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6th Circuit Panel Stays Preliminary Injunction in Tennessee Gender-Affirming Care Case

Posted on: July 8th, 2023 by Art Leonard No Comments

For the first time, federal judges have suggested that constitutional challenges to state laws banning gender-affirming care for minors are unlikely to succeed, and have stayed a preliminary injunction that was issued by the district court on June 28 against operation of Tennessee’s law.  The case is LW. V. Skrmetti, No. 23-5600 (6th Cir.).  The state’s request to the trial judge to stay his preliminary injunction pending an appeal had been denied by that judge.  The state immediately filed an “emergency motion” to stay the preliminary injunction.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit voted 2-1 in a decision released on July 8 that the district court’s statewide preliminary injunction against the Tennessee law should be stayed as the case proceeds.  However, acknowledging that their ruling contradicts the ruling of all federal courts that have addressed this issue thus far on the issues of due process and equal protection, the panel promised to expedite consideration of the state’s appeal from the preliminary injunction, with the goal of issuing a decision by September 30.

The Tennessee law, which was scheduled to go into effect on July 1, authorizes state regulatory authorities to impose “professional discipline” on any physician providing gender-affirming care to minors, with a temporary carve-out until March 31, 2024, for continuing care to those already receiving the treatment.  Thus, it would be professional misconduct in Tennessee for a licensed health care provider to start providing gender-affirming care to patients now, or to continue providing such care to patients after March 31 of next year.  The law also provides a right for an “injured minor” or a “nonconsenting parent” to sue health care providers for providing such care.

The district judge who issued the preliminary injunction, Eli Richardson (appointed by President Donald J. Trump), found that the plaintiffs – three transgender minors and their parents– were likely to prevail on their argument that the law violated the constitutional rights of transgender minors on equal protection grounds and their parents on due process grounds.  However, he found that they lacked standing to contest the ban on surgery, limiting his preliminary injunction to the ban on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

The majority of the 6th Circuit panel, Chief Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton (appointed by President George W. Bush) and Circuit Judge Amul Thapar (appointed by President Trump), found that Judge Richardson erred by recognizing a “new” fundamental right under the due process clause for parents to override state legislative judgments about access to particular medical treatments for their children.  Judge Richardson found, based on the record before him, that the facts asserted by the Tennessee legislature in support of this measure were contrary to the weight of professional medical authority, but the panel majority insisted that on a motion for preliminary injunction it was inappropriate for the trial court to substitute its judgment for the legislature’s decision to “protect” minors from “experimental treatments” that could permanently affect their reproductive capacity.  The panel majority was critical of the judge’s deferral to the majority judgment of the medical profession, noting that there was debate within the profession on the wisdom of using these medications on minors.

The panel majority also seized upon the fact that use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender affirming care was an “off label” use of those medications, as they have not been officially approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose.  Judge Richardson had found that “off-label” use of approved drugs is a widespread practice in the medical profession when the drugs have been deemed safe by the FDA, so he had not given weight to the state’s argument that it was rational for it to prohibit such care on that basis.

The panel majority insisted that the Supreme Court has never directly recognized the fundamental right claimed by the plaintiffs in this case, and had – most recently in the Dobbs abortion decision – shown great reluctance to apply the Due Process Clause to recognize rights that were not recognized when the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1867.  Indeed, the court pointed out that the Supreme Court has not recognized any new fundamental rights in the past forty years, arguing that thus it was inappropriate for a federal trial judge to do so in deciding a pre-trial preliminary injunction motion.  As far as the panel majority was concerned, the Supreme Court’s prior parental rights decisions (dealing with education and child custody issues) had not extended to health care, and the Supreme Court had even overridden parents objections to a compulsory vaccination law more than a century ago.

The panel majority rejected Judge Richardson’s conclusion that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their equal protection claim, which was based on the conclusion that banning gender-affirming care should be considered either discrimination on the basis of sex or of gender identity, in either case subject to heightened scrutiny.  The panel majority argued that neither the Supreme Court nor the 6th Circuit has explicitly ruled that gender identity discrimination requires heightened scrutiny.

They also rejected the argument that banning gender-affirming care constitutes sex discrimination.  In so doing, they rejected the argument that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the Bostock case, holding that an employer discriminating against an employee because of their “transgender status” constituted sex discrimination, should be applied in a constitutional equal protection case.  They argued that the Bostock decision applied to interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which applies only to employment discrimination, and that the Supreme Court had disclaimed ruling on any other aspect of gender identity discrimination.

The panel majority instead embraced the simplistic argument that because the ban on gender affirming care applied equally to male and female minors, there was no discrimination because of sex.  Such reasoning had been rejected by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, where the state defended its law against interracial marriage by arguing that both white and non-white persons were prohibited from engaging in interracial marriage so there was no discrimination because of race.  The panel majority countered with the Supreme Court’s holding in Dobbs that laws banning abortion, an operation performed only on women, did not raise an equal protection issue.

Before getting to these substantive points, however, the full three-judge panel found that Judge Richardson should not have issued a statewide injunction, insisting that any preliminary relief should be limited to the plaintiffs in the case.  They noted that this was not certified as a class action case, and that blocking the enforcement of a statute for the entire state could only be justified if plaintiffs were likely to prevail on a claim that there were no possible lawful applications of the statute, that it was invalid on its face for all applications.

Dissenting in part, Senior Circuit Judge Helene White (initially appointed by President Bill Clinton toward the end of his second term, but confirmed under a deal to break a deadlock in confirming circuit court judges under which her name was resubmitted to the Senate by President George W. Bush) agreed that the statewide injunction was improper under a 6th Circuit precedent holding that “district courts should not issue relief that extends further than necessary to remedy the plaintiff’s injury.”  However, she parted company from the majority on the equal protection claim, finding that the 6th Circuit’s precedents had recognized discrimination claims by transgender plaintiffs in several cases under Title VII, and that the 6th Circuit had specifically held in the past that “we review discrimination claims brought under the Equal Protection Clause using the same test applied under Title VII.”  She would have upheld the preliminary injunction but narrowed it to apply only to enforcement against the plaintiffs.

 

 

U.S. Education Department to Publish Official Interpretation of Title IX Covering Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination

Posted on: June 16th, 2021 by Art Leonard No Comments

Following up on President Joe Biden’s Executive Orders of January 20 and March 8, 2021, and a March 26 Memorandum by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education announced on June 16 that it is publishing a “Notice of Interpretation” in the Federal Register confirming that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits educational institutions that received federal funding from discriminating against students “on the basis of sex,” applies to discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity (transgender status).

The announcement came just a year after the Supreme Court interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex,” to include discrimination because of sexual orientation or transgender status, in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.  In Bostock, the Court combined cases from the 2nd, 6th and 11th Circuit Courts of Appeals involving two gay men and a transgender woman, and voted 6-3 that any discrimination against an employee because they are gay, lesbian or transgender is necessarily at least in part because of their sex.  President Donald J. Trump’s first appointee to the Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote the opinion for the Court by assignment from Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the opinion together with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Although the Bostock decision directly interpreted only Title VII, its reasoning clearly applied to any law that prohibits discrimination “because of sex” or “on the basis of sex,” as the Education Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg, wrote in the Notice issued on June 16.  In his January 20 Executive Order, President Biden directed all Executive Branch agencies to consider the implications of the Bostock decision for their policies and programs, and to apply the reasoning of that decision to the extent it was consistent with purposes of the particular policies and programs.  His March 8 Executive Order explicitly referenced sexual orientation and gender identity in “guaranteeing an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex.”

“After reviewing the text of Title IX and Federal courts’ interpretation of Title IX,” wrote Goldberg, “the Department has concluded that the same clarity [that the Supreme Court found under Title VII] exists for Title IX.  That is, Title IX prohibits recipients of Federal financial assistance from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in their education programs and activities.  The Department has also concluded for the reasons described in this Notice that, to the extent other interpretations may exist, this is the best interpretation of the statute.”

The Notice listed “numerous” lower federal court decisions that were issued over the past year taking this position, including the most recent ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Gavin Grimm case, concerning a transgender boy who was denied access to restroom facilities at a Virginia high school.  The school board in that case filed a petition seeking Supreme Court review on February 24, which would present the Supreme Court with a ready vehicle to weigh in on this issue if it wants to do so.

Reversing the position taken by the Education Department during the Trump Administration, the Notice announces that the Department will investigate sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination allegations by students.  “This includes allegations of individuals being harassed, disciplined in a discriminatory manner, excluded from, denied equal access to, or subjected to sex stereotyping in academic or extracurricular opportunities and other education programs or activities, denied the benefits of such programs or activities, or otherwise treated differently because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” wrote Goldberg.  She pointed out that a determination whether Title IX was violated will depend on the facts of individual cases, and of course Title IX applies only to schools that receive federal funds.

In a footnote, Goldberg pointed out that “educational institutions that are controlled by a religious organization are exempt from Title IX to the extent that compliance would not be consistent with the organization’s religious tenets,” citing 20 U.S.C. section 1681(a)(3).  There is a pending federal lawsuit against the Education Department by a group of students from such religious schools claiming that this section violates the 1st Amendment Establishment Clause.  Religious schools have moved to intervene as parties in that lawsuit, claiming that the government may not sufficiently defend their exemption.  The Justice Department has opposed their motion in a recent court filing, asserting that the government will “vigorously” defend the challenged provision.  The religious exemption was a politically necessary compromise to get Title IX adopted by Congress.

While the June 16 Notice states that its interpretation of Title IX “supersedes and replaces any prior inconsistent statements made by the Department regarding the scope of Title IX’s jurisdiction over discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” it goes on to say that this “interpretation does not reinstate any previously rescinded guidance documents.”  This comment is significant, because during the Obama Administration the Education Department issued guidance documents on Title IX compliance requirements that took positions on many of the controversial issues that have been subject to litigation.  Those guidance requirements were cited by school boards and administrators in defending actions they took, even after the guidances were formally rescinded by the Education Department shortly after Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education.  DeVos took the position, later bolstered by a memorandum by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in October 2017, that Title IX did not cover sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination.

Miguel Cardona, Biden’s Secretary of Education, told The New York Times in an interview published on June 16 that “Students cannot be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity,” but left unclear the question whether his Department would be challenging state laws that ban transgender girls from competing in school sports.  He stated, “We need to make sure we are supporting all students in our schools,” but he did not get specific about particular challenged policies.  Making clear that “all” really means “all,” the Notice says that the Department’s Office of Civil Rights “carefully reviews allegations from anyone who files a complaint, including students who identify as male, female or nonbinary; transgender or cisgender; intersex; lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, heterosexual, or in other ways.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently heard arguments in the State of Idaho’s appeal from a district court decision finding that the state’s ban on transgender girls playing sports, the first such ban to be enacted, violates the constitutional rights of the transgender girls.  If this issue ends up in the Supreme Court, the Biden Administration will have to take a position one way or the other, just as it will be pressed to take a position if the Court grants the petition by the Gloucester County School Board in the Gavin Grimm case.  A federal court in Connecticut recently dismissed a lawsuit by a group of cisgender female high school athletes challenging a state policy of allowing transgender girls to compete, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the issue to the court.

The Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX is not binding on the federal courts, but is entitled to some degree of deference under principles of administrative law.   After DeVos and Sessions “rescinded” the Obama Administration’s interpretation and guidance documents, many federal courts continued to rule in favor of transgender students and school administrators who had adopted policies allowing transgender students to use restroom facilities.  The lower federal courts have been united up to now in rejecting claims by parents and students that allowing transgender students to use restroom and locker room facilities violates the constitutional privacy rights of non-LGBTQ students, and the Supreme Court has so far refrained from hearing those cases.

As President Biden has boasted about how many LGBTQ people he has appointed, it is worth noting that both the Justice Department Civil Rights Division March 26 Memo and the June 16 DOE Notice were authored by out lesbian appointees, Pamela Karlan and Suzanne Goldberg.

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.

Gavin Grimm Victorious: U.S. Appeals Court Reject’s School Board’s Anti-Trans Restroom Policy

Posted on: August 29th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

Capping litigation that began in 2015, a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled by a vote of 2-1 on August 26 that the Gloucester County (Virginia) School Board violated the statutory and constitutional rights of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, when it denied him the use of boys’ restrooms at Gloucester County High School.  Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 27234, 2020 Westlaw 5034430.

This may sound like old news, especially since other federal appellate courts, most notably the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit, the Chicago-based 7th Circuit, the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, have either ruled in favor of the rights of transgender students or rejected arguments against such equal access policies by protesting parents and cisgender students. But Grimm’s victory is particularly delicious because the Trump Administration intervened at a key point in the litigation to switch sides in the case after the Obama Administration had supported Grimm’s original lawsuit.

Grimm, identified as female at birth, claimed his male gender identity by the end of his freshman year, taking on a male name and dressing and grooming as male. Before his sophomore year, he and his mother spoke to the high school principal and secured agreement that he could use boys’ bathrooms, which he did for several weeks without incident.  But as word spread that a transgender boy was using the facilities, parents became alarmed and deluged the school board with protests, leading to two stormy public meetings and a vote that transgender students in the district (of which Grimm was then the only known one) were restricted to using a single-occupant restroom in the nurse’s office or restrooms consistent with their “biological sex,” which the district defined as the sex identified at birth.

After Grimm filed his lawsuit represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) seeking a court order to allow him to resume using the boys’ restrooms in his school, the Obama Administration weighed in with a letter to the court siding with Grimm’s argument that the school board’s policy violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bans sex discrimination against students.  Despite this positive letter, the district judge granted the school board’s motion to dismiss the Title IX claim, reserving judgment on Grimm’s alternative claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Grimm appealed the dismissal.  A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit then ruled that the district court should have deferred to the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title IX and not dismissed that claim.  The school board sought review from the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted the petition and scheduled the case for argument in March 2017.  The timing of this argument guaranteed that Grimm would never get to use the boys’ restrooms at the high school before graduating that spring.

After the Trump Administration took office in January 2017, the Justice and Education Departments announced that they were “withdrawing” the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title IX.  Without taking a formal position on the interpretive question, they criticized the Obama Administration as inadequately reasoned.  But subsequently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his disagreement with the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title IX and more generally the prior administration’s position that transgender people are protected by all federal laws banning sex discrimination.  In an October 2017 memorandum to all executive agencies, Sessions announced that laws banning sex discrimination apply only narrowly to a claim that an individual suffered discrimination because he was a biological male or she was a biological female, defined by how they were identified at birth.

Since the 4th Circuit had premised its reversal of the dismissal of Grimm’s Title IX claim on its conclusion that the district court should have deferred to the Obama Administration’s interpretation, the basis for that ruling was effectively gone.  The Solicitor General formally notified the Supreme Court, which cancelled the scheduled hearing, vacated the 4th Circuit’s decision, and sent the case back to the District Court without any ruling by the Supreme Court.  In the interim, the district court had responded to the 4th Circuit’s decision by issuing an injunction requiring the school board to let Grimm use the boys’ restrooms, but that was stayed while the appeal was pending in the Supreme Court and within months of the Supreme Court’s action of March 2017, Grimm had graduated from high school.

The Gloucester County School Board than urged the district court to dismiss the case as moot, since Grimm was no longer a student.  Grimm insisted that the case should continue, because he should be entitled to seek damages for the discrimination he suffered and he wanted to be able to use the male facilities if he returned to the school as an alumnus to attend events there.  The mootness battle raged for some time, the complaint was amended to reflect the new reality that Grimm was no longer a student, and a new issue emerged when Grimm requested that the school issue him an appropriate transcript in his male name identifying him as male, since he was stuck in the odd situation of being a boy with a high school transcript identifying him as a girl.  By this time, he had gotten a court order approving his name change and a new birth certificate, but the school persisted in denying him a new transcript, raising frivolous arguments about the validity of the new birth certificate.

Thus repurposed, the case went forward.  Ultimately the district court ruled in Grimm’s favor on both his statutory and constitutional claims, but the school board was not willing to settle the case, appealing again to the 4th Circuit.  The August 26, 2020, ruling is the result.

The ACLU publicized this case heavily from the beginning, winning national media attention and an army of amicus parties filing briefs in support of Grimm’s claim along the away.  On May 26, 2020, the case was argued in the 4th Circuit before a panel of two Obama appointees, Judge Henry Floyd and Judge James A. Wynn, Jr., and an elderly George H.W. Bush appointee, Judge Paul Niemeyer (who had dissented from the original 4th Circuit ruling in this case).  In light of the rulings by other courts of appeals on transgender student cases and the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, on June 25, 2020, holding that discrimination because of transgender status is discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the result in this new ruling was foreordained.

Judge Floyd’s opinion for the panel, and Judge Wynn’s concurring opinion, both go deeply into the factual and legal issues in the case, constituting a sweeping endorsement of the right of transgender students to equal treatment in schools that receive federal funding, a prerequisite for coverage under Title IX.  Furthermore, public schools are bound by the Equal Protection Clause, and the court’s ruling on the constitutional claim was just as sweeping.

The court first rejected the school board’s argument that the case was moot, with Grimm having graduated and now being enrolled in college.  Since damages are available for a violation of Title IX, it was irrelevant that Grimm was no longer a student.  He had been barred from using the boys’ restrooms for most of his sophomore and all of his junior and senior years.  Even though the district court granted him only nominal damages, his claim for damages made this a live controversy, as did the school’s continuing refusal to issue him a proper transcript, which the court held was also illegal.

Turning to the merits, Judge Floyd first tackled the Equal Protection claim.  The court rejected the School Board’s argument that there was no discrimination against Grimm because he was not “similarly situated” to cisgender boys.  Judges Floyd and Wynn firmly asserted that Grimm is a boy entitled to be treated as a boy, regardless of his sex as identified at birth.  This judicial endorsement of the reality of gender identity is strongly set forth in both opinions.

Judge Niemeyer’s dissent rests on a Title IX regulation, which Grimm did not challenge, providing that schools could maintain separate single-sex facilities for male and female students, and the judge’s rejection that Grimm is male for purposes of this regulation.  Niemeyer insisted that Title IX only prohibits discrimination because of “biological sex” (a term with the statute does not use).  As far as he was concerned, the school did all that the statute required it to do when it authorized Grimm to use the nurse’s restroom or the girls’ restrooms.  But the majority of the panel accepted Grimm’s argument that the school’s policy subjected him to discriminatory stigma, as well as imposing physical disadvantages.  As a boy, he would not be welcome in the girls’ restroom, and the nurse’s restroom was too far from the classrooms for a break between classes.  As a result, he generally avoided using the restroom at school, leaving to awkward situations and urinary tract infections.

As the case unfolded, the school constructed additional single-user restrooms open to all students regardless of sex and made some modifications to the existing restrooms to increase the privacy of users, but the single-user restrooms were not conveniently located and cisgender students did not use them, reinforcing the stigma Grimm experienced.  Stigma due to discrimination has long been recognized by the federal courts as the basis for a constitutional equal protection claim.

The school’s actions undermined Judge Niemeyer’s argument that the school board policy was justified by the need to protect the privacy of cisgender students, an argument that has been specifically rejected by the 3rd and 9th Circuit cases when they rejected cases brought by parents and cisgender students challenging school policies that allowed transgender students to use appropriate restrooms.  Judge Niemeyer colorfully wrote, “we want to be alone — to have our privacy — when we ‘shit, shower, shave, shampoo, and shine.’”  (Do high school buys shave in the boys’ room as a general practice?)  But the panel smajority was not persuaded that it was necessary to exclude Grimm from the boys’ restrooms to achieve this goal.  After all, the only way Grimm as a transgender boy could relieve himself was by using an enclosed stall, lacking the physical equipment to use a urinal, so he would not be disrobing in front of the other students.  (Let’s be real here.)

Judge Floyd’s opinion did not rely on the Bostock ruling for its constitutional analysis, instead noting that many circuit courts of appeals have accepted the argument that government policies discriminating because of gender identity are subject to heightened scrutiny, and are thus presumptively unconstitutional unless they substantially advance an important state interest.  The majority, contrary to judge Floyd, did not think that excluding Grimm advanced an important state interest, especially after the School Board had altered the restrooms to afford more privacy, an obvious solution to any privacy issue.

Turning to the statutory claim, Judge Floyd pointed out that judicial interpretation of Title IX has always been informed by the Supreme Court’s Title VII rulings on sex discrimination, so the Bostock decision carried heavy precedential weight and the school board’s arguments on the constitutional claim were no more successful on this claim.  The School Board lacked a sufficient justification under Title IX to impose unequal access to school facilities on Grimm.

At this point, the Gloucester County School Board can read the writing on the wall and concede defeat, or it can petition the 4th Circuit for en banc review (review by the full 15-judge bench of the circuit court), or it can seek Supreme Court review a second time.  As to the en banc situation, the 4th Circuit is one of the few remaining federal circuit courts with a majority of Democratic appointees, as several of Bill Clinton’s appointees are still serving as active judges and all six of Obama’s appointees are still serving, leaving a majority of Democratic appointees on the full bench, so seeking en banc review, which requires that a majority of the active judges vote to review the case, would be a long shot.

On the other hand, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s decision for the Supreme Court in Bostock refrained from deciding – since it wasn’t an issue in that case – whether excluding transgender people from restroom facilities violates sex discrimination laws, and this case would provide a vehicle for addressing that issue.  It takes only four votes on the Supreme Court to grant review of a lower court case, so there may be another chapter in the saga of Grimm’s legal battle. It is also possible that the St. Johns County School District in Florida, which lost in the 11th Circuit in a virtually identical ruling, might also seek Supreme Court review, so one way or another, this issue may yet get on to the Court’s Docket this term or next.

ACLU attorney Joshua Block has been representing Grimm throughout the struggle, but the case was argued in May by cooperating attorney David Patrick Corrigan, a litigation specialist at the Richmond firm of Harman Clayton Corrigan & Wellman.  A local Richmond firm represented the School Board, confronting Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring supporting Grimm with an amicus brief.  The overwhelming majority of amicus briefs filed, many by state attorneys general, sided with Grimm.

Missouri Supreme Court Revives Sex Discrimination Law Suits by Gay and Transgender Plaintiffs

Posted on: March 2nd, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Missouri Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings on February 26, reversing circuit court dismissals of sex discrimination lawsuits by gay and transgender plaintiffs.  Lampley v. Missouri Commission on Human Rights, 2019 WL 925557, 2019 Mo. LEXIS 52; R.M.A. v. Blue Springs R-IV School District, 2019 WL 925511, 2019 Mo. LEXIS 54.  In both cases, the court was sharply split, and in neither opinion did the Court hold that sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination claims, as such, may be brought under the state’s Human Rights Law.  However, at least a majority of the seven judges agreed in both cases that being gay or transgender does not bar an individual from making a sex discrimination claim under the statute, which it least allows them to survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

The decision is significant because Missouri is a conservative state that has not amended its Human Rights Act to ban discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity, and Missouri’s federal courts are in the 8th Circuit, where the federal court of appeals has not yet ruled on a pending appeal posing the question whether the federal Civil Rights Act’s ban on sex discrimination can be interpreted to cover such claims.

The first of the two decisions, Lampley v. Missouri Commission on Human Rights, involves discrimination claims by two employees of the Missouri Department of Social Services Child Support Enforcement Division.  Harold Lampley filed a discrimination charge with the Commission, checking off on the charge form that he was a victim of discrimination because of “sex” and “retaliation.”  A heterosexual co-worker of Lampley, Rene Frost, also filed a charge, claiming she suffered “retaliation” because of her association with Lampley.

In the narrative portion of his charge, Lampley stated that he is a gay man who does not exhibit the stereotypical attributes of how a male should appear and behave, as a result of which he was treated differently from “similarly situated co-workers” who were not gay and who exhibited “stereotypical male or female attributes.”  Lampley claimed he was subjected to harassment at work, and that in retaliation for his complaints, he was “grossly underscored” in a performance evaluation.

In her narrative, Frost described her close friendship with Lampley.  Frost had complained about a performance review, the result of which was publicly announced to her co-workers in a departure from practice, and after which she claimed the employer moved her desk away from Lampley and the other co-workers with whom she collaborated. She was told she and Lampley were not allowed to eat lunch together, as they customarily did.  She also claimed that, unlike other employees, both she and Lampley were docked for pay for the time they met with their union representative about these issues, and that she continued to be subjected to verbal abuse, threats about her performance review, and “other harassing behaviors” as a result of her friendly association with Lampley.

The Commission’s investigator decided that Lampley was really trying to assert a sexual orientation discrimination claim, and that Frost’s claim was really that she was discriminated against for associating with a gay person.  In both cases, the investigator determined that the Act did not cover these charges, and the Commission terminated its proceedings, stating that both claims did not involve a category of discrimination covered by the law. The cases were “administratively closed,” and the Commission did not issue either Lampley or Frost the usual “right to sue” notice that would authorize them to go to court.

Thus stymied, Lampley and Frost filed petitions with the circuit court for administrative review, or, alternatively, for a writ of mandamus – an order from the court to the Commission to issue them right-to-sue notices.  The circuit court granted the Commission’s motion for summary judgment, citing a 2015 Missouri Court of Appeals decision that stated that sexual orientation claims are not covered by the statute.

The Supreme Court judges were divided over how to characterize this case and whether the Supreme Court even had jurisdiction to decide it, finding procedural problems with the Lampley and Frost lawsuits, but ultimately a majority concluded that they could address these appeals on the merits.

As to that, three members of the seven-member court, joining in an opinion by Judge George W. Draper, III, concluded that it was appropriate to follow federal precedents stemming from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), holding that the denial of a promotion to a female employee who was criticized as being too masculine in her dress and demeanor violated the rule against discrimination because of sex.  The Supreme Court accepted the argument that reliance on sex stereotypes in making personnel decisions was evidence of employment discrimination because of sex.

Turning to this case, Judge Draper wrote that it was wrong for the Commission to drop its investigation and close the case, because Lampley did not allege in his charge that he was a victim of sexual orientation discrimination.  Although he mentioned more than once in his narrative that he is a gay man, his claim was that he was a victim of sex discrimination because he did not exhibit stereotypical attributes of males.  Thus, he was entitled to an investigation of his claim, and similarly Frost was entitled to an investigation of her claim of retaliation against her based on her association with Lampley.  Draper emphasized that sexual orientation discrimination claims, as such, are not covered by the statute.  But he pointed to several opinions by federal courts, interpreting Title VII, that allowed gay plaintiffs to pursue sex discrimination claims using the sex stereotype theory.

Furthermore, wrote Draper, since the statutory time for investigation of a claim had long since expired, the appropriate remedy was for the circuit court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the Commission to issue right-to-sue notices to Lampley and Frost so they could pursue their discrimination claims in the circuit court.

One member of the Supreme Court concurred, but on a narrower ground.  Judge Paul C. Wilson, who wrote the opinion for a majority of the court in the R.M.A. case, discussed below, wrote that this case “should be analyzed and disposed of entirely on the basis of whether the facts alleged by Claimants assert sex discrimination claims covered by the MHRA,” which, he wrote, “they plainly do.”  However, he wrote, “the principal opinion does not stop there.  Instead, it proceeds to opine on whether ‘sex stereotyping,’ as discussed in the Title VII context in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, is a type of sex discrimination under the MHRA.”  But, referring to his opinion in R.M.A., Wilson argued that the MHRA “does not provide for ‘types’ of sex discrimination claims.”  Either a claimant is alleging sex discrimination or not.  If he or she is alleging sex discrimination, they are entitled to have their claims investigated and, ultimately, to present them to a court if they can’t be resolved by the Commission.

Judge Wilson would leave to a later stage in the litigation, when the matter is before the circuit court on the merits, the question whether the facts proven by the plaintiff in the lawsuit would amount to sex discrimination in violation of the law.  Thus, he saw the discussion of sex stereotypes as premature at this stage of the litigation.

Wilson agreed with Judge Draper’s opinion that the MHRA does not forbid sexual orientation discrimination as such.  His concurring vote, however, provided Draper with the majority to hold that the circuit court should not have granted summary judgment to the Commission, because Lampley was not claiming sexual orientation discrimination.

Chief Judge Zel Fischer agreed with Draper and Wilson that the state law does not forbid sexual orientation discrimination, but Fischer concluded for procedural reasons that the appeal should be dismissed.  Judge W. Brent Powell, in a separate dissent, while agreeing with Fischer that the court should dismiss the appeal on procedural grounds, said that otherwise the circuit court’s decision should be affirmed because “mandamus cannot be used to control the administrative agency’s executive director’s discretionary determination that Lampley’s and Frost’s complaints alleged discrimination based on sexual orientation rather than sex stereotyping.”  If that decision was reviewed under an “abuse of discretion” standard, wrote Powell, “the executive director did not abuse her discretion in closing Lampley’s and Frost’s complaints because the determination that the complaints alleged discrimination based on sexual orientation rather than sex stereotyping was not unreasonable, arbitrary, or clearly against the logic of the circumstances considering the allegations contained in the complaints.”

The footnotes of the opinions by Draper and Powell battle over how to characterize the narrative portions of the charges filed with the Commission.  Draper emphasizes that both Lampley and Frost claimed to be victims of sex discrimination because of sex stereotyping, while Powell emphasizes that Lampley’s extended narrative, not quoted in full in the plurality opinion, could clearly support a conclusion that he was the victim of sexual orientation discrimination, thus making the Commission’s conclusion rational and not arbitrary.

In the R.M.A. case, the teenage student filed suit claiming that the school’s refusal to let him use boys’ restrooms and locker rooms was discrimination because of sex.  The plaintiff’s claim to the Commission and Complaint in the Circuit Court stated that his “legal sex is male” and that by denying him “access to the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms,” the school discriminated against him in the use of a public accommodation “on the grounds of his sex.”

R.M.A. filed his charge with the Commission in October 2014, and the Commission issued him a right-to sue notice in July 2015.  He filed suit against the school district and board of education in October 2015.  The defendants move to dismiss the complaint on two grounds: that the Act does not cover gender identity discrimination, and that the public schools are not subject to the public accommodations provisions.  The circuit court granted the motion to dismiss in June 2016, “without explanation,” and R.M.A. appealed.

Writing for give members of the court, Judge Wilson, as noted above in his concurring opinion in the Lampley case, asserted that it was unnecessary for the court to deal with the question whether R.M.A. had a valid sex discrimination.  Since it was dealing with an appeal from a motion to dismiss, he wrote, the court should focus on what R.M.A. alleged in his Complaint.  There, he stated that he was legally a male, and that the school’s denial of his access to the boys’ facilities discriminated against him because of his sex.  To Wilson, this was straightforward.  R.M.A. was claiming sex discrimination, and denial of access to school facilities because of his sex.  At this stage of the litigation, that should be enough to survive a motion to dismiss, and it was not necessary to address the question whether gender identity discrimination claims can be brought under the statute, because R.M.A. made no such claim in his Complaint.  Furthermore, Wilson saw no merit to the argument that the school’s restroom and locker room facilities were not subject to the ban on sex discrimination in public accommodations under the MHRA.

One can easily imagine what Judge Powell thought about this.  In his vehement dissent, joined by Chief Judge Fischer, Powell insisted that the term “sex” as used in the Act could not be construed to allow gender identity discrimination claims, and he insisted that this is what R.M.A. was trying to assert.

“The MHRA does not define the word ‘sex,’” wrote Powell.  “When there is no statutory definition, the plain and ordinary meaning of a statutory term can be derived from the dictionary.”  Quoting from Webster’s 3rd New International Dictionary (1993), the word “sex” means “one of the two divisions of [organisms] esp. human beings respectively designated male or female.”  A secondary definition from Webster’s is the “sum of morphological, physiological, and behavioral peculiarities of living beings that subserves biparental reproduction with its concomitant genetic segregation and recombination… that is typically manifested as maleness or femaleness.”  And a third definition: “The sphere of interpersonal behavior esp. between male and female,” and the “phenomena of sexual instincts and their manifestations,” and “determining the sex of an organic being.”  Powell characterized these as boiling down to the concept of “biological sex,” asserting: “The MHRA, therefore, prohibits discrimination based on the biological classifications of male or female and does not extend to the separate concept of transgender status.”

Consequently, Powell concluded, “the petition survives a motion to dismiss only if it alleges that, as a biological female, R.M.A. was deprived of a public accommodation available to biological males.  R.M.A. makes no such allegation,” Powell continued.  “Instead, R.M.A. alleges he is a female who has transitioned to living as a male, and that the Defendants discriminate against him based on his sex by preventing him from using the boys’ restrooms and locker room.  R.M.A. does not allege that, as a biological female, he was barred from any public accommodation afforded to biological males.  Instead, R.M.A.’s allegation of discrimination distills to an acknowledgment that the Defendants excluded him from the boys’ restrooms and locker room because he is biologically female. If, as the principal opinion reasons, the relevant allegation is that R.M.A.’s ‘legal sex’ is male, then the majority will have ignored the crux of the petition while discarding the substance of the MHRA. The logical upshot is that the majority is presumably willing to hold the MHRA prohibits schools from maintaining separate restrooms and locker rooms for male and female students.  The alternative, of course, is to accept all of R.M.A.’s allegations as true, apply the plain language of the MHRA, and hold R.M.A.’s petition fails to state a claim of sex discrimination.”

Powell concluded that the question whether the statute should cover this kind of case was a policy question for the legislature, not the court.  “The General Assembly has spoken, and R.M.A.’s petition fails to state a claim of unlawful sex discrimination under the MHRA,” stated Powell, declaring that the judgment of the circuit court should be affirmed.  To Judge Wilson, speaking for a majority of the court, Judge Powell’s arguments were irrelevant on the motion to dismiss, since R.M.A. had met the minimal pleading requirement of articulating a claim of sex discrimination.

Given the voting dispositions in these two cases, it is difficult to predict the future course of sex discrimination claims by gay and transgender plaintiffs in Missouri.  While they may survive motions to dismiss their claims, and a reluctant Human Rights Commission may be able to conciliate with the parties and obtain settlements in some cases, ultimately the questions posed by Judge Powell will come right back when the cases are litigated on the merits.  Since Judge Draper’s analysis was supported by only a minority of the court, it is uncertain whether his use of the sex stereotype theory would prevail in a ruling on the merits of a gay plaintiff’s sex discrimination claim.  And the limited nature of Judge Wilson’s ruling in R.M.A.’s case gives no hint of how a majority of the court would deal with a transgender student’s claims to restroom and locker room access.  Looming over all these questions is the pending 8th Circuit appeal under Title VII, and the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court may hear cases next term concerning gay and transgender rights under federal sex discrimination laws.

Lampley and Frost are represented by Jill A. Silverstein, D. Eric Sowers, Ferne P. Wolfe and Joshua M. Pierson of Sowers & Wolf LLC in St. Louis.  R.M.A. is represented by Alexander Edelman and Katherine Myers of Edelman, Lisen & Myers LLP in Kansas City, and Madeline Johnson of the Law Offices of Madeline Johnson in Platte City, Missouri.

Sex Stereotype Theory Cannot Overcome Adverse 6th Circuit Precedent in Sexual Orientation Claim

Posted on: June 16th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

Characterizing a lesbian plaintiff’s sex discrimination claim under Title VII and the Kentucky Civil Rights Act as a sexual orientation discrimination claim, Chief U.S. District Judge Joseph H. McKinley, Jr., granted an employer’s motion for partial dismissal, finding that 6th Circuit precedent from a decade ago expressly rejected using a sex stereotype theory to find sexual orientation discrimination actionable under Title VII or the Kentucky statute. Lindsey v. Management & Training Corporation, 2018 WL 2943454, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98001 (W.D. Ky., June 12, 2018).

Terry Lindsey alleged that she was terminated because she is an African-American, noting that she and other African-American employees in management positions were either removed or encouraged to resign from management prior to her termination. She also alleged that she was terminated because she was seen by another employee with her female “significant other,” who is a former employee of the company.  Lindsey pointed to inconsistent enforcement by the company of its rule against co-workers forming romantic relationships, pointing out that the company “never took disciplinary action against employees who were engaged in opposite-sex relationships with other employees.  The company moved to dismiss the sex discrimination claim as well as a retaliation claim which had not been administratively exhausted prior to filing suit.

The company’s motion asserted that Lindsey had not pled a cognizable sex discrimination claim, as “the characteristic upon which she claims she was discriminated, her sexual orientation, is not a protected classification” under either Title VII or the Kentucky law, wrote Judge McKinley. One might argue that this mischaracterizes Lindsey’s claim. She is not alleged that she was discriminated because she is a lesbian, but rather she is being discriminated against because of the sex of the person she is dating, observing that the company treats same-sex and different sex relationships differently, thus having a policy based on sex.  But the court, without any discussion of the matter, accepts the company’s characterization of the claim, and comments, “The Sixth Circuit has categorically held that ‘sexual orientation is not a prohibited basis for discriminatory acts under Title VII,” citing Vickers v. Fairfield Medical Center, 453 F.3d 757 (6th Cir. 2006).  “Further,” he wrote, “the Sixth Circuit, in applying Title VII precedent to the KCRA, has held that the KCRA also does not protect individuals from discrimination based on sexual orientation,” citing Pedreira v. Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, 579 F. 3d 722 (6th Cir. 2009).  “Lindsey’s complaint alleges that M & T took adverse action against her because of her same-sex relationship.  Because of the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in Vickers, this claim is foreclosed both under Title VII and the KCRA.”

But the judge acknowledges that there is some logic to viewing this as a sex stereotyping case, writing, “Lindsey’s arguments to the contrary, while foreclosed by Vickers, are not without some merit.  Title VII’s protection against sex discrimination allows for claims ‘based on gender nonconformance that is expressed outside of work,’” citing EEOC v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, 884 F.3 560 (6th Cir. 2018), and some earlier 6th Circuit cases allowing sex discrimination claims to be brought by transgender plaintiffs using a sex stereotype theory.  “If the court were simply required to apply this framework,” the judge continued, “Lindsey’s claim would likely survive.  Lindsey’s behavior that was at the root of the alleged discrimination (dating another woman) fails to conform to the stereotypical female behavior of dating men.  The Vickers court seemed to acknowledge that such claims based on sexual orientation discrimination fit within the framework for analyzing sex discrimination claims, stating that, ‘in all likelihood, any discrimination based on sexual orientation would be actionable under a sex stereotyping theory if this claim is allowed to stand, as all homosexuals, by definition, fail to conform to traditional gender norms in their sexual practices.’  But the Vickers court removed claims based on sexual orientation from ever being put through this analytical framework by declaring that ‘a gender stereotyping claim should not be used to bootstrap protection for sexual orientation into Title VII,’” in this instance quoting the 2nd Circuit’s opinion in Dawson v. Bumble & Bumble, 398 F.3d 211 (2nd Cir. 2005).  In a footnote, Judge McKinley notes that Dawson “was recently overruled by Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc., 883 F.ed 100 (2nd Cir. 2018).

Nonetheless, despite these developments since Vickers, Judge McKinley states that “because Vickers remains good law [citing EEOC v. Harris Funeral Homes], the court must dismiss Lindsey’s Title VII and KCRA claims for sex discrimination.”

Lindsey also tried to argue in opposition to the motion to dismiss that M&T is a federal contractor and thus bound not to discriminate because of sexual orientation as part of its contract with the federal government under Obama Administration Executive Order 13672, which has not been expressly rescinded by Trump. Judge McKinley notes that the complaint filed in this case “makes no mention of this Executive Order as a legal theory under which she is seeking relief,” nor could it, really, because the E.O. is only enforceable administratively within the department with which the employer has its contract.  There is no general right for an employee to sue an employer in federal court to enforce a provision in a contract between the employer and the government.  And, of course, raising new legal theories that were not mentioned in a complaint in opposition to a dismissal motion just does not work as a matter of civil procedure.

However, Judge McKinley may not have read Harris Funeral Homes closely enough.  He cited it for the proposition that Vickers remains “good law” in the 6th Circuit, but the paragraphs in Harris dealing with the Vickers precedent may lead one to doubt whether Vickers remains on such solid ground as circuit precedent as Judge McKinley believes.  In Harris, admittedly a gender identity rather than a sexual orientation case, the court cast doubt on the viability of the Vickers panel’s narrow approach to the sex stereotyping theory, citing to the earlier circuit gender identity cases of Smith v. City of Salem and Barnes v. City of Cincinnati, which had taken a broader view of sex stereotyping theory than the Vickers panel had embraced.  (The Harris panel criticized Vickers for engrafting an additional interpretive test to the theory that went beyond what the Supreme Court had done in the seminal sex stereotyping case of Price Waterhouse.) Furthermore, of course, the 2nd Circuit case on which Vickers relied, Dawson, has been overruled in Zarda, as Judge McKinley noted.  Which is a long way around to saying that if he were willing to stick his neck out, there was sufficient diversity of approach in 6th Circuit sex discrimination precedents for McKinley, had he been so inclined, to decline to dismiss the sex discrimination claim.

It is unfortunate that Lindsey is apparently litigating pro se, because this seems like the kind of case that might be used to persuade the 6th Circuit to abandon Vickers and, in light of the broader view of sex stereotyping and flexibility in interpreting “sex” in Title VII exhibited in Harris, to adopt an interpretation that could encompass Lindsey’s claim.

 

Obscure Brooklyn Appellate Ruling Protects Transgender People from Discrimination Without Saying So

Posted on: June 14th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

Talk about “hiding the ball!” On June 6, a unanimous four-judge panel of the New York Appellate Division, 2nd Department, based in Brooklyn, confirmed an Order by the State Division of Human Rights (SDHR), which had adopted a decision by an agency administrative law judge (ALJ) ruling that a Port Jervis employer violated the human rights law when it discharged a transgender employee.

But nobody reading the court’s short memorandum opinion, or the short agency opinion and order, would have any idea that the case involved a gender identity discrimination claim. Surprisingly, given the novelty of the legal issues involved, only the administrative law judge’s opinion, an internal agency document, communicates what the case is actually about.

The case is Matter of Advanced Recovery, Inc. v. Fuller, 2018 N.Y. Slip Op 03974, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3969, 2018 WL 2709861 (N.Y. App. Div., 2nd Dept., June 6, 2018).

Erin Fuller, a transgender woman, was fired by Mark Rea, the owner and chief executive of Advanced Recovery, Inc., the day Fuller presented a supervisor with a copy of a court order authorizing her change of name from Edward to Erin and the supervisor passed the document to Rea. Rea called Fuller into his office and, according to Fuller, said in the presence of the supervisor, “Now I have a problem with your condition.  I have to let you go.”

Rea and other company officials had been aware for some time that Fuller was transitioning, since she had presented them with a letter from her doctor in 2009 explaining her gender dysphoria diagnosis and how she would be transitioning, and on at least one occasion Rea had reacted adversely to Fuller’s mode of dress, but it wasn’t until he was presented with the legal name change that Rea apparently decided that he had enough and no longer wanted Fuller, a good worker who had been with the company more than two years.

When Fuller went back later to pick up her final paycheck, a supervisor told her that “he felt bad, but your job would be waiting for you as long as you came in wearing normal clothes.”

Attempting to escape possible liability, Rea and the company’s lawyer later came up with a termination letter that cited other reasons for terminating Fuller and said nothing about her name change, mode of dress, or gender identity, but they never sent her that letter, which first surfaced when it was offered as evidence at the SDHR law judge’s hearing on Fuller’s discrimination claim.

The discharge took place on August 4, 2010, several years before Governor Andrew Cuomo directed the SDHR to adopt a policy under which gender identity discrimination claims would be deemed to come within the coverage of the state’s ban on sex discrimination.

Fuller filed her complaint with SDHR on October 13, 2010. On the complaint form, she checked the boxes for “sex” and “disability” as the unlawful grounds for her termination.  After the company was notified of the complaint, it apparently prompted local police to arrest Fuller for altering a medical prescription, a spurious charge based on her changing the pronouns on the note written by a doctor on a prescription form after she missed a few days of work due to hospital treatment.  At the time, she didn’t think of amending her discrimination charge to allege retaliation, unfortunately, waiting until the hearing to raise the issue, by which time the judge had to reject her motion because she waited too long to assert the retaliation claim.

The agency concluded, after investigation, that it had jurisdiction over the discharge claim and set the case for a public hearing before an ALJ. At the hearing, Fuller was represented by attorneys Stephen Bergstein and Helen Ullrich, who persuaded the judge that Fuller had a valid claim and that the reasons given by the employer for firing her were pretexts for discrimination.  The same lawyers represented Fuller when the company appealed the judge’s ruling to the Appellate Division.

Relying on a scattering of trial court decisions holding that transgender people are protected from discrimination under the New York Human Rights Law, ALJ Robert M. Vespoli concluded that Fuller “states a claim pursuant to New York State’s Human Rights Law on the ground that the word ‘sex’ in the statute covers transsexuals.”

“Complainant also has a disability,” wrote Vespoli, “as that term is defined in the Human Rights Law.” The New York Human Rights Law’s definition of “disability” is broader and more general than the federal definition in the Americans with Disabilities Act, and New  York law does not have the explicit exclusion of coverage for people with “gender identity disorders” that is in the federal law.  Under New York’s law, a disability is “a physical, mental or medical impairment resulting from anatomical, physiological, genetic or neurological conditions which prevents the exercise of a normal bodily function or is demonstrable by medically accepted clinical or laboratory diagnostic techniques.”  The statute provides that a disability may also be a “record of such impairment or the perception of such impairment.”

“During the relevant time period,” wrote Vespoli, “Complainant was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. This condition falls within the broad definition of disability recognized under the Human Rights Law,” citing a 2011 decision by the agency to recognize its jurisdiction in a transgender discrimination case. The employer could not claim ignorance about Fuller’s transition, because in 2009 she had presented the company with her doctor’s letter explaining the situation, after which she began to dress and groom differently.

In his opinion dated February 20, 2015, Judge Vespoli rejected the employer’s evidence of other reasons for the discharge, finding that the proffered letter was a document created after the discharge for the purpose of litigation, that it had never been delivered to Fuller, and that the reasons it offered were pretexts for discrimination. The judge recommended awarding Fuller $14,560.00 in back pay and $30,000.00 for mental anguish caused by the discrimination.  He also recommended imposing a civil penalty on the company of $20,000.00.

The company filed objections to Vespoli’s recommendations with the Commission, but did not specifically object to Vespoli’s finding that Fuller had a disability or that the agency had jurisdiction over this case on grounds of sex and disability. The Commission’s Notice and Final Order of April 1, 2015, overruling without discussing the company’s evidentiary objections and adopting the judge’s recommendations and findings, said nothing about the details of the case, beyond noting that Fuller had complained of discrimination because of sex and disability.

The company’s appeal to the court again did not explicitly contest the ruling that the statute covers the case, instead urging the court to find that the ruling was not supported by substantial evidence of discrimination. Perhaps because the company’s appeal did not raise the question whether the Human Rights Law bans discrimination because of gender identity, the Appellate Division’s ruling also  did not  mention that the complainant is a transgender woman, and did not discuss the question whether this kind of case is covered under the disability provision.  Rather, the court’s opinion recites that the complainant alleged “that the petitioners discriminated against her on the basis of sex and disability,” and that the agency had ruled in her favor.  “Here there is substantial evidence in the record to support the SDHR’s determination that the complainant established a prima facie case of discrimination, and that the petitioners’ proffered reasons for terminating the complainant’s employment were a pretext for unlawful discrimination.  The petitioner’s remaining contentions are either not properly before this Court or without merit.”

Of course, Fuller’s brief in response to the appeal would have mentioned this issue, and SDHR, which cross-petitioned for enforcement of its Order, mentioned the issue as well.

The court wrote that there is “substantial evidence in the record” to support the agency’s ruling, so the court presumably looked at the record, including the ALJ’s opinion, and was aware that this was a gender identity discrimination claim.  The appellate panel surely knew that this was an important issue in the case.

Cursory research in published New York court opinions would show that there is no prior appellate ruling in New York finding that a gender identity claim can be asserted under the Human Rights Law’s prohibited grounds of “sex” and “disability.” The court took its time on this case, waiting until June 6, 2018, to issue a ruling upholding an administrative decision that was issued on April 1, 2015.  Despite taking all this time, the court produced an opinion that never mentions these details, that provides no discussion of the ALJ’s analysis of the jurisdictional issue, and that does not expressly state agreement with the trial court ruling that Judge Vespoli specifically cited in support of his conclusions.

This may be the first case in which a New York appellate court has affirmed a ruling holding that an employer violated the state’s Human Rights Law by discriminating against an employee because of her gender identity, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the court’s opinion. While the court’s failure to mention the doctrinal significance of its ruling may be explainable because the employer did not raise the issue on its appeal, it’s omission nonetheless renders the decision basically useless as an appellate precedent.

One can fairly criticize the court for failing to play its proper role in a system of judicial precedent to produce a decision that can be referred to by later courts. The judges whose names appear on this uninformative opinion are Justices Mark C. Dillon, Ruth C. Balkin, Robert J. Miller, and Hector D. LaSalle.

Governor Cuomo’s directive, issued while this case was pending before the Appellate Division, actually reinforced existing practice at the State Division of Human Rights, as the earlier opinions cited in Judge Vespoli’s opinion show, but in the absence of an explicit appellate ruling, enactment of the Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Act remains an important goal and its recent defeat in a Senate committee after renewed passage by the Assembly is more than merely a symbolic setback for the community.

A legal team of Caroline J. Downey, Toni Ann Hollifield and Michael K. Swirsky represented SDHR before the Appellate Division, which had cross-petitioned for enforcement of its decision. Port Jervis lawyer James J. Herkenham represented the company, and Stephen Bergstein of Bergstein & Ullrich presented Fuller’s response to the appeal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Supreme Court Receives Two New Certiorari Petitions on Title VII Sexual Orientation Discrimination Claims

Posted on: May 31st, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

At the end of May the Supreme Court had received two new petitions asking it to address the question whether the ban on employment discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be interpreted to apply to claims of discrimination because of sexual orientation.

Altitude Express, the former employer of the late Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who claimed he was dismissed because of his sexual orientation in violation of Title VII, has asked the Court to reverse a February 26 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.  The 2nd Circuit ruled in Zarda v. Altitude Express, 883 F.3d 100 (en banc), that the district court erred in dismissing Zarda’s Title VII claim as not covered under the statute, and sent the case back to the U.S. District Court, holding that sexual orientation discrimination is a “subset” of sex discrimination.

Gerald Lynn Bostock, a gay man who claims he was fired from his job as the Child Welfare Services Coordinator for the Clayton County, Georgia, Juvenile Court System because of his sexual orientation, is asking the Court to overturn a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which reiterated in his case its recent ruling in Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital, 850 F.3d 1248 (11th Cir. 2017), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 557 (2017), that an old precedent requires three-judge panels within the 11th Circuit to dismiss sexual orientation claims under Title VII.  As in the Evans case, the 11th Circuit refused Bostock’s request to consider the question en banc. See Bostock v. Clayton County Board of Commissioners, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 12405, 2018 WL 2149179 (11th Cir., May 10, 2018).

The question whether Title VII can be used to challenge adverse employment decisions motivated by the worker’s actual or perceived sexual orientation is important as a matter of federal law, and even more important nationally because a majority of states do not forbid such discrimination by state statute. Although Title VII applies only to employers with at least 15 employees, thus leaving regulation of small businesses to the states and localities, its applicability to sexual orientation discrimination claims would make a big difference for many lesbian, gay and bisexual workers in substantial portions of the country where such protection is otherwise unavailable outside those municipalities and counties that have local ordinances that cover sexual orientation claims. It would give them both a federal forum to litigate their employment discrimination claims and substantive protection under Title VII.  For example, not one state in the southeastern United States forbids sexual orientation discrimination by statute.  In Georgia, individuals employed outside of a handful of municipalities are, like Gerald Bostock in Clayton County, out of luck unless the federal law can be construed to protect them.  Thus, an affirmative ruling by the Supreme Court would be especially valuable for rural employees who are unlikely to have any state or local protection.  (The question whether a county or city ordinance provides protection depends on where the employer does business, not where the employee lives, so somebody living in Birmingham, Alabama, but working in a factory or a retail business outside the city limits, would not be protected by the city’s ordinance.)

During the first several decades after Title VII went into effect on July 2, 1965, every attempt by LGBT plaintiffs to assert sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination claims was rejected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the federal courts. Two Supreme Court decisions adopting broad interpretations of the meaning of discrimination “because of sex” have led to a movement to reconsider that old position.  In Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), the Court accepted the argument that an employer who discriminates against a worker because of the worker’s failure to comport with stereotypes the employer holds about sex and gender may have acted out of a forbidden motivation under Title VII.  And in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, 523 U.S. 75 (1998), holding that the interpretation of “because of sex” was not limited to the factual scenarios envisioned by Congress in 1964, the Court rejected the 5th Circuit’s holding that Title VII could not apply to a case where a man was being subjected to hostile environment harassment of a sexual nature by male co-workers.  In that case, the Court (speaking unanimously through Justice Antonin Scalia) said that Title VII could be applied to “comparable evils” to those envisioned by Congress.  Taking these two cases together as precedents, lower federal courts began to interpret federal laws forbidding sex discrimination to be susceptible to broader interpretations, first in cases involving transgender plaintiffs, and then more recently in cases involving lesbian, gay or bisexual plaintiffs.

The EEOC embraced this movement in the lower federal courts during the Obama Administration in rulings reversing half a century of agency precedent to extend jurisdiction to gender identity and sexual orientation claims. The key sexual orientation ruling is Baldwin v. Foxx, EEOC Decision No. 0120133080, 2015 WL 4397641 (July 15, 2015), issued just weeks after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges.  The EEOC’s rulings are not binding on the federal courts, however, and the agency does not have the power to enforce its rulings without the courts’ assistance.  It does have power to investigate charges of discrimination and to attempt to persuade employers to agree to settle cases that the agency finds to be meritorious. The decision that the statute covers sexual orientation also provides a basis to ground retaliation claims under Title VII when employees suffer adverse employment actions because they oppose discrimination or participate in enforcement proceedings.

Plaintiffs bringing these sexual orientation cases in federal courts have had an uphill battle because of the weight of older circuit court decisions rejecting such claims. Under circuit court rules, old appellate decisions remain binding not only on the district courts in each circuit but also on the three-judge circuit court panels that normally hear appeals.  Only a ruling en banc by an expanded (eleven judges in the huge 9th Circuit) or full bench of the circuit court can overrule a prior circuit precedent, in addition, of course, to the Supreme Court, which can overrule circuit court decisions.  Some have argued, as the petition recently filed in Bostock argues, that Price Waterhouse and Oncale implicitly overrule those older precedents, including the case that the 11th Circuit cites as binding, Blum v. Golf Oil Corporation, 597 F.2d 936 (5th Cir. 1979), a case from the old 5th Circuit.  (Congress subsequently split the 5th Circuit, separating off its eastern half to create a new 11th Circuit, which treats as binding old 5th Circuit precedents that have not been overruled en banc by the 11th Circuit.)  The 2nd Circuit ruling in Zarda specifically looked to Price Waterhouse and Oncale as well as the EEOC’s Baldwin decision to overrule several earlier panel decisions and establish a new interpretation of Title VII for the federal courts in Vermont, New York, and Connecticut.

Before the Zarda decision, the only circuit court to issue a similar ruling as a result of en banc review was the 7th Circuit in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, 853 F.3d 339 (7th Cir. 2017).  At the time of Hively, two out of the three states in the 7th Circuit – Wisconsin and Illinois – already had state laws banning sexual orientation discrimination, so the ruling was most important for people working in Indiana.  A three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit, covering seven Midwestern states, most of which do not have state laws banning sexual orientation discrimination, will be hearing argument on this issue soon in Horton v. Midwest Geriatric Management, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 209996, 2017 WL 6536576 (E.D. Mo. Dec. 21, 2017), in which the U.S. District Court dismissed a sexual orientation discrimination claim in reliance on a 1989 decision by an 8th Circuit panel.

Bostock’s petition argues that circuit courts should not be treating as binding pre-Price Waterhouse rulings on this issue.  Under this logic, the 8th Circuit panel in Horton should be able to disclaim that circuit’s 1989 ruling, although it is more likely that an overruling would require an en banc hearing, unless, of course, the Supreme Court grants one of the new petitions and sides with the plaintiffs in these cases.

Altitude Express’s petition, by contrast, relies on the Supreme Court’s general disposition against recognizing “implied” overruling, arguing that the 2nd and 7th Circuits have erred in interpreting Title VII to apply to claims that Congress did not intend to address when it passed Title VII in 1964, and that neither Price Waterhouse nor Oncale has directly overruled the old circuit court precedents.  While the Altitude Express petition states sympathy, even support, for the contention that sexual orientation discrimination should be illegal, it lines up with the dissenters in the 2nd and 7th Circuits who argued that it is up to Congress, not the courts, to add “sexual orientation” through the legislative process.

A similar interpretation battle is playing out in the circuit courts of appeals concerning gender identity discrimination claims. However, plaintiffs are having more success with these claims than with sexual orientation claims because it is easier for the courts to conceptualize gender identity – especially in the context of transition – as non-conformity with gender stereotypes, and thus encompassed directly within the scope of Price Waterhouse.  Although only one circuit court – again the 7th – has gone so far as to embrace the EEOC’s determination that gender identity discrimination claims can be considered discrimination “because of sex” without resorting to a stereotyping theory, most of the courts of appeals that have considered the question have agreed that the stereotyping theory can be put to work under Title VII to allow transgender plaintiffs to pursue their claims in federal court, and many have also applied it under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 to find protection for transgender students. If the Supreme Court were to take up the sexual orientation issue, a resulting decision could have significance for gender identity claims as well, depending on the Court’s rationale in deciding the case.

The timing of these two petitions, filed late in the Term and after all oral arguments have been concluded, means that if the Court wants to take up this issue, the earliest it could be argued would be after the new Term begins on October 1, 2018. As of now, nobody knows for certain what the composition of the Court will be when the new term begins.  Rumors of the possible retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy (who will turn 82 in July), likely to be the “swing” voter on this as on all LGBT rights cases, are rife, and although Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (recently turned 85) and Stephen Breyer (turning 80 in August) have expressed no intentions of stepping down, they are – together with Kennedy – the oldest members of the Court.  Justice Clarence Thomas, a decisive vote against LGBT rights at all times, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the second-longest serving member of the Court after Kennedy (a Reagan appointee in 1987), but Thomas, who was relatively young at his appointment, will turn 70 on June 23, and most justices have continued to serve well past that age, so occasional speculation about his retirement is probably premature.  With the exception of Jimmy Carter, who did not get to appoint any Supreme Court justices during his single term, every president in modern times has gotten to appoint at least two justices to the Court during their first (or only) term.  So there is considerable suspense as to the composition of the Court for its 2018-2019 Term.  If the Justices are thinking strategically about their certiorari votes on controversial issues, they might well hold back from deciding whether to grant these petitions until they see the lay of the land after the Court’s summer recess.

The Altitude Express petition was filed by Saul D. Zabell and Ryan T. Biesenbach, Zabell & Associates, P.C., of Bohemia, N.Y. The Zarda Estate is represented by Gregory Antollino and Stephen Bergstein, of Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP.  The Bostock petition was filed by Brian J. Sutherland and Thomas J. Mew IV of Buckley Beal LLP, Atlanta, Georgia.  The Trump Administration Justice Department sided with Altitude Express in the en banc argument before the 2nd Circuit in Zarda, while the EEOC sided with the Estate of Zarda.  The Bostock petition seizes on this divided view from the government representatives in the Zarda argument as yet another reason why the Supreme Court should take up the issue and resolve it once and for all.  Numerous amicus briefs were filed for the 2nd Circuit en banc argument.  The Bostock 11th Circuit appeal attracted little notice and no amicus briefs.

 

Supreme Court Denies Review in Title VII Sexual Orientation Discrimination Case

Posted on: December 11th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on December 11 that it will not review a decision by a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on March 10 that a lesbian formerly employed as a security guard at a Georgia hospital could not sue for sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The full 11th Circuit denied a motion to reconsider the case on July 10, and Lambda Legal, representing plaintiff Jameka Evans, filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking review on September 7.  Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital, 850 F.3d 1248 (11th Cir. 2017), rehearing en banc denied, 7/6/2017, cert. denied, 2017 WL 4012214 (12/11/2017).

At the heart of Lambda’s petition was an urgent request to the Court to resolve a split among the lower federal courts and within the federal government itself on the question whether Title VII, which bans employment discrimination because of sex by employers that have at least 15 employees, can be interpreted to ban discrimination because of sexual orientation.

Nobody can deny that members of Congress voting on the Civil Rights Act in 1964 were not thinking about banning sexual orientation discrimination at that time, but their adoption of a general ban on sex discrimination in employment has been developed by the courts over more than half a century to encompass a wide range of discriminatory conduct reaching far beyond the simple proposition that employers cannot discriminate against an individual because she is a woman or he is a man.

Early in the history of Title VII, the Supreme Court ruled that employers could not treat people differently because of generalizations about men and women, and by the late 1970s had accepted the proposition that workplace harassment of women was a form of sex discrimination. In a key ruling in 1989, the Court held that discrimination against a woman because the employer considered her inadequately feminine in her appearance or behavior was a form of sex discrimination, under what was called the sex stereotype theory, and during the 1990s the Court ruled that a victim of workplace same-sex harassment could sue under Title VII, overruling a lower court decision that a man could sue for harassment only if he was being harassed by a woman, not by other men.  In that decision for a unanimous court, Justice Antonin Scalia opined that Title VII was not restricted to the “evils” identified by Congress in 1964, but could extend to “reasonably comparable evils” to effectuate the legislative purpose of achieving a non-discriminatory workplace.

By the early years of this century, lower federal courts had begun to accept the argument that the sex stereotype theory provided a basis to overrule earlier decisions that transgender people were not protected from discrimination under Title VII.  There is an emerging consensus among the lower federal courts, bolstered by rulings of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), that gender identity discrimination is clearly discrimination because of sex, and so the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled several years ago in a case involving a transgender woman fired from a research position at the Georgia legislature.

However, the idea that some variant of the sex stereotype theory could also expand Title VII to protect lesbian, gay or bisexual employees took longer to emerge.  It was not until 2015 that the EEOC issued a decision in the Baldwin case concluding that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, in part responding to the sex stereotype decisions in the lower federal courts.  And it was not until April 4 of this year that a federal appeals court, the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, approved that theory in a strongly worded opinion by a decisive majority of the entire 11-judge circuit bench, just a few weeks after the 11th Circuit panel ruling in the Jameka Evans case.  Writing for the 7th Circuit in the Hively  case, Judge Diane Wood said, “It would require considerable calisthenics to remove the ‘sex’ from ‘sexual orientation.’”

The 11th Circuit panel’s 2-1 decision to reject Jameka Evans’ sexual orientation discrimination claim seemed a distinct setback in light of these developments.  However, consistent with the 11th Circuit’s prior gender identity discrimination ruling, one of the judges in the majority and the dissenting judge agreed that Evans’ Title VII claim could be revived using the sex stereotype theory based on how she dressed and behaved, and sent the case back to the lower court on that basis.  The dissenting judge would have gone further and allowed Evans’ sexual orientation discrimination claim to proceed under Title VII.  The other judge in the majority strained to distinguish this case from the circuit’s prior sex stereotype ruling, and would have dismissed the case outright.

The 7th Circuit’s decision in April opened up a split among the circuit courts in light of a string of rulings by several different circuit courts over the past several decades rejecting sexual orientation discrimination claims by gay litigants, although several of those circuits have since embraced the sex stereotype theory to allow gay litigants to bring sex discrimination claims under Title VII if they could plausibly allege that they suffered discrimination because of gender nonconforming dress or conduct.  Other courts took the position that as long as the plaintiff’s sexual orientation appeared to be the main reason why they suffered discrimination, they could not bring a Title VII claim.

In recent years, several federal trial judges have approved an alternative argument: that same-sex attraction is itself a departure from widely-held stereotypes of what it means to be a man or a woman, and thus that discrimination motivated by the victim’s same-sex attraction is a form of sex discrimination under Title VII.  Within the New York-based 2nd Circuit, several trial judges have recently embraced this view, but three-judge panels of the Court of Appeals consistently rejected it.  Some progress was made last spring, however, when a three-judge panel in Christiansen v. Omnicom Group overruled a trial judge to find that a plaintiff whose sexual orientation was clearly a motivation for his discharge could bring a sex stereotype Title VII claim when he could plausibly allege behavioral nonconformity apart from his same-sex attraction.

More recently, however, the 2nd Circuit agreed to grant en banc reconsideration to the underlying question and heard oral argument in September in Zarda v. Altitude Express on whether sexual orientation discrimination, as such, is outlawed by Title VII.  That case involved a gay male plaintiff whose attempt to rely alternatively on a sex stereotype claim had been rejected by the trial judge in line with 2nd Circuit precedent.  Plaintiff Donald Zarda died while the case was pending, but it is being carried on by his Estate.  Observers at the oral argument thought that a majority of the judges of the full circuit bench were likely to follow the lead of the 7th Circuit and expand the coverage of Title VII in the 2nd Circuit (which covers Connecticut, Vermont and New York).  With argument having been held more than two months ago, a decision could be imminent.

Much of the media comment about the Zarda case, as well as the questioning by the judges, focused on the spectacle of the federal government opposing itself in court.  The EEOC filed an amicus brief in support of the Zarda Estate, and sent an attorney to argue in favor of Title VII coverage.  The Justice Department filed a brief in support of the employer, and sent an attorney to argue that the three-judge panel had correctly rejected the plaintiff’s Title VII claim.  The politics of the situation was obvious: The Trump appointees now running the Justice Department had changed the Department’s position (over the reported protest of career professionals in the Department), while the holdover majority at the EEOC was standing firm by the decision that agency made in 2015.  As Trump’s appointment of new commissioners changes the agency’s political complexion, this internal split is likely to be resolved against Title VII protection for LGBT people.

This is clearly a hot controversy on a question with national import, so why did the Supreme Court refuse to hear the case?  The Court does not customarily announce its reasons for denying review, and did not do so this time.  None of the justices dissented from the denial of review, either.

A refusal to review a case is not a decision on the merits by the Court, and does not mean that the Court approves the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision.  It is merely a determination by the Court, which exercises tight control over its docket, not to review the case.  Hypothesizing a rationale, one might note that the plaintiff here has not suffered a final dismissal of her case, having been allowed by the 11th Circuit to file an amended complaint focusing on sex stereotype instead of sexual orientation, so she can still have her day in court and there is no pressing need for the Court to resolve the circuit split in her case.  One might also note that Georgia Regional Hospital did not even appear before the 11th Circuit to argue its side of the case, and did not file papers opposing Lambda Legal’s petition until requested to do so by the Court.

On October 11, the Supreme Court Clerk’s office distributed the Lambda petition and some amicus briefs supporting it to the justices in anticipation of their conference to be held October 27. The lack of a response by Georgia Regional Hospital evidently sparked concern from some of the justices, who directed the Clerk to ask the Hospital to file a response, which was filed by Georgia’s Attorney General on November 9, and the case was then put on the agenda for the Court’s December 8 conference, at which the decision was made to deny review.  The responsive papers argued, among other things, that the Hospital had not been properly served with the Complaint that initiated the lawsuit. Those kinds of procedural issues sometimes deter the Court from taking up a case.

For whatever reason, the Court has put off deciding this issue, most likely for the remainder of the current Term. The last argument day on the Court’s calendar is April 25, and the last day for announcing decisions is June 25.  Even if the 2nd Circuit promptly issues a decision in the Zarda case, the losing party would have a few months to file a petition for Supreme Court review, followed by a month for the winner filing papers responding to the Petition.  Even if the Court then grants a petition for review, thus starting the clock running for filing merits briefs and amicus briefs, it is highly likely that once all these papers are submitted, it will be too late in the Term for the case to be argued, so it would end up on the argument calendar for Fall 2018.

Which raises the further question of who would be on the Court when this issue is finally before it? Rumors of retirements are rife, and they center on the oldest justices, pro-LGBT Ruth Bader Ginsburg and conservative but generally pro-gay Anthony Kennedy.  If President Trump gets to nominate successors to either of them, the Court’s receptivity to gay rights arguments is likely to be adversely affected.

Federal Court Refuses to Enjoin School District from Allowing Transgender Students to Use Facilities Consistent With Their Gender Identity

Posted on: September 1st, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

After rendering a bench ruling in mid-August in anticipation of the approaching resumption of school for the fall semester, U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith released a lengthy opinion (running over 75 pages in LEXIS) on August 25, explaining why he was denying a preliminary injunction motion by plaintiffs in Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137317, 2017 WL 3675418 (E.D. Pa.), in which the plaintiffs, cisgender students and their parents, sought to block the school district’s unwritten policy of allowing transgender students to use bathroom and changing room facilities consistent with their gender identity.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a non-profit law firm self-identified with conservative Christian principles which has filed similar lawsuits against other school districts, represents the plaintiffs in arguing that constitutional and common law privacy rights of the students are violated by the school district’s policy. In addition to local attorneys representing the school district, intervenors on behalf of defendants are represented by attorneys from the ACLU’s LGBT Rights Project and ACLU of Pennsylvania with cooperating attorneys from Cozen O’Connor’s New York and Philadelphia offices.

This case presents in many respects a mirror image of the lawsuits brought by transgender teens seeking the right to use bathroom and changing facilities at their high schools consistent with their gender identity. In both kinds of cases, testimony is presented that the plaintiffs have suffered emotional and physical harm because the schools’ usage policy interferes with their ability to use a convenient, non-stigmatizing restroom when they need it.  In this case, cisgender students affirmed that they were so traumatized at the prospect of encountering a “student of the other sex” – as they insist on calling transgender students – in the restroom or locker room, that they avoid using the facilities altogether during the school day, and the fear of such encounters haunts them throughout the day.  The court rejected the underlying premise, because Boyertown Area High School (referred to by the acronym BASH throughout the opinion) has provided numerous single-user facilities and alternative locations that would accommodate the plaintiffs’ concerns, and has made physical alterations in the common facilities to enhance the ability of individuals to avoid exposing themselves unclothed (fully or partially) to other students.  The plaintiffs’ position is to argue that transgender boys are really girls, and transgender girls are really boys, and the traditional of sex-segregated restroom and locker-room facilities most be preserved in order to protect the long-recognized privacy interests of cisgender people.  But to the court, the issue for decision in August 2017 had to be based on the facilities available for the upcoming academic year, as to which alterations and additions have changed the situation since the incidents during the 2016-17 school year that gave rise to the lawsuit.

The court sets out the factual allegations in great detail, including findings that this writer – having attended high school in the 1960s – found startling, such as a finding that few of the students at the high school actually use the showers after their gym classes. (When this writer attended high school, showering after gym was mandatory and closely monitored by the coaches, and the required freshman swimming course at his college prohibited students in the class from wearing anything in the pool.)  Another startling finding: that the high school, even before the recent renovations, had several single-user restrooms available to students, and not just in the nurse’s and administrative offices, so that any student seeking absolute privacy for their restroom needs could easily avail themselves of such facilities.

This lawsuit can be traced to several instances during the Fall Semester of 2016 when plaintiffs claim to have been startled, abashed, and disturbed to discover students whom they considered to be of the opposite sex in the locker room or restroom, leading them to approach administrators to complain and subsequently to involve their parents in further complaints. The transgender students were in these facilities after having obtained permission from school administrators who had determined that the students had sufficiently transitioned to make it appropriate. The administrators were determining, on a case-by-case basis, the students in question had transitioned sufficiently that it would have been awkward, unsettling, and perhaps even dangerous to them for them to use facilities consistent with the sex originally noted on their birth certificates.

The evidence presented to the court was that transgender students went through a transitional facilities usage period as they were transitioning in their gender presentation, generally preferring the single-user facilities until their transition was far enough along that they would feel more comfortable using facilities consistent with their gender expression and expected their presence would not cause problems. Indeed, there was testimony that when one transgender boy went into the girls’ restroom, he was chased out by the girls, who perceived him a boy and didn’t want him in there! Because surgical transition is not available under established standards of care before age 18, none of the transgender students at the high school had genital surgery, so their transitions were based on puberty-blocking drugs, hormones, grooming and dress.  One suspects that parents particularly objected to the presence of transgender girls who still had male genitals in the girls’ facilities, but there were no allegations that any transgender girl was exposing male genitals to the view of others in the common facilities.

When the issue arose and the administrators had to respond to a handful of protesting students and parents, they had long since received the “Dear Colleague” letter sent out by the Obama Administration’s Education and Justice Departments in May 2016, which advised that Title IX required public schools to accommodate transgender students by allowing them to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity and presentation. The Boyertown administrators, who did not seek authorization from the school board prior to problems arising, treated that letter as “the law of the land” and informally extended approval on a case-by-case basis to transgender students seeking permission to use appropriate facilities, a phenomenon which began to surface in that school district prior to the 2016 school year.  Not only did they refrain from adopting a formal written policy, but they also refrained from announcing the school’s policy to the student body or parents generally.  Thus, it is not surprising that some students were startled to encounter students who they considered to be of the “wrong sex” in their facilities.  The response of the administrators to the complaints was the this was the school’s policy and the students should just treat the situation as natural and adjust to it, which some students and their parents found unacceptable.

After the issue blew up during the 2016-2017 school year, the board of education voted 6-3 to back up the administrators, but there was still no formal written policy, and the school actually refused a demand by some parents to produce a written policy. Although the Trump Administration “withdrew” the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title XI, the substitute letter issued in 2017 did not take a firm position on whether Title IX required such accommodations, merely asserting that the matter required further “study” and should be left to state and local officials to decide.  The Boyertown administrators decided to continue the policy they were following.  This lawsuit was first filed in March 2017, with an amended complaint adding more plaintiffs on April 18.

The complaint asserted claims under the 14th Amendment, Title IX, and Pennsylvania common and statutory law (the Public School Code, which mandates that public schools provide separate facilities for boys and girls).  They claimed a substantive due process violation (privacy), hostile environment sex discrimination in violation of Title IX, and Pennsylvania common law invasion of privacy in violation of public policy.

Judge Smith’s opinion thoroughly dissects the plaintiff’s arguments and carefully distinguishes the cases they cite as precedents, taking the perspective that the issue in deciding the motion for preliminary injunction is whether to preserve the status quo (the school district’s current policy of allowing transgender students, with permission given on a case-by-case basis depending upon their stage of transition and gender presentation, to the use the facilities with which they are comfortable), or to upset the status quo by requiring transgender students to restrict themselves to using single-user facilities or those consistent with their sex as identified at birth. There is a strong bias in considering preliminary injunctions in favor of preserving the status quo, so the plaintiffs had a heavy burden to persuade the court that they were likely to prevail on the merits of their claim in an ultimate ruling, and that the status quo policy inflicted real harm on them that would outweigh the harm that halting the policy would impose on the transgender students and the district.  As to both of those issues, Judge Smith found that plaintiffs had failed to make their case.

In particular, the school’s alteration and expansion of its facilities had significantly undermined the privacy arguments, and the court easily rejected the contention that the possibility of encountering one of about half a dozen transgender students in a high school with well over a thousand students had created a “hostile environment” for cisgender students. The court also noted that the common law privacy precedents concerned situations where the individual defendants had physically invaded the private space of the plaintiffs.  In this case, the individual defendants are school administrators, none of whom had personally invaded the private space of students using restroom and locker room facilities.

Judge Smith devoted a substantial portion of his opinion to recounting expert testimony, presenting a virtual primer on the phenomena of gender identity, gender dysphoria, and transition from a medical and social perspective. The opinion clearly and strongly rejects the plaintiffs’ argument that this case is about boys invading girls’ facilities or vice versa.  The tone and detail of the opinion reflect the considerable progress that has been made in educating courts and the public about these issues.

On the plaintiff’s likelihood of ultimately winning their case on the merits, Judge Smith pointed to the most definitive appellate ruling so far on the contested transgender bathroom issue, a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit involving a lawsuit by Ash Whitaker, a transgender student, against the Kenosha (Wisconsin) school district, which the school district asked the Supreme Court to review, coincidentally on the date that Judge Smith released this opinion.  No other federal circuit appeals court has issued a ruling on the merits of the constitutional and Title VII claims being put forth on this issue, although the 4th Circuit had in 2016 dictated deference to the Obama Administration’s interpretation in Gavin Grimm’s lawsuit against the Gloucester County (Virginia) school district, only to have that decision vacated by the Supreme Court last spring after the Trump Administration “withdrew” the Obama Administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter.  That case is still continuing, now focused on a judicial determination of the merits after the filing of an amended complaint by the ACLU.

Because ADF is on a crusade to defeat transgender-friendly facilities policies, it will most likely seek to appeal this denial of injunctive relief to the 3rd Circuit, which has yet to weigh in directly on the issue, although there are conflicting rulings by district courts within the circuit in lawsuits brought by transgender students.  ADF’s first step could be to seek emergency injunctive relief from the Circuit court and, failing that, the Supreme Court (which had during the summer of 2016 granted a stay of the preliminary injunction issued in the Grimm case).  If the Supreme Court grants the Kenosha school district’s petition, as seems likely, the underlying legal issues may be decided during its 2017-18 Term, before the Boyertown case gets to a ruling on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims.

Judge Smith was nominated to the district court by President Obama in 2013, winning confirmation from the Senate in 2014. A substantial part of his prior career involved service as a military judge, followed by a period of private practice and then service as a state court judge.  In his Senate confirmation vote he received more votes from Republicans than Democrats.  The Washington Post reported at the time that Smith was the first Obama judicial nominee to win more Republican than Democratic votes.