their child, continue to have contact until Haas cut off her contact in 2017 and demanded that she cease contact with the child.

Pueblo filed suit in Kalamazoo in 2020, invoking the state’s Child Custody Act, seeking joint custody, parenting time, and child support.  Haas challenged the suit on standing grounds, pointing out that Pueblo had no biological or adoptive connection to the child.  The trial court granted summary judgment to Haas on that basis, and the state’s Court of Appeals affirmed in an unpublished per curiam opinion in 2021.  The Michigan Supreme Court granted leave to appeal to address the question whether, in light of Obergefell, they should extend the equitable parent doctrine, which has previously been confined to different-sex couple situations, to same-sex couples, and if, so, what the “parameters of that extension should be.”  See 510 Mich. 936 (2022).

“Pueblo argues that she has standing to seek custody under the equitable-parent doctrine,” wrote Justice Cavanagh.  “We agree that Pueblo should have the opportunity to prove that she is entitled to assert her rights as an equitable parent.”  Under the existing doctrine, “a spouse who is not a biological parent has standing to seek custody of a child born or conceived during their marriage when (1) the would-be equitable parent and the child acknowledge the parental relationship or the biological or adoptive parent has cultivated the development of the relationship over a period of time, (2) the would-be equitable parent desires to have the rights afforded a parent, and (3) the would-be equitable parent is willing to pay child support.”  The court of appeals in this case rejected Pueblo’s equitable-parent argument on the ground that she was not a legal spouse of Haas, applying existing Michigan precedent.

Obergefell held that same-sex couples are entitle to the same “constellation of benefits” associated with marriage that different-sex couples enjoy.  Therefore, it would follow, same-sex couples are entitled to the benefit of the “equitable-parent doctrine” because that is part of the “constellation of benefits” associated with marriage in Michigan.  “As a matter of equity and constitutional law,” wrote Justice Kavanagh, “we are compelled to treat same-sex couples equally.  Same-sex couples have the constitutional right to marry and to all the attendant benefits of marriage.  Withholding the benefit of the equitable-parent doctrine from couples who were previously unconstitutionally prohibited from marrying would perpetuate the harms identified in Obergefell:  that denying same-sex couples the same legal treatment in marriage and all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples demeans them, stigmatizes their children and families, and teaches society that they are inferior.  Given the ruling in Obergefell, we cannot justifiably deny same-sex couples – who would have married before the arrival of the child but for unlawful prohibitions – the privilege of invoking the equitable-parent doctrine because of their sexual orientation.”

But, the extension of the doctrine is narrowed to certain requirements.  “Therefore,” wrote Kavanagh, “we narrowly extend the equitable-parent doctrine to Pueblo and other similarly situated persons who were unable to marry during their same-sex relationships because of discriminatory and unconstitutional Michigan laws but who nonetheless developed de facto parent-child relationships with the children born or adopted by their same-sex partners during the time they would have otherwise been married.”  The court stated that the person claiming the benefit of this doctrine must show that “the parties would have married before the child’s birth or conception but did not because unconstitutional laws prevented them from doing so.”    The court found persuasive precedent for applying this test in In re Madrone, 271 Or. App. 116, 350 P.3d 495 (Oregon Court of Appeals, 2015), emphasizing that the burden to show that the parties would have married would take care of the problem of unmarried heterosexual couples who were legally capable of married but chose not to do so.  Based on Pueblo’s factual allegations, it appears that on remand she will likely be able to meet the test based on the Madrone criteria, but it is up to the trial court to determine the facts, which were not previously determined in this case because the summary judgment was based solely on lack of standing.  However, wrote Justice Kavanagh, “Pueblo has alleged facts entitling her to a threshold determination on whether the parties would have married but for Michigan’s unconstitutional bar on same-sex marriage under the inquiry set forth above.”

Justice Kavanaugh also commented, in conclusion, that if Pueblo meets the burden of showing she is entitled to the benefit of the equitable-parent doctrine, “she has the right to a best-interest evaluation for custody and parenting time.”  The court of appeals decision is reversed and the case remanded to the trial court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

Concurring, Justice Kyra H. Bolden observed that the extension of the doctrine raised a host of questions and urged the legislature to revise the state’s custody laws to provide answers.

Justice Brian Zahra dissented in an opinion joined by Justice David F. Viviano. He argued that the plaintiff’s brief had failed adequately to address the constitutional issues raised by her claims.  “While I am sympathetic toward plaintiff’s circumstances,” he wrote, “extending the equitable-parent doctrine, a marriage-based doctrine that rests on shaky legal grounds, is inappropriate and ill-suited to provide plaintiff the relief she seeks.  The majority’s extension of the doctrine, and its creation of an accompanying ‘but for’ test, is unsupported by the law and likely will result in far-reaching ramifications outside the child custody context.  Because I would not extend the equitable-parent doctrine and because I believe that the legislature, not the judiciary, should be making these policy-based decisions, I dissent.  I would decline to disturb the opinions of the lower courts in this case.”

Carrie Pueblo’s counsel is Reh A. Starks of Kalamazoo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

N.Y. Appellate Division 2nd Department Overrules Precedent, Holding False Imputation of Homosexuality is not Defamatory Per Se

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

In Laguerre v. Maurice, 2020 WL 7636435, 2020 N.Y. App. LEXIS 8011, 2020 NY Slip Op 07887 (2nd Dept., Dec. 23, 2020), a panel of the N.Y. Appellate Division, 2nd Department, abandoned a departmental precedent dating from 1984, Matherson v. Marchello, 100 App. Div. 2d 233, finding that today a false statement that the plaintiff was a homosexual who watched gay porn on his employer’s computer is not defamatory per se and thus a complaint to that effect must be dismissed for failure to allege special damages.  The court noted with approval the 3rd Department’s 2012 decision in Yonaty v. Mincolla, 97 App. Div. 3d 144, which was the first intermediate appellate ruling in New York to abandon prior case law on this point.  Justice Sheri Roman wrote the opinion for the panel.

Pierre Delor Laguerre was an elder in the Gethsemane Seventh Day Adventist Church in Brooklyn.  He claims that he had a falling out with Pastor Jean Renald Maurice, the defendant, which, according to Justice Roman’s summary, “initially centered around church-related issues, and that Pastor Maurice stated that, if the plaintiff ‘did not submit to him,’ Pastor Maurice would ‘crumble’ the plaintiff.”  According to the complaint, Maurice stated that he would “make false statements against the plaintiff and have the church membership vote to relieve the plaintiff of his responsibilities at the church.”  Laguerre claims that before a congregational meeting with about 300 members in attendance, Maurice made the false statement concerning Laguerre, thus prompting the congregation to vote as Maurice requested.  Laguerre is for per se defamation.

Pastor Maurice moved to dismiss the complaint on three grounds.

First, he argued, the court lacked jurisdiction because this was essentially an ecclesiastical matter.  Laguerre countered that the question of defamation could be decided as a matter of civil law without reference to any religious doctrine, and the trial judge, Justice Devin P. Cohen of Kings County Supreme Court, agreed with Laguerre’s argument on this point and denied the motion to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds, and the Appellate Division panel found this ruling to be correct.

Second, Maurice argued that his statement was privileged under the “common interest” rule, contending that a communication from a pastor to a congregation on a church-related matter could not be made the basis of a defamation claim.  While acknowledging the existence of the privilege, Justice Cohen found that Laguerre’s allegations support the argument that the privilege was lost in this case because the statement was made with “malice,” noting Laguerre’s allegation that Pastor Maurice had threatened to make a false statement about Laguerre to persuade the congregation to terminate his status.  Knowingly making a false statement of fact with malice is not privileged.  The appellate panel also found this ruling to be correct.

However, Pastor Maurice was more successful with his third argument on appeal, that the alleged statement was not defamatory per se.  Laguerre’s complaint relies on Matherson v. Marchello, cited above, to contend that in the 2nd Department a false imputation of homosexuality is automatically actionable as per se defamation.  That is, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, a trial court in the 2nd Department should presume that such a statement would harm the reputation and livelihood of the plaintiff, so the plaintiff would not have to allege special damages such as economic injury in order to maintain his action.  At the time Matherson was decided, there were rulings by all four Appellate Departments to similar effect.  However, the 3rd Department broke ranks in 2012 with Yonaty.  The Court of Appeals has not ruled on the question, so the matter is left to be decided by each Appellate Division department.  Given the state of precedent in the 2nd Department, Justice Cohen had denied the motion to dismiss on this ground as well.  Laguerre appealed Cohen’s decision on all three grounds.

Finding the reasoning of Yonaty to be persuasive, the 2nd Department now holds that Matherson and the earlier cases that it had cited “are inconsistent with current public policy,” wrote Justice Roman.  “This profound and notable transformation of cultural attitudes and governmental protective laws impacts our own consideration of stare decisis,” she wrote.  The court recited a litany of legal developments since 1984, particularly noting the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas striking down as unconstitutional a Texas statute outlawing homosexual sex and that court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges finding a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry.  The court also noted that New York has banned sexual orientation discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations since 2002 and enacted its own marriage equality law in 2011.

Thus, there is today no necessary presumption that falsely calling somebody homosexual will harm their reputation, and such a statement no longer falls within the sphere of cases in which reputational harm can be assumed on ground of criminality, professional disqualification or the imputation of a “loathsome illness.”  A false statement that does demonstrably cause economic harm to the plaintiff could still be the basis of a defamation claim, but such harm would have to be alleged and factually supported in the complaint.  Although the court does not discuss the point, it seems likely that being an elder in the church did not make Laguerre an employee and so the loss of his position did not inflict an economic injury on him; otherwise, he might have alleged that as special damages.

“Based on the foregoing,” wrote Justice Roman, “we conclude that the false imputation of homosexuality does not constitute defamation per se.  Matherson’s holding to the contrary should no longer be followed.  Therefore, the plaintiff was required to allege special damages.  He failed to do so, and, consequently, his cause of action alleging defamation per se must be dismissed.”

The unanimous panel of the 2nd Department in this case included, in addition to Justice Roman, Justices Cheryl E. Chambers, Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, and Colleen D. Duffy.  Laguerre is represented by Maurice Dean Williams of The Bronx, and Pastor Maurice by the firm of Lester Schwab Katz & Dwyer of Manhattan.

Supreme Court Lets Stand 7th Circuit Decision on Lesbian Spouses and Birth Certificates

Posted on: December 14th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Henderson v. Box, 947 F.3d 482 (2020), that the state of Indiana must extend to married lesbian couples the same parentage presumption it applies to married different sex couples: that a birth mother’s spouse is presumed to be a parent of her child, that  the child be deemed born “in wedlock,” and that both mothers be named as parents on the birth certificat.  On December 14, the Supreme Court denied the State of Indiana’s petition to review that ruling without explanation or any dissent.  Box v. Henderson, 2020 WL 7327836 (Dec. 14, 2020).

On one hand, this action might be seen as routinely expected, because the Supreme Court decided a similar case from Arkansas exactly this way in 2017.  In Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075, the Court voted 6-3 to reverse a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court.  That opinion was issued per curiam, although a close reading would identify the hand of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Jr., author of the Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, in which the Court not only said that same-sex couples have a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment to marry, but also that such marriages must be treated by the states as equal in every respect to the marriages of different sex couples.  In Obergefell, Justice Kennedy specifically mentioned listing on birth certificates as one of the incidents of legal marriage from which same-sex couples had previously been excluded.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion in Pavan, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, arguing that the Obergefell ruling did not necessarily compel the conclusion stated by the Court and that the Court should have scheduled briefing and a full hearing on the question rather than issue a summary per curiam ruling.

Since Pavan was decided, Justice Kennedy has retired and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, being replaced respectively by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both religious conservatives.  When Indiana filed its petition for review in the Henderson case last spring, Justice Ginsburg was still on the Court and the Pavan v. Smith majority was intact.  The same-sex couples who had filed the lawsuit, represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, did not even file an opposition, assuming the Court would dismiss the petition.  But with Justice Ginsburg’s death and replacement, the calculus had changed, as the Pavan 6-member majority had been reduced to a 4-member minority of the Court.  The Supreme Court then requested the plaintiffs to file a reply to Indiana’s petition for review, and the possibility appeared that the Supreme Court might take up the issue anew.

At the heart of Indiana’s case was the contention that the presumption that a husband is the father is reality-based in biology, and there is no such basis for a reality-based presumption for the wife of a woman who gives birth, although the 7th Circuit had observed that one of the lesbian couples in the case comprised two biological mothers, as the second mother had donated the egg that was gestated by the birth mother.

Be that as it may, Indiana, in common with other states, has never treated the father’s parental status as conclusive, since it could be rebutted by evidence that a different man was the biological father, and ultimately a birth certificate records legal parentage, not biological parentage, as in the new birth certificates that are issued upon a child’s adoption.  The trial court, and ultimately the 7th Circuit, related that Indiana relied on self-reporting by the mother in determining a man’s name to record on a birth certificate, and the form the birth mother is given asks for the name of the father, not explicitly the name of the biological father, making it likely that many men are named as fathers on birth certificates despite the lack of a biological tie to the child.

Ultimately, wrote the 7th Circuit, “The district court’s order requiring Indiana to recognize the children of these plaintiffs as legitimate children, born in wedlock, and to identify both wives in each union as parents, is affirmed.”

By refusing to review this ruling, without any explanation or dissent by the conservative justices, the Supreme Court seems to have put the seal on this issue.  This is particularly reassuring in light of gratuituous comments by Justice Alito (joined by Justice Thomas) in a statement he issued when the Court refused to review former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis’s petition to review an award of damages against her for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Obergefell decision was announced.  Davis v. Ermold, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 3709, 2020 WL 588157 (October 5). In Alito’s statement, and remarks he later delivered to a conservative public forum, Alito sharply criticized the Obergefell decision and suggested that the Court needed to “fix” the problems that ruling created for those with religious objections to same-sex marriage.  This focused renewed attention on the Henderson case and the possibility that the Court would take it and rule in a way that would detract from the equal legal status of same-sex marriages.  The decision not to take this case may represent an important bullet dodged for now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Removes a Staunch Advocate of LGBTQ Rights from the Supreme Court

Posted on: September 27th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, age 87, having served on the Supreme Court of the United States since August 10, 1993.  Throughout her tenure on the Court she had been a staunch supporter of LGBTQ rights, joining all of the pro-LGBTQ rights majorities and dissenting from all of the adverse decisions except for two in which the Court was unanimous.

In 1993, she joined Justice David Souter’s opinion for the Court in Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), in which the Court ruled that a transgender inmate who was repeatedly subjected to sexual assault in prison could hold prison officials liable for damages under the 8th Amendment by showing that they knew the inmate faced “a substantial risk of serious harm” and the officials “disregard[ed] that risk by failing to take reasonable measures to abate it.”  Although three members of the Court wrote concurring opinions, Justice Ginsburg did not write in this case, then a new member of the Court.

In 1995, Justice Ginsburg joined the unanimous Court in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U.S. 557 (1995), holding that the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade was an expressive association whose organizers had a right to exclude from their parade an organization whose message they did not want to include.  While holding that Massachusetts could not enforce its public accommodations law banning sexual orientation discrimination against the parade organizers, the Court affirmed that it was within the legislative and constitutional authority of the state to generally ban public accommodations from discrimination based on sexual orientation.  Justice Souter wrote for the Court.

In 1996, Justice Ginsburg joined the Court’s opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Jr., in Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), holding that Colorado violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by enacting a state constitutional amendment that prohibited the state or any of its subdivisions from protecting “homosexuals” from discrimination.  Justice Kennedy wrote that the state could not treat gay people as “strangers from the law” or categorically single gay people out for exclusion based on animus against homosexuality. The Court’s vote was 6-3, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joining Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion.

Justice Ginsburg joined Justice Scalia’s opinion for the unanimous Court in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998), which embraced a textualist interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reversing a decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that a man who was subjected to severe and pervasive harassment of a sexual nature by male co-workers in an all-male workplace could not bring a hostile work environment sex discrimination claim under that statute.  To the contrary, ruled the Court, nothing in the language of the statute suggested that so-called “same-sex harassment” was not actionable, so long as the plaintiff showed that he was harassed because of his sex.  Justice Scalia memorably wrote that even though “male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not the principal evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII, … 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.”  This mode of interpretation provided a foundation for the Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020), the last LGBTQ rights victory in which Justice Ginsburg participated.

In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000), the Court ruled 5-4 that the Boy Scouts of America enjoyed a 1st Amendment right to exclude gay men from serving as adult leaders of their Boy Scout troops.  Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for the Court in an opinion that drew upon Hurley as precedent.  Justice Ginsburg joined two dissenting opinions, one by Justice John Paul Stevens and the other by Justice David Souter.

Justice Ginsburg was part of the 6-3 majority that voted to hold that a Texas law penalizing “homosexual conduct” was unconstitutional as applied to private, consensual adult sexual activity.  Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).  Ginsburg joined the opinion for the Court by Justice Kennedy, which based its ruling on the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, and overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), which had rejected a Due Process challenge to Georgia’s sodomy law.  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concurred in the judgement but would not vote to overrule Bowers (a case in which she had joined the Court’s opinion), rather premising her vote on Equal Protection.  Scalia dissented, in any opinion joined by Rehnquist and Thomas.

In 2006, Justice Ginsburg joined the unanimous opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47 (2006), rejecting a 1st Amendment claim by a group of law schools and law faculty members that their institutions should have a right to exclude military recruiters because of the Defense Department’s policy excluding gay people, among others, from the service.  Roberts premised the Court’s ruling on Congress’s power under Article I of the Constitution to “raise and support armies,” holding that Congress could constitutionally support this function by denying federal financial assistance to educational institutions that denied military recruiters the same access that they accorded to other recruiters under the so-called Solomon Amendment that Congress regularly attached to Defense appropriations bills.

Justice Ginsburg wrote for the Court in 2010 in Christian Legal Society v.  Martinez, 561 U.S. 661 (2010), rejecting a claim by students of the Christian Legal Society chapter at Hastings Law School that the school’s denial of official status to CLS because of its exclusionary membership policy violated the 1st Amendment.  The Court divided 5-4, with Justices Kennedy and Stevens issuing concurring opinions, from which it was reasonable to infer that Justice Ginsburg assembled her majority by seizing upon a factual stipulation entered at the district court that the school’s policy required that recognized student organizations allow all students to join, even though the wording of the policy prohibited discrimination based on enumerated characteristics, including sexual orientation, which was the “sticking point” with CLS.  Writing in dissent, Justice Samuel Alito angrily charged the court with failing to address the explicit policy that the school had adopted and then relied upon to withdraw recognition from CLS.  He argued that the Court was enabling viewpoint discrimination by the public law school.  Roberts, Scalia and Thomas joined the dissent.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, 573 U.S. 682 (2014), dissenting, Justice Ginsburg rejected the Court’s holding that commercial businesses could assert claims to being exempt from coverage requirements of contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act as an interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  In his opinion for the 5-4 majority, Justice Alito observed (in dicta) that an employer could not rely on religious freedom claims to defend against a race discrimination claim under Title VII.  In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg noted religious objections to homosexuality by some employers and questioned whether the Court would find that employers would have a right under RFRA statutes (patterned on the federal RFRA) to discriminate on that basis.  She specifically noted the case of Elane Photography v. Willock, in which the New Mexico Supreme Court had rejected a state RFRA defense by a wedding photographer being sued under the state’s public accommodations law, and in which the Supreme Court had recently denied a petition for certiorari, as well as a state law case from Minnesota involving a health club owned by “born-again” Christians who denied membership to gay people in violation of a local anti-discrimination law.

Justice Ginsburg joined opinions for the Court by Justice Kennedy in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), both 5-4 rulings, in which the Court invoked concepts of Due Process and Equal Protection to invalidate Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (which prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages recognized by some states at that time), and to strike down state constitutional and statutory provisions denying same-sex couples the right to marry or recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states.  (As senior justice in the majority in both cases, Justice Kennedy assigned himself the opinions for the Court.)  As they were 5-4 decisions, Justice Ginsburg’s vote was necessary to the outcome in both cases.  Between the decision in Windsor and the decision in Obergefell, Justice Ginsburg became the first sitting member of the Court to officiate at a same-sex wedding ceremony, an action that led some to call for her recusal in Obergefell.

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U.S. 693 (2013), Justice Ginsburg joined Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion holding that the proponents of California Proposition 8, which had amended the state’s constitution to define marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman, lacked Article III standing to appeal the district court’s decision holding that measure unconstitutional, where the state had declined to appeal that ruling.  The Court’s opinion expressed no view as to the constitutionality of Proposition 8, focusing entirely on the question of standing, but its effect was to allow same-sex couples to resume marrying in California, which they had not been able to do from the effective date of Prop 8’s passage in November 2008.  Of course, Californian same-sex couples who subsequently married, as well as those who had married in the five-month period prior to the passage of Prop 8, benefited from federal recognition of their marriages under U.S. v. Windsor, which was issued by the Court on the same day as Hollingsworth.  Justice Kennedy dissented, in an opinion joined by Thomas, Alito and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

In two subsequent per curiam rulings, Justice Ginsburg, who did not dissent, presumably joined in the Court’s disposition of the cases:

In 2016, the Court ruled per curiam in V.L. v. E.L., 136 S. Ct. 1017 (2016), that the courts of one state must accord full faith and credit to an adoption approved by the courts of another state where the court that approved the adoption had general jurisdiction over the subject of adoptions.  The case involved a second-parent adoption by the same-sex partner of the child’s birth mother in Georgia, where they were temporarily residing.  They moved back to Alabama and in a subsequent split-up, the birth mother urged Alabama courts to refuse to recognize the adoption, arguing that had it been appealed, the appellate courts in Georgia would have found it invalid.  There was no dissent from the U.S. Supreme Court per curiam, which asserted the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires state courts to recognize decisions by courts of other states who had jurisdiction to render those decisions under the laws of their states.

In 2017, the Court ruled per curiam in Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075 (2017), that the state of Arkansas’s refusal to apply the spousal presumption to name the wife of a woman who gave birth to a child as a parent of the child on its birth certificate violated the 14th Amendment as construed by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges.  In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Alito and Thomas, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the decision in Obergefell did not necessarily decide this case so the Court should have called for merits briefing and oral argument rather than deciding the case based on the cert documents.

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018), Justice Ginsburg wrote a dissent, joined by Justice Sotomayor, rejecting the Court’s decision to reverse the Colorado Court of Appeals and the state’s Civil Rights Commission in their ruling that a bakery violated the state’s civil rights law by refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.  Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court in the 7-2 ruling was premised on the majority’s conclusion that the baker, who was relying on 1st Amendment free exercise and free speech arguments, had been denied a “neutral forum” for the decision of his case due to hostility to his religious views arguably expressed by two members of the Commission during the hearing process.  Justice Ginsburg observed in dissent that there was no evidence of a lack of neutrality on the part of the Colorado Court of Appeals, and she agreed with that court’s conclusion that application of the public accommodations law to the bakery did not violate the 1st Amendment.  In his opinion for the Court, Justice Kennedy noted Supreme Court precedent that generally private actors, such as businesses, do not have a 1st Amendment Free Exercise right to fail to comply with the requirements of state laws of general application that do not specifically target religious practices or beliefs.

Finally, in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia,140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020), noted above, Justice Ginsburg joined Justice Gorsuch’s opinion for the Court holding that discrimination in employment because of sexual orientation or transgender status is, at least in part, discrimination because of sex and thus actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The vote in this case was 6-3, with dissenting opinions by Justice Alito, joined by Thomas, and by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  In his dissent, Justice Alito asserted that the reasoning of the Court’s opinion would affect the interpretation of more than 100 provisions of federal law, which he listed in an appendix to his opinion.  The immediate effect of the opinion was to ratify the position of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which had earlier recognized its jurisdiction over such claims, and to extend protection against discrimination on these grounds to employees in the majority of states where state or local laws did not provide such protection, although private sector protection under Title VII is limited to employers with at least 15 employees, thus missing the majority of private sector employers.  This decision, which consolidated appeals from three circuits, presented the Court’s first merits ruling on a transgender rights case since Farmer v. Brennan (1993), noted above, although of course the marriage equality rulings, sub silentio, effectively overruled decisions by several state courts refusing to recognize marriages involving a transgender spouse that were challenged is being invalid “same-sex” marriages.

In her career prior to her Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals service, Justice Ginsburg taught at Rutgers and Columbia Law Schools and was the founder and first director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project.  Litigation by that Project under her direction persuaded the Supreme Court in a series of important rulings beginning with Reed v. Reed in 1971 to recognize sex discrimination claims under the Equal Protection Clause, laying the doctrinal foundation for equal protection claims by LGBT litigants in later years.  Although she was seen as a moderate on many issues at the time of her appointment to the Court by President Bill Clinton, she went on to become a leader of the Court’s progressive wing and in the 21st century a frequent and very pointed dissenter as the center of gravity of the Court moved in a more conservative direction with the appointment of justices by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.

Justice Ginsburg’s death left a Supreme Court vacancy less than two months before national elections for President and Congress.  Senate Republicans, who had blocked consideration of President Barack Obama’s nomination of D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland after Justice Scalia died in February 2016, arguing that a Supreme Court appointment should not be made in a presidential election year, now claimed that this was no bar to approving a replacement because the President and the incumbent Senate majority were of the same party.  President Trump announced his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on September 26.  Based on her record, if she is confirmed Judge Barrett would likely move the Court sharply to the right, with a 6-3 Republican-appointed conservative majority for the first time in generations, leading to discussion among Democrats about the possibility of expanding the Court if former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden is elected president and Democrats win a majority in the Senate.  Such a plan would require abolishing the filibuster rule by which a minority in the Senate can block a floor vote on legislation, unless the Republicans retained fewer than 40 seats as a result of the election and thus would be unable to block legislation under the filibuster rule without successfully recruiting some Democrats to join them.  Since the filibuster rule was repealed by a bare majority of the Senate in 2017 in order to confirm Justice Gorsuch in the face of a potential Democratic filibuster, it appeared likely at the time Trump announced his nomination that Judge Barrett will be confirmed, but the timing of a floor vote had not been announced by the end of September.

Supreme Court Broadens “Ministerial Exception” to Anti-Discrimination Laws, Leaving LGBTQ Employees or Religious Schools Without Protection

Posted on: July 8th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ people from employment discrimination.  On July 8, 2020, the Court took away that protection from most LGBTQ people who are employed as teachers by religious schools.  In a ruling expanding a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws that it had recognized under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Right eight years previously, the Court held that employees of religious schools whose job entails teaching religion enjoy no protection against discrimination because  of their race or color, religion, national origin, sex, age, or disability.  The Court’s vote in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 2020 WL 3808420, was 7-2.

The prior decision, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 565 U. S. 171 (2012), involved a teacher at a Lutheran church school, whom the Court found to be, in effect, a “minister” of the Church, since she had been formally “called” to the ministry by the congregation after a period of extended theological study, and who had even claimed the tax benefits of being clergy.  Although the teacher in question did not teach religion as her primary assignment, the Court found it easy to conclude that it would violate Hosanna-Tabor’s right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment for the government to intervene in any way in its decision not to continue this teacher’s employment, even if – as the teacher alleged – she was being discriminated against because of a disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The July 8 decision involved two teachers at Catholic elementary schools in the Los Angeles Diocese.  Neither of them was formally a “minister,” neither of them had extended religious education.  As grade school teachers, they each taught the full range of subjects, including a weekly unit on Catholic doctrine at appropriate grade level for their students, but the overwhelming majority of their time was spent teaching arithmetic, science, history, reading, and so forth – the normal range of what a grade school teacher covers, but with an overlay of Catholicism.  They also were supposed to pray with their students every day, and to attend Mass with them weekly.

One of the teachers claimed that she was dismissed because the school want to replace her with a younger person, suing under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.  The other claimed she was forced out because of a disability, in violation of the ADA.  In both cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, reversing trial judges, found that these teachers could sue their schools for discrimination because they were not ministers.

The 9th Circuit looked to the Hosanna-Tabor ruling and found that unlike the teacher in that case, these teachers did not have extensive religious education, were not “called” to ministry or titled as ministers by their schools, and were essentially lay teachers whose time teaching religion was a small part of their duties.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the Supreme Court, said that the 9th Circuit had misinterpreted the Hosanna-Tabor case.  He rejected the idea that there was a checklist that could be mechanically applied to the question whether somebody is a “ministerial employee,” instead focusing on the religious mission of the Catholic School and the role the teacher plays in that mission.

“The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools,” wrote Alito, “and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission. Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch) argued that the Court needn’t even probe into the details of the teachers’ employment, but instead should defer to a religious school’s determination whether their employees are excluded from coverage of anti-discrimination laws because of the ministerial exception.  However, the Court was not willing to go that far, and Justice Alito’s opinion made clear that how to classify an employee of a religious institution is a fact-specific determination that does require looking at the job duties of the employee.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rejected Alito’s contention that the Court’s ruling was a faithful application of the Hosanna-Tabor precedent.  Although the Court had not explicitly adopted Justice Thomas’s “deference” approach, she charged that it had actually adopted Thomas’s approach when it classified these teachers as covered by the ministerial exception.  She wrote that “because the Court’s new standard prizes a functional importance that it appears to deem churches in the best position to explain, one cannot help but conclude that the Court has just traded legal analysis for a rubber stamp.”

To the dissenters, there was a world of difference between the teacher in Hosanna-Tabor and the teachers in this case, and they could see no good reason why church schools should be free to discriminate on the full list of grounds prohibited by anti-discrimination laws when the schools had no “theological” reason for discharging the teachers.

Federal anti-discrimination laws specifically allow religious schools to discriminate based on religion, but not based on such grounds as race or color, sex, national origin, age or disability, except for their “ministers,” as to whom traditionally the churches would have total freedom to decide whom to employ.  The Supreme Court long recognized churches’ freedom from government interference in employing “ministers.”  Hosanna-Tabor extended the concept from clergy to some religious teachers, but Sotomayor argued that this new decision takes that concept too far away from traditional religious leadership roles, taking protection against discrimination away from thousands of teachers.

The Court’s ruling may have an immediate adverse effect in lawsuits pending around the country by teachers who have been systematically fired by religious schools – almost entirely Catholic schools – after marrying their same-sex partners in the wake of the Obergefell decision five years ago.  By rejecting Justice Thomas’s “deference” approach, the Court leaves open the possibility that some of these discharged teachers might be able to prove that the “ministerial exception” does not apply to them, but, as Justice Sotomayor suggests, in most cases courts will have to dismiss their discrimination claims if their job had a religious component similar to the elementary school teachers, even if that was only a minor part of their role.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2nd Circuit Holds That It Was Not “Clearly Established” That Sexual Orientation Discrimination in Public Employment is Actionable Under the Equal Protection Clause Prior to Obergefell and Windsor

Posted on: September 8th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

In the course of deciding an appeal by some supervisory public employees of a district court’s refusal to accord them qualified immunity from a discharged employee’s claim of discrimination because of perceived sexual orientation (that took place in 2010), a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals stated in Naumovski v. Norris, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 23891, 2019 WL 3770193 (Aug. 12, 2019), that it was not then “clearly established” by the Supreme Court or the 2nd Circuit prior to the rulings in U.S. v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges that sexual orientation discrimination is actionable under in a 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 claim alleging a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

The opinion for the panel by Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes suggests that it might be “possible today that sexual orientation discrimination in public employment may be actionable under Section 1983,” but at the time of the conduct challenged in this case “such a constitutional prohibition was not yet ‘clearly established’” so the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity from the claim.  In a footnote, Judge Cabranes acknowledged that as early as 1996, in Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 634, and again in 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, the Supreme Court “had already begun to scrutinize laws that reflected ‘animosity’ toward gays,” but in this case the plaintiff had not alleged “such class-based animosity or desire to harm.”  He also noted that under Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture, 553 U.S. 591 (2008), the plaintiff could not bring a “class of one” equal protection case “simply on the basis that her termination was individually arbitrary.”

On March 10, 2010, Binghamton University’s Athletic Director, James Norris, informed Elizabeth Naumovski, then assistant coach of the women’s basketball team, that she would be discharged if she did not resign.  She resigned and filed her discrimination charges with the NY State Division of Human Rights and the EEOC.  After exhausting administrative remedies against the school, she filed suit in federal court, adding discrimination claims under the Constitution against the Athletic Director and the Head Coach of the team as well as the university employer.  Norris and Scholl sought unsuccessfully to get U.S. District Judge David Hurd to dispose of the claims against them on grounds of qualified immunity, as part of his overall ruling on motions for summary judgment, and this appeal to the 2nd Circuit concerns Judge Hurd’s failure to grant their motions, which he implicitly did by denying them summary judgment.

Naumovski, a single woman in her thirties, became the subject of rumors concerning her possible relationship with a woman on the team, identified in the opinion as J.W.  Complaints from other students that Naumovski was showing favoritism to this woman came to the head coach and the then-assistant athletic director, James Norris, who, according to Judge Cabranes, “states that he understood the rumors to refer to a relationship of favoritism between a coach and a student-athlete, rather than to a sexual relationship between the two.”  Norris discussed these rumors with the Athletic Director, “who assured him that the allegations were the baseless fabrications of disgruntled former members of the Binghamton Athletics community.”  Norris was promoted to the athletic directorship on September 30, 2009.

In response to the persisting rumors during the fall term of 2009, Head Coach Nicole Scholl “imposed various restrictions on interactions between coaches and student-athletes to avoid any perception of impropriety.”  According to Naumovski’s allegations, “As a result of the increased scrutiny triggered by these restrictions, Naumovski began to suffer from depression and stress-induced weight loss.” She met with Norris to address the rumors, and claims he told her that “your problem is that you’re a single female in your mid-30s,” implying that the rumors were due to a perception that she was a lesbian.  Norris denies having made that comment, a potential material fact in the overall scheme of the litigation, in terms of the school’s potential liability.

The rumors persisted into 2010, as Norris continued to receive complaints about “favoritism” by Naumovski towards J.W. Friction developed between Naumovski and Head Coach Scholl, who felt that “Naumovski was trying to undermine her leadership of the team.”  Wrote Cabranes, “Naumovski does not deny tension between herself and Scholl; rather, she claims that any such tension ceased after a February 9, 2010 meeting with Scholl.  Naumovski further claims that Scholl and Norris never expressed any additional concerns about her coaching performance after that time.”  However, during a phone call on February 21, Scholl and Norris agreed that Naumovski’s employment should be terminated at the end of the basketball season in March. “The decision was purportedly based on Naumovski’s demonstrated favoritism toward certain student-athletes and the disruptive impact of her workplace conflicts with Scholl,” writes Cabrances, relating the defendants’ claims.  Meanwhile, Norris continued to receive student complaints and things came to a head when J.W.’s family received “an anonymous, vulgar letter accusing her of ‘screwing’ Naumovski,” which J.W. told Naumovksi about, and which led J.W.’s mother to call Norris; it is disputed whether the letter was mentioned in that phone call.  However, a week after that call, Norris informed Naumovski that she was being fired for performance reasons, but she could resign to forestall being fired, which she did.

Naumovski’s suit alleges discrimination based on her sex, perceived sexual orientation, and national origin (Canadian), in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Equal Protection Clause and the First Amendment (42 USC 1983), as well as the NY Constitution and NY Human Rights Law.  Defendants moved for summary judgment after discovery.  “The motion remained pending for several years,” write Cabranes, not being decided until April 17, 2018, when District Judge Hurd granted summary judgment to Binghamton University and the State University of New York on all constitutional claims but allowed statutory claims to proceed to trial. (Perhaps Judge Hurd was waiting to rule on the motions for a final resolution by the Circuit of whether sexual orientation claims are actionable under Title VII, which emerged with the Zarda v. Altitude Express en banc ruling in February 2018.) As to the individual defendants, Scholl and Norris, Hurd dismissed all claims except for Naumovski’s sex-based disparate treatment and hostile work environment claims under 42 USC 1983 (Equal Protection), failing to address the issue of their qualified immunity from constitutional claims even though they sought to invoke immunity in their summary judgment motion.  Judge Hurd subsequently denied a motion by Norris and Scholl for reconsideration on the immunity argument as untimely under local rules, asserting that it did not raise any new issues, and they appealed to the 2nd Circuit.

Judge Cabranes devoted considerable space in his opinion to explaining the different proof requirements on the statutory claims and the constitutional claims.  In particular, he noted, under Title VII, the plaintiff can win by showing that her sex or perceived sexual orientation was a “motivating factor” for discrimination, but on the constitutional equal protection claim, her burden would be to show that it was a “but-for” factor.  He also devoted a portion of the opinion to itemizing the various other ways in which the statutory and constitutional claims receive different treatment, finding that the district court seems to have conflated the two separate modes of analysis in its decision.  Furthermore, he pointed out that the statutory claims under employment discrimination law run only against the institutional employer, not against individuals, while the constitutional claims could be asserted against individuals who are “state actors,” but who enjoy qualified immunity from personal liability unless it is “clearly established” by appellate precedent that the discrimination with which they are charged is, if proven, unconstitutional.

Turning to the subject of the appeal, Judge Hurd’s implicit denial (or failure to recognize) qualified immunity from the constitutional claims for Norris and Scholl, Cabranes noted that the 2nd Circuit’s review of the district court’s “implicit” rejection of the qualified immunity claims “is complicated by several factors.  First, the District Court never addressed the claims of qualified immunity in its Memorandum-Decision and Order; it is therefore impossible to review its specific reasoning in denying relief on this ground.  Second, while both the Complaint and the District Court’s Memorandum-Decision and Order conclude that Defendants’ alleged conduct constitutes sex discrimination (either through disparate treatment or subjection to a hostile environment), neither explains precisely how Defendants’ conduct can be so construed.  Third, the District Court opinion conflates its analysis of Naumovski’s Title VII and Sec. 1983 claims, rendering our task of reviewing only the Sec. 1983 claims more difficult.”  Attempting to “reconstruct the logic” of the District Court’s denial of immunity to Scholl and Norris on the constitutional claims, the court concluded that “no theory can sustain the District Court’s implicit denial of Defendant’s qualified immunity.”

First addressing the sex discrimination claim, the court found that there was a lack of evidentiary allegations to support the claim, apart from Naumovski’s allegation about Norris’s remark concerning her status as a single woman in her 30s, which the court concluded did not “constitute sufficient evidence to make out a case of employment discrimination,” characterizing it as “the sort of ‘stray remark’ that is insufficient to support an inference of discriminatory intent.”  While Judge Hurd referred to “other indicia” of discrimination intent, the appeals court was not convinced:  “The only ‘other indicia,’ however, is evidence suggesting that Scholl and Norris interpreted the rumors as alleging a sexual relationship between Naumovski and J.W., rather than mere favoritism from one to the other.  The invocation of such evidence is unavailing.  Even if we assume Scholl and Norris interpreted the allegations against Naumovski as sexual in nature, that fact provides no additional support for a conclusion that Scholl’s and Norris’s own actions were based on discriminatory animus toward women in general or any subcategory of female employees in particular,” wrote Cabranes.  Thus, the conclusion that summary judgment should have been granted on the sex discrimination claim.

The court also discussed the possibility that Naumovski could succeed on a sex-stereotyping claim; i.e., “Norris and Scholl stereotyped Naumovski based on her sex (possibly in combination with other characteristics) as more likely to have engaged in a romantic or sexual relationship with J.W.  Defendants then fired Naumovski (at least in part) because of their wrongful and discriminatory belief that she engaged in sexual impropriety with a student and, subsequently, attempted to conceal that stereotyping played any role in their termination decision.”  While the court agreed that such a theory might work in some cases, “Naumovski cannot succeed on such a theory” because of the “but-for” proof requirement for a constitutional violation.  In order to prevail, “Naumovski must establish that a reasonable jury could find that Defendants would not have terminated her based on their stated reasons alone.  To be sure, there may well be cases in which misconduct findings based on sex stereotyping meet the ‘but-for’ discrimination standard,” Cabranes continued.  “Here, however, we do not think that the evidence, even construed in the light most favorable to Naumovski, satisfies that standard.”  Cabranes gives an extended explanation for this conclusion, noting in particular that “Naumovski does not materially dispute that Scholl’s personality and coaching style clashed with her own,” which on its own would be a legitimate reason to let go an assistant coach who was an at-will employee.

Turning to the perceived sexual orientation discrimination claim, Cabranes came to the issue of most direct relevance to Law Notes: whether public officials enjoy qualified immunity from constitutional liability for discriminating against their employees because of actual or perceived sexual orientation.  He pointed out that if the district court was relying on the 2nd Circuit’s 2018 Zarda decision for this proposition, “it erred for at least two reasons.”  First, Zarda was a statutory interpretation case under Title VII, not a constitutional case, thus the Circuit’s decision that discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII includes discrimination because of sexual orientation was not a ruling the sexual orientation claims should be treated the same as sex discrimination claims under the 14th Amendment.  Second, the conduct at issue in this case (2009-2010) predated Zarda by many years.  Given the 2nd Circuit’s pre-Zarda caselaw, Cabranes pointed out, at the time Naumovski was fired, “the ‘clearly established law’ … was that sexual orientation discrimination was not a subset of sex discrimination.”

“Nor could the District Court rely on freestanding constitutional principles separate from Zarda,” continued Cabranes.  “To date, neither this court nor the Supreme Court has recognized Sec. 1983 claims for sexual orientation discrimination in public employment.  Moreoever, when the conduct in this case occurred, neither of the Supreme Court’s landmark same-sex marriage cases – United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges – had been decided.  It was, therefore, not yet clear that all state distinctions based on sexual orientation were constitutionally suspect.”  At this point, Cabranes wrote a footnote acknowledging the existence of Romer and Lawrence, but distinguishing them based on Naumovski’s factual allegations. Cabranes’ opinion does not explicitly state that a public official would not enjoy qualified immunity today from an adverse personnel decision based on sexual orientation, but he implies that after Windsor and Obergefell, “state distinctions based on sexual orientation” are “constitutionally suspect,” a point that some scholars have argued, attempting to give more teeth to Justice Kennedy’s opinions in those cases than some might see in them.  To be clear, neither of those cases explicitly states that government distinctions based on sexual orientation are to be treated the same as sex discrimination cases and enjoy heightened scrutiny under the 14th Amendment.  Justice Kennedy did not employ that vocabulary, and arguably placed more weight on the liberty interest in marriage in those cases.

The court also found that Norris and Scholl would clearly enjoyed qualified immunity from a claim that their decision relied on biased student claims against Naumovski, and also that a constitutionally-based hostile environment claim based on sex or perceived sexual orientation in a public employment context was not clearly actionable under 42 USC 1983, as the precedential basis for such claims has been developed thus far only under Title VII.

Summarizing the Court of Appeals holding, Cabranes wrote that Section 1983 claims for discrimination in employment require plaintiffs to establish that the defendants’ discriminatory intent was a “but-for” cause of the adverse employment action, that because of the intent requirements under the Equal Protection clause, a Section 1983 claim for employment discrimination “cannot be based on a respondeat superior or ‘cat’s paw’ theory to establish a defendant’s liability (thus ruling out liability for Scholl and Norris based on complaints by discriminatory students), and defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because, “even when interpreted in the light most favorable to Naumovski, the record cannot support the conclusion that they violated her ‘clearly established’ constitutional rights.”

Naumovski is represented by A. J. Bosman of Rome, N.Y.  Judge Cabranes was appointed by President Bill Clinton.  The other two judges on the 2nd Circuit panel were Ralph Winter (Reagan) and Renee Raggi (George W. Bush).

2nd Circuit Endorses Narrow Interpretation of its Title VII LGBT-Rights Precedent

Posted on: August 16th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, sitting in Manhattan, observed in an opinion issued on August 12 that its historic ruling last year in Zarda v. Altitude Express, holding that sexual orientation discrimination violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not create a judicial precedent in the 2nd Circuit for purposes of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause on the issue of sexual orientation discrimination.

This observation, in an opinion by Circuit Judge Jose A. Cabranes, came in a lawsuit by a woman who was fired early in 2010 from a position as assistant women’s basketball team coach at Binghamton State University in upstate New York after months of rumors that she had a romantic relationship with one of the women on the basketball team.  Naumovski v. Norris, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 23891, 2019 WL 3770193 (2nd Cir., Aug. 12, 2019). The plaintiff, Elizabeth Naumovski, who denied that there was any romantic relationship, sued Nicole Scholl, the head coach, and James Norris, the associate athletic director, who made the decision to fire her, claiming a violation of her rights under Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause.  Part of their defense to her constitutional claim was that they enjoyed “qualified immunity” from any personal liability for making the decision to fire her.  District Court Judge David N. Hurd refused to dismiss the claim without discussing the qualified immunity claim, and they appealed.

Under the Supreme Court’s decisions on state actor liability for violating constitutional rights, a government agency or entity such as a public university can only be held liable for its policies, not for discretionary decisions by its management employees.  That is, the doctrine of “respondeat superior,” under which private sector employers can be held liable for the actions of their employees, does not apply in this situation.  Since the University does not have an anti-LGBT employment policy, it cannot be held liable under the Equal Protection Clause, even if a court were to conclude that Ms. Naumovski’s sexual orientation was the reason for her discharge.

However, management employees such as Scholl and Norris can be sued for their decisions violating a public employee’s constitutional rights, if at the time they acted it was “clearly established” in law that the basis for their action was unconstitutional.  Consequently, in ruling on their motion to dismiss the Equal Protection claim against them, Judge Hurd had to determine whether at the time of the discharge in 2010, it was “clearly established,” either by U.S. Supreme Court decisions or 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decisions, that employees of the state university enjoy constitutional protection from discrimination because of their sexual orientation.   If it was not “clearly established” at that time, Scholl and Norris should be shielded from liability by “qualified immunity,” and their motion for summary judgment should have been granted.

The 2nd Circuit ruled that the motion should have been granted.

“Naumovski’s complaint does not explicitly allege sexual orientation discrimination in its enumeration of her [federal] claims,” wrote Judge Cabranes. “Nevertheless, the District Court appears to have so interpreted her claims.  Indeed, the District Court concluded that ‘Plaintiff has established that she is a member of several protected classes including . . . being perceived as gay.’ We need not decide whether the District Court erred in so construing Naumovski’s complaint.  Even if Naumovski had stated a sexual orientation discrimination claim, Defendants would have qualified immunity from such a claim.”

The court said that any reliance by the district judge on the 2nd Circuit’s decision last year in Zarda v. Altitude Express “in recognizing Naumovski’s arguable sexual orientation discrimination claims” would be erroneous for two reasons.  First, Zarda was a Title VII (statutory) case, not a constitutional case.  Because Altitude Express is a private business, not a government entity, it could not be sued on a constitutional theory.  Furthermore, wrote Cabranes, the Zarda ruling “did not address whether the Constitution prohibits sexual orientation discrimination.  Thus, Zarda is only ‘clearly established law’ for statutory sexual orientation discrimination claims under Title VII.  It does not, however, ‘clearly establish’ constitutional sexual orientation discrimination claims.’”

This is quite disappointing, since the reasoning of Circuit Judge Robert Katzmann’s opinion in the Zarda case should apply equally as a matter of logical reasoning to the question whether sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination, and thus potentially a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.  Elsewhere in his opinion in this case, Judge Cabranes devoted attention to explaining the difference between proof of sex discrimination under Title VII as distinguished from the Equal Protection Clause.  Under Title VII, a defendant can be found to have violated the statute if an employee’s sex was a “motivating factor” in an employment decision, even though it was not the only factor supporting the decision.  By contrast, under the Supreme Court’s approach to Equal Protection, the plaintiff must prove that her sex was the “but-for” cause of the action she is contesting, and the defendant would escape liability if other reasons for its action would provide a valid non-discriminatory reason for the action.

Furthermore, Judge Cabranes pointed out, Zarda was decided in 2018, and Naumovski was discharged in 2010.  “Prior to Zarda,” he wrote, “our Court had expressly declined to recognize sexual orientation discrimination claims under Title VII, much less the Constitution.  Thus, if anything, the ‘clearly established law’ at the time Defendants terminated Naumovski’s employment was that sexual orientation discrimination was not a subset of sex discrimination.  Insofar as the District Court relied on Zarda, therefore, Defendants were surely entitled to qualified immunity.”

The court also pointed out that Naumovski was fired before the Supreme Court had decided U.S. v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).  “It was, therefore, not yet clear that all state distinctions based on sexual orientation were constitutionally suspect,” he asserted.  In a footnote, he conceded that in 1996 the Supreme Court had “already begun to scrutinize laws that reflected ‘animosity’ toward gays” when it declared unconstitutional a Colorado constitutional amendment that excluded gay people in that state from protection under state law. “Here, however,” he wrote, “Naumovski has alleged no such class-based animosity or desire to harm.”

Judge Cabranes concluded that even if it is possible that today a public official would not enjoy qualified immunity from constitutional liability for dismissing a public employee because of their sexual orientation, depending how one interprets the current state of affairs in the 2nd Circuit in light of Zarda and nationally in light of Windsor and Obergefell, “at the time of the challenged conduct here such a constitutional prohibition was not yet ‘clearly established.’”

The bottom line in Naumovski’s case is that constitutional claims against Binghamton University and the State University of New York (SUNY) as a whole are dismissed, but several statutory claims against the employers that were not dismissed by Judge Hurd remain in play.  Constitutional claims against Scholl and Norris are now dismissed on grounds of qualified immunity.

Naumovski is represented by A.J. Bosman of Rome, New York.  Scholl and Norris are represented by Margaret Joanne Fowler of Vestal, New York.  The other two judges on the 2nd Circuit panel are Senior Circuit Judges Ralph Winter and Renee Raggi.