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Second Round of Briefing in LGBT Title VII Cases Before the Supreme Court Completed During August

Posted on: September 7th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

On October 8, the second day of hearings in the Supreme Court’s October 2019 Term, the Court will hear arguments in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, Case No. 17-1618, and Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, Case No. 17-1623, appeals from the 11th and 2nd Circuits on the question whether sexual orientation discrimination claims are actionable as sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Aimee Stephens, Case No. 18-107, an appeal from the 6th Circuit on the question whether gender identity discrimination claims are actionable as sex discrimination under Title VII.  The Court consolidated the two sexual orientation discrimination cases, in which the plaintiff-employee is appealing in Bostock and the defendant-employer is appealing in Altitude Express, for a single argument of one hour.  The argument in Harris Funeral Homes, in which the employer is appealing, will be argued next.  Transcripts of the arguments will be posted on the Supreme Court’s website shortly after each argument has concluded (usually within an hour or two), and links to audio recordings of the arguments will be made available on the Court’s website later in the week.

Harris Funeral Homes presents an unusual situation; the victorious party in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), is represented in the Supreme Court by the Solicitor General, who, reflecting the change of administration since the original complaint in this case was filed by the EEOC, is now joining with the employer to ask the Court to reverse the 6th Circuit.  The only party defending the 6th Circuit’s decision is the charging party in the EEOC proceeding, transgender funeral director Aimee Stephens, who intervened as a co-appellant in the 6th Circuit, is named as a Respondent in Harris Funeral Homes’ cert. petition, and is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. Harris Funeral Homes is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative religious litigation group that is a frequent litigant opposing LGBT rights in the courts.

For purposes of briefing, the Court decided to treat all the employee-plaintiffs in the three cases as if they were Petitioners (although only Bostock is a Petitioner in the Supreme Court), and the three employer-defendants as if they were Respondents (even though two of them are actually Petitioners).  Thus, the first round of briefing, which was concluded early in July, consisted of the main briefs for Gerald Bostock, the Estate of Donald Zarda, and Aimee Stephens, and the amicus briefs (more than 40) filed in support of their claims that Title VII does extend to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination claims.  The second round of briefing, which concluded during August, consisted of the briefs for the three employers – Clayton County, Georgia; Altitude Express; and Harris Funeral Homes; and the EEOC, which is technically a respondent even though the government, as such, is now siding with the Petitioner.

Interestingly, despite earnest efforts by the Solicitor General’s Office, the EEOC’s General Counsel, who would ordinarily be a signatory on the brief purporting to represent their agency, did not join in the submission of the government’s brief, since as of the date of filing the EEOC had not disavowed its position that gender identity discrimination claims are covered by Title VII.  Indeed, the amicus brief filed by the Solicitor General in the sexual orientation cases on behalf of the employer also lacked the EEOC’s signature, since the agency that enforces Title VII (and whose interpretation of the statute is entitled to judicial deference, under existing precedents), has not disavowed its position (argued as an agency amicus in the 2nd Circuit) that Title VII covers sexual orientation claims.  Quite a tangle for the Supreme Court to confront. During oral argument of Zarda v. Altitude Express in the 2nd Circuit, the en banc bench reflected some puzzlement and bemusement about being confronted with a lawyer from the S.G.’s office and a lawyer from the EEOC arguing against each other.

Simultaneously with the filing of the government’s brief, the Solicitor General filed a request that argument time be divided evenly (15 minutes each) between the Solicitor General’s office and ADF, counsel for Harris Funeral Homes.

Law Notes gave an overview of the first round of filings in our August 2019 issue.  Herewith is a brief summary of the second round of filings.

Altitude Express’s brief was signed by Saul D. Zabell, Counsel of Record who has represented the company throughout this litigation, and Ryan T. Biesenbach of Zabell & Collotta, P.C., a Bohemia, N.Y., law firm.  It predictably argues that the meaning of Title VII must be its “original public meaning” – the meaning that members of the public would attribute to the statutory language when it was enacted by Congress in 1964.  The brief claims that the Supreme Court has never interpreted Title VII in a manner that “conflicts” with “the original public meaning of ‘sex’.”  It also describes as “wrong” the various legal theories offered by Bostock for construing “sex” to include “gender identity.”  It argues that subsequent legislative developments – the repeated introduction of bills to amend federal anti-discrimination law to add “sexual orientation” that have never achieved enactment, as well as the enactment of some other statutes that use ‘sexual orientation’ such as the Hate Crimes Law – show Congress’s understanding that the term must be used to address such discrimination, noting also that after the EEOC and several lower federal courts had rejected sexual orientation discrimination claims in the early period of Title VII’s history, Congress passed a package of amendments to Title VII in 1991 but did not overrule any of those rulings legislatively.  The brief also rejects certain other arguments that some lower court judges had accepted as reasons for extending Title VII to cover sexual orientation claims.  None of these arguments was new or unanticipated, and they were all rejected in one way or another not only in the 2nd Circuit (en banc) but also in the 7th Circuit (en banc) in 2017 in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, a case where the employer decided not to seek Supreme Court review.

Clayton County’s brief (Bostock), signed by Counsel of Record Jack R. Hancock and other attorneys from the Forest Park, Georgia, law firm of Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP, carries the same argument headings as Altitude Express’s brief.  Indeed, they appear to be a joint product, making identical arguments.

The main brief that drew most of the press commentary when it was filed, of course, was the Solicitor General’s brief, on which S.G. Noel J. Francisco is Counsel of Record.  The other signatories are attorneys in the Solicitor General’s office and main Justice Department.  As noted above, and deemed newsworthy, no attorneys from the EEOC signed this brief which is presented as the brief of the Federal Respondent (which, technically, is the EEOC).   The brief urges the Court to adopt a narrow interpretation of key Title VII Supreme Court precedents on which the EEOC had relied in the 6th Circuit, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins and Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, contending that the 6th Circuit had extended them beyond their holdings to reach the conclusion that allowing gender identity discrimination claims is consistent with Supreme Court precedent.  Most of the arguments in the brief are variants of one or more of the arguments in the Altitude Express and Clayton County briefs, effectively countering the EEOC’s justifications for applying Title VII to gender identity claims in Macy v. Holder, EEOC Doc. 0120120821, 2012 WL 1435995 (2012).  Even though the EEOC has not overruled Macy, it is anticipated that it may do so in due course as the new majority resulting from Trump’s appointments to the Commission either rules on a federal sector gender identity discrimination case, proposes a new regulatory interpretation, or takes a position in litigation in the lower federal courts embracing a change of position.  The Commission could just instruct its regional offices to dismiss gender identity claims on jurisdictional grounds, similar to the action of the U.S. Department of Education which now refuses to process gender identity discrimination claims under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

The brief on behalf of Harris Funeral Homes, submitted by Alliance Defending Freedom, attracted comparatively little attention, with the Solicitor General being the “elephant in the room.”  Mainstream press coverage clearly sees Harris as part of the Trump Administration’s overall opposition to transgender rights as part of its systemic attempt to reverse the civil rights positions taken by the Obama Administration. Clearly, the president feels that he was elected to overturn everything that the Obama Administration did, if possible.  This was certainly reflected in his transgender military service ban and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ October 2017 memorandum disavowing the Obama Administration’s positions on both sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.

Beginning on August 16 and extending through August 23, the Supreme Court clerk added to the docket forty amicus briefs supporting Harris Funeral Homes’ (and the Solicitor General’s) position that Title VII does not extend to gender identity discrimination claims.  Some were from the “usual suspects” familiar to anybody who had scanned the amicus lists in Obergefell and Windsor, the cases concerning marriage equality.  They include states whose anti-discrimination laws do not cover gender identity, Republican members of Congress, companies that don’t want to be forced to employ transgender people, individual legal scholars, polemicists, think tanks and policy institutes, and, of course, religious entities that argue that requiring employers to accommodate transgender people excessively burdens their religious freedom.  (In Harris, the owner of the funeral homes stated his religious beliefs as a justification for his refusal to continue employing the plaintiff after she wrote to him about her gender transition. As a result of this, the district court ruled in favor of Harris Funeral Homes in reliance on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, employing an interpretation subsequently rejected by the 6th Circuit.  Surprisingly, in light of its religious freedom orientation, ADF did not include in its cert petition a question about the application of the RFRA to this case, so technically the religious arguments made by many of the amici are not pertinent to the questions on which cert was granted.

Particular press attention was drawn to briefs of some feminist groups who are particularly perturbed about any legal recognition of transgender women, making arguments that fall far outside the mainstream of the professional medical and mental health communities about the nature of human sexuality, contending that transgender women are men in drag who should not be given admission to women-only spaces and should not be accorded the treatment under anti-discrimination law that has been accorded to women.  Vox.com devoted a lengthy article to explaining the opposition of some feminist groups to transgender rights.  See Katelyn Burns, The Rise of Anti-Trans ‘Radical’ Feminists, Explained” (posted September 5, 2019).

Also during August, 24 amicus briefs (including one from the Solicitor General, as the federal government is not a party in the sexual orientation cases) were filed in support of the employers in the sexual orientation discrimination cases, Bostock and Altitude Express.  Of course, the EEOC’s legal staff is not represented among the signers of the Solicitor General’s amicus brief, again a newsworthy absence denoting that at least as of the time when briefs were due, the agency had not abandoned its position in Baldwin v. Foxx, EEOC No. 0120133080, 2015 WL 4397641 (2015), that Title VII covers sexual orientation discrimination claims.  Many of these amicus briefs were noted as addressing all three pending Title VII cases and thus were also filed and counted among the Harris Funeral Home amicus briefs.  When it announced the filing schedule, the Court also directed that amicus briefs for the Altitude Express case were to be filed on the Bostock docket. The same mix of amici that one finds on the Harris Funeral Homes docket generally show up on the Bostock list, minus those groups who have a specific focus on opposing transgender rights.  The arguments in the amicus briefs are similar as well, although, of course, the argument that gender is identified at birth is permanent and not changeable is absent here, while it predominates in many of the amicus briefs filed in Harris Funeral Homes.

Several of these amicus briefs emanate from groups that may have been formed for the specific purpose of filing amicus briefs in these cases.  All of the docketed amicus briefs can be examined on the Supreme Court’s website, where they are available to be downloaded in pdf format.

The deadline for the third round of briefing set by the Court is September 16, when Reply Briefs can be filed, responding to the briefs that were filed in August.  Reply briefs, if any, will be reported in the October issue of Law Notes.

New Supreme Court Term Potentially Momentous for LGBT Rights

Posted on: September 24th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Supreme Court begins its October 2018 Term, which runs through June 2019, on October 1. During the week of September 24, the Court holds its “long conference,” during which the Justices consider the long list of petitions for review filed with the Court since last spring, and assembles its docket of cases for argument after those granted late last term are heard.  While there are several petitions involving LGBT-related issues pending before the Court, it is unlikely that there will be any announcement about these cases until late October or November at the earliest.

Three of the pending petitions raise one of the most hotly contested LGBT issues being litigated in the lower federal courts: Whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination because of an individual’s sex, can be interpreted to extend to claims of discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity. One of the three cases also raises the question whether an employer with religious objections gender transition has a defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  Another petition presents the question whether a judge who has religious objections to conducting same-sex marriages has a 1st Amendment right to refuse to do so.

Although many state civil rights laws ban such discrimination, a majority of states do not, so the question whether the federal law applies is particularly significant in the Southeast and Midwest, where state courts are generally unavailable to redress such discrimination.

With President Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat vacated by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Jr.’s, retirement, which was effective on July 31, petitions pending at the Supreme Court took on heightened significance while the Senate confirmation process was taking place. The Senate Republican leadership had hoped to speed the process so that Trump’s appointee would be seated on the Court by the time the term began on October 1, but accusations of long-ago sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh have caused the Judiciary Committee’s vote to be delayed.  Meanwhile, the eight-member Court had to confront the question during their long conference of whether to grant review on cases as to which the justices were likely to be evenly divided, when they were unsure when the ninth seat would be filled and who would fill it.  As of the end of September, they had already scheduled oral arguments on cases granted last spring running through the first week of November.

In Bostock v. Clayton County Board of Commissioners, a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to dismiss Gerald Lynn Bostock’s Title VII claim alleging employment discrimination because of his sexual orientation. The panel held that it was bound by prior circuit precedent, a 1979 ruling by the old 5th Circuit in Blum v. Gulf Oil Corporation, which was recently reaffirmed by a panel of the 11th Circuit in Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital, which was denied by review by the Supreme Court last December.

Three-judge panels are required to follow circuit precedents, which can be overruled only by an en banc court (the full circuit bench) or the Supreme Court. The 11th Circuit Bostock panel also noted that Mr. Bostock had “abandoned any challenge” to the district court’s dismissal of his alternative claim of gender stereotyping sex discrimination, which is significant because an 11th Circuit panel had ruled in 2011 in Glenn v. Brumby that a transgender plaintiff could bring a sex discrimination claim under a gender stereotyping theory.  The panel relied on a Supreme Court ruling from 1989, Price Waterhouse v Hopkins, which held that requiring employees to conform to the employer’s stereotyped view of how men and women should act was evidence of discrimination because of sex.  The court noted that in Evans, a majority of the 11th Circuit panel had rejected extending the same theory to uphold a sexual orientation claim, and this, of course, is also now binding 11th Circuit precedent.

Mr. Bostock sought en banc reconsideration of the panel decision by the full 11-member bench of the 11th Circuit, but he also filed a petition with the Supreme Court on May 25.  On July 18, the 11th Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc, voting 9-2.  Circuit Judge Robin Rosenbaum, who was the dissenting member of the three-judge Evans panel, released a dissenting opinion, joined by Circuit Judge Jill Pryor.

Although the Evans and Bostock panel decisions may have been foreordained by circuit precedent, recent developments persuaded the dissenters that the issue raised in this case “is indisputably en-banc-worthy. Indeed,” continued Rosenbaum, “within the last fifteen months, two of our sister Circuits have found the issue of such extraordinary importance that they have each addressed it en banc.  See Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc.; Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana.  No wonder.  In 2011, about 8 million Americans identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual,” citing a demographic study published by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School.  “Of those who so identify, roughly 25% report experiencing workplace discrimination because their sexual preferences do not match their employers’ expectations.  That’s a whole lot of people potentially affected by this issue.”

Judge Rosenbaum strongly argued that the 11th Circuit’s implicit decision to “cling” to a “39-year-old precedent” that predates Price Waterhouse by a decade is ignoring “the Supreme Court precedent that governs the issue and requires us to reach the opposite conclusion,” as she had argued in her Evans dissent. “Worse still,” she wrote, “Blum’s ‘analysis’ of the issue is as conclusory as it gets, consisting of a single sentence that, as relevant to Title VII, states in its entirety, ‘Discharge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII.’  And if that’s not bad enough, to support this proposition, Blum relies solely on Smith v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. (5th Cir. 1978) – a case that itself has been necessarily abrogated not only by Price Waterhouse but also by our own precedent in the form of Glenn v. Brumby. I cannot explain why a majority of our Court is content to rely on the precedential equivalent of an Edsel with a missing engine,” Rosenbaum continued, “when it comes to an issue that affects so many people.”

Rosenbaum argued that regardless of what a majority of the court’s views might turn out to be on the substantive issue, it had an obligation to, “as a Court, at least subject the issue to the crucial crucible of adversarial testing, and after that trial yields insights or reveals pitfalls we cannot muster guided only by our own lights, to give a reasonable and principled explanation for our position on this issue – something we have never done.” But, shamefully, the 11th Circuit has absented itself from the current interpretive battle.

Bostock is represented by Thomas J. Mew IV, Timothy Brian Green, and Brian J. Sutherland of Buckley Beal LLP, Atlanta, who filed the petition for certiorari on May 25, with Sutherland listed as counsel of record. Clayton County filed a “Waiver” of its right to respond to the petition on June 27, and the petition was circulated to the justices’ chambers on July 3, anticipating the “long conference.” But evidently some of the justices were not satisfied to consider taking this case without hearing from the “other side,” so on July 13 it sent a request for a response, to be due August 13.  Clayton County retained counsel, Jack R. Hancock and William H. Buechner, Jr., of Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP, Forest Park, GA, who filed the County’s response to the petition on August 10, opposing the petition.  They argued that the appeal was an attempt to get the Court to do Congress’s work, which should be rejected.  On August 29, the Supreme Court clerk again circulated all of these papers to the Justices’ Chambers and the petition was scheduled for consideration at the “long conference.”

The other case pending before the Supreme Court presenting the same question, but this time appealing from the employer’s side, is Altitude Express v. Zarda, from the New York-based 2nd Circuit. A three-judge panel had affirmed the district court’s decision to dismiss a Title VII sex discrimination claim by Donald Zarda, a gay sky-diving instructor, who based his claim on alternative assertions of gender stereotyping or sexual orientation discrimination, on April 18, 2017.  Zarda died in a sky-diving accident while the case was pending, but his estate stepped in to continue the lawsuit.  The 2nd Circuit’s Chief Judge, Robert Katzmann, attached a concurring opinion to the panel ruling, calling for the 2nd Circuit to reconsider this issue en banc in an appropriate case, noting the then-recent ruling by the 7th Circuit in Hively and other developments.

Thus encouraged, Zarda’s Estate sought and obtained en banc review, resulting in the 2nd Circuit’s decisive repudiation of its past precedent on February 26, 2018.  Judge Katzmann’s opinion for the en banc court held that discrimination because of sexual orientation is, at least in part, discrimination because of sex, and thus actionable under Title VII.  The Estate of Zarda is represented by Gregory Antollino, New York, NY, with Stephen Bergstein, Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP, Chester, NY, on the brief.

Saul D. Zabell and Ryan T. Biesenbach, Zabell & Associates, P.C., of Bohemia, N.Y., counsel for Altitude Express, filed a Supreme Court petition on May 29. Responsive papers were filed over the summer, and all the papers were distributed on September 5 to the Justices’ Chambers anticipating the “long conference.”  The federal government, consistent with positions announced in various contexts by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rejects the 2nd Circuit’s en banc ruling and, if certiorari were granted in Bostock or in Altitude Express v. Zarda, would presumably seek to participate in oral argument.

The third pending Title VII petition, in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc., comes from the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit, where a three-judge panel ruled on March 7 that the Funeral Home’s discharge of transgender funeral director Aimee Stephens violated Title VII.  The American Civil Liberties Union represents Stephens.  The EEOC, which had ruled years earlier that it considered discrimination because of gender identity or gender transitioning to be discrimination because of sex, initiated the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan.  Stephens intervened as co-plaintiff.

Although the district judge accepted the EEOC’s argument that this could be a valid sex discrimination case using the gender stereotype theory, he concluded that the funeral home had a right under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to be free of government prosecution, because of the burden it placed on the funeral home owner’s religious beliefs.

The 6th Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. In an opinion by Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore, the court agreed with the district judge that gender identity discrimination can be the basis of a Title VII claim, but the court went a step further than prior panel opinions by deciding, as the EEOC had argued, that discrimination “because of sex” inherently includes discrimination against employees who are transgender, without any need to analyze the question of gender stereotypes. The court of appeals reversed the district court’s ruling on the RFRA defense, finding that requiring the employer to continue to employ a transgender funeral director would not substantially burden his right to free exercise of religion.  The court specifically rejected the employer’s reliance on presumed customer non-acceptance of a transgender funeral director as a legitimate justification for the discharge.  The court also rejected the employer’s argument that because of the religiosity of the owner and the way he conducted his business, his funeral directors should be treated as “ministers” as to whom the owner would enjoy a 1st Amendment-based “ministerial exception” from complying with Title VII.

One might anticipate that a petition to review a Court of Appeals decision that was issued on March 7 would generate the necessary paperwork in time to be considered during the “long conference,” but in this case Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the anti-gay religious litigation group that is representing the funeral home, obtained an extension of time to file their petition, which was not docketed until July 20. Responses were due August 23. Then the Court granted a request from the Solicitor General’s Office, representing the government, for an extension of time to file a response, which was granted to September 24, 2018, the date on which the “long conference” would begin.  But the Solicitor General wrote to the Court again as this deadline approached requesting a further extension to October 24, which was granted.

At the end of September the government’s official response to this petition had not been filed. With the change of administration since the EEOC started this case, and the position on these issues announced by the Justice Department last year, the Solicitor General would probably urge the Court to take the case and reverse the 6th Circuit on both the Title VII and RFRA rulings.    As to the former, last year Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued written guidance that gender identity discrimination does not violate Title VII, and, as to the latter, President Trump issued an executive order, recently amplified by Attorney General Sessions, directing the Executive Branch to give maximum play to free exercise of religion claims.

But there is a further twist to the government’s response. Although the Solicitor General represents the government in the Supreme Court, an administrative agency such as the EEOC could represent itself, if it gets permission from the Solicitor General.  The EEOC is the plaintiff in this case, and the winning party in the 6th Circuit.  Trump’s appointments of new EEOC commissioners may change the agency’s view of these issues, but as of now the agency’s position is that gender identity discrimination violates Title VII.   One of the Supreme Court’s most important functions is to deal with interpretations of federal statutes as to which the lower courts are divided, and there are precedents in several of the circuit courts that differ from the 6th Circuit’s view in this case, but the trend of lower court decisions around the country is to recognize gender identity discrimination claims under Title VII using the gender stereotype theory.  Neither the Solicitor General nor the EEOC has announced who will be filing a response on behalf of the government, and what position the government may take in the case.

Counsel for the Funeral Home filed a blanket consent with the court to allow amicus briefs in this case. On the original response date of August 23, the Clerk recorded filing of amicus briefs from the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, the Foundation for Moral Law, the State of Nebraska on behalf of itself and fifteen other states, and Public Advocate of the United States (despite its name, a private organization), all urging the Court to take the case and reverse the 6th Circuit for a variety of reasons, taking issue with the 6th Circuit’s decision on every conceivable point.

ADF, counsel for the funeral home, sent a letter to the Court on September 13, suggesting that because the three Title VII petitions present common questions of statutory interpretation, they should be considered together. After receiving the letter, the Court removed the two sexual orientation cases from the agenda for the long conference, which means that the extension of time granted to all the respondents in the Funeral Home case may delay the Court’s consideration of the other two Title VII petitions for several months.

It would be very surprising if the Court did not grant the petitions in Altitude Express and Harris Funeral Homes, as both court of appeals rulings extend existing splits in circuit court interpretations of Title VII, the nation’s basic employment discrimination statute, and employ reasoning that potentially affects the interpretation of many other federal sex discrimination statutes, such as the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, and the Affordable Care Act. But it takes four votes to grant a petition for review in the Supreme Court, and as long as the Court remains evenly divided between Democratic and Republican appointees, it is possible that both “camps” will shy away from taking on cases where a tie vote on the merits would affirm the lower court ruling without an opinion or a nationally-binding precedent.

Also pending before the Court is a petition filed on behalf of Oregon Judge Vance D. Day, who was disciplined by the Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability in a report that was approved by the Oregon Supreme Court for, among other things, refusing to perform same-sex marriages, claiming a 1st Amendment privilege.  The petition, filed on July 23, asks the Court to decide whether Judge Day’s constitutional rights were violated both procedurally and substantively, and raises the contention that judges have a constitutional right to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry as well as to equal protection of the law.  Judge Day is represented by James Bopp, Jr., and other members of his Terre Haute, Indiana law firm.  Mr. Bopp is a frequent advocate in opposition to LGBT and reproductive rights.  The petition is on the agenda for the Court’s October 11 conference.

There are several other controversies brewing in the lower courts that could rise to the level of Supreme Court petitions during the October 2018 Term.

Following its Masterpiece Cakeshop decision on June 4, the Court vacated a decision by the Washington State Supreme Court against a florist who had refused to provide floral decorations for a same-sex wedding and sent the case back to the Washington court for reconsideration in light of the Masterpiece ruling. This is one of several cases pending in the lower courts, some rising to the federal court of appeals or state supreme courts level, raising the question of religious freedom exemptions from compliance with anti-discrimination laws.  The Supreme Court’s evasion of the underlying issue in Masterpiece means that the issue will come back to the Supreme Court, possibly this term, especially as some lower courts have already seized upon language in Justice Kennedy’s opinion observing that the Court has never recognized a broad religious exercise exemption from complying with anti-discrimination laws.  Cases are pending concerning wedding cakes, wedding invitations, and wedding videos. And, in a different arena, the Court recently denied a request by Catholic authorities in Philadelphia to temporarily block the City from suspending referrals of children to a Catholic adoption agency that refuses to deal with same-sex couples.  The District Court upheld the City’s position, as Gay City News previously report, finding a likely violation of Philadelphia’s public accommodations ordinance that covers sexual orientation and rejecting an exemption for the Catholic adoption agency. This kind of issue could also rise to the Supreme Court, depending how lower court litigation works out.

Litigation continues over a claim by some Houston Republicans that the City is not obligated to provide equal benefits to the same-sex spouses of Houston employees. The case is pending before a state trial judge after the Texas Supreme Court, in a blatant misinterpretation of the Obergefell decision, held that the U.S. Supreme Court had not necessarily decided the issue. This was “blatant” because the Obergefell opinion specifically mentioned insurance as one of the important reasons why same-sex couples had a strong interest in being able to marry, making marriage a fundamental right.  Insurance was mentioned as part of a list of reasons, another listed being “birth certificates,” and the Supreme Court specifically quoted from that list in Pavan v. Smith, the 2017 case in which it reversed the Arkansas Supreme Court, rejecting that court’s opinion that Obergefell did not decide the question whether same-sex parents had a right to be listed on birth certificates.  Pavan was decided just days before the Texas Supreme Court issued its obtuse and clearly politically-motivated decision in Pidgeon v. Turner!  One need not guess too hard at the political motivation.  Texas Supreme Court justices are elected, and that court was deluged with communications of protest and pressure from the state’s top elected Republican officials after an earlier announcement that the court was declining to review the Texas Court of Appeals’ decision in this case, which had found Obergefell and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ subsequent marriage equality ruling, DeLeon, to be controlling on the issue.

Before long the Court will probably take up the question whether transgender public school students have a right under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause to use restroom and locker room facilities consistent with their gender identity. The Court granted a petition in Gavin Grimm’s case from Virginia and scheduled argument to take place during the October 2016 Term, but the Trump Administration’s withdrawal of the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title IX persuaded the Court to cancel the argument and send the case back to the 4th Circuit for reconsideration. The 4th Circuit sent the case back to the district court, where the school district argued that it was moot because Grimm had graduated.  But Grimm continues to battle the district’s policy as an alumnus.  The district court has refused to dismiss a revised version of Grimm’s lawsuit.   This is one issue as to which there is not a significant split of lower court authority, but the issue continues to rage, school districts continue to discriminate against transgender students, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice in the Trump Administration have reversed the Obama Administration’s position that sex discrimination laws protect transgender people, and religious litigation groups such as ADF continue to generate lawsuits, representing parents and students who oppose school district policies that allow transgender students to use the desired facilities.  The issue is far from settled, and it may work its way to the Court again soon.

Another candidate for Supreme Court review is Trump’s transgender military service ban, first tweeted in July 2017. The issue that may bring it up to the Court quickly is the government’s refusal to comply with pre-trial discovery orders, in which plaintiffs in the four pending challenges are seeking information about the alleged basis for the ban, noting Trump’s vague reference to having consulted “my generals and military experts” before his tweet, and the undisclosed identity of the members of Defense Secretary Mattis’s “Task Force” that produced the memorandum he submitted in support of his version of the ban that Trump authorized him to adopt in March 2018.  As of now, preliminary injunctions from the four district judges have kept the ban from going into effect and required the Defense Department to accept applications from transgender people, beginning January 1, 2018.  On September 18, District Judge Jesus Bernal in Riverside, California, became the fourth district judge to reject the government’s motion for summary judgment, and to refuse to dissolve the preliminary injunction he had previously issued.   Seattle District Judge Marsha Pechman’s discovery order is being appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The Solicitor General recently filed a petition with the Supreme Court to stay Judge Pechman’s order, since her deadline for compliance was looming and the 9th Circuit had not acted on the government’s motion to stay, but the 9th Circuit then granted the motion and the petition was withdrawn.  If any one of the four district courts grants the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, of course, the government will appeal on the merits and the case may end up in the Supreme Court.  This litigation may provide the vehicle for the Court to determine the extent to which government discrimination against transgender people violates the Equal Protection requirement of the 5th Amendment.

Watch this space for further developments!

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.

 

TWO MORE LGBTQ-RELATED CONTROVERSIES DROP OFF THE SUPREME COURT DOCKET

Posted on: January 10th, 2018 by Art Leonard 2 Comments

As the Supreme Court’s 2017-18 Term began in October, it looked like a banner term for LGBTQ-related cases at the nation’s highest court. Petitions were pending asking the Court to address a wide range of issues, including whether LGBTQ people are protected against discrimination under federal sex discrimination laws covering employment (from Georgia) and educational opportunity (from Wisconsin), whether LGBTQ people in Mississippi had standing to seek a federal order to prevent a viciously anti-gay religiously-motivated law from going into effect, and whether the Texas Supreme Court erred in holding that Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), did not necessarily require a municipal employer to treat same-sex married couples the same as different-sex married couples in their employee benefits plans.  The Court had already granted review in a “gay wedding cake” case from Colorado (Masterpiece Cakeshop, which was argued on December 5), and another petition involving a Washington State florist who refused to provide floral decorations for a same-sex wedding was waiting in the wings.

 

But the hopes for a blockbuster term have rapidly faded. In December, the Court declined to hear the employee benefits case and the Title VII employment discrimination case.  And now in January, the Court has declined to hear the Mississippi cases, Barber v. Bryant and Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant, and the Wisconsin case, Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District, has settled, with the school district agreeing to withdraw its Supreme Court petition.   It may be that the only LGBTQ-related issue that the Court decides this term is the one it heard argued in December: whether a business owner’s religious objections to same-sex marriage or his right to freedom of speech would privilege him to refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.  An opinion expected sometime in the coming months.

On January 8, the Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Barber v. Bryant, 860 F.3d 345 (5th Cir.), petition for rehearing en banc denied, 872 F.3d 671 (2017), which had dismissed a constitutional challenge to Mississippi’s infamous H.B. 1523, a law enacted in 2016 that protects people who discriminate against LGBTQ people because of their religious or moral convictions.  The 5th Circuit had ruled that none of the plaintiffs – either organizations or individuals – in two cases challenging the Mississippi law had “standing” to bring the lawsuits in federal court.

H.B. 1523, which was scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2016, identifies three “religious beliefs or moral convictions” and protects against “discrimination” by the state anybody who acts in accord with those beliefs in a wide range of circumstances. The beliefs, as stated in the statute, are: “(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman; (b) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and (c) male (man) or female (woman) refers to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.”  Among other things, the law would protect government officials who rely on these beliefs to deny services to individuals, and would preempt the handful of local municipal laws in the state that ban discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity, so that victims of discrimination would have no local law remedy.  Mississippi does not have a state law banning sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination, so H.B. 1523 in relation to private businesses and institutions was mainly symbolic when it came to activity taking place outside of the cities of Jackson, Hattiesburg and Oxford, or off the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.

Two groups of plaintiffs brought constitutional challenges against the law in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, where the case came before Judge Carlton W. Reeves, the same judge who ruled for plaintiffs in a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage a few years earlier. He issued a preliminary injunction against implementation of H.B. 1523 on June 30, 2016, the day before it was to go into effect, finding that it would violate the 1st Amendment by establishing particular religious beliefs as part of the state’s law.  The plaintiffs also challenged it on Equal Protection grounds. Judge Reeves refused to stay his preliminary injunction, and so did the 5th Circuit.

The state appealed the grant of preliminary injunction to the 5th Circuit, where a unanimous three-judge panel ruled on June 22, 2017, that the district court did not have jurisdiction to issue the injunction because, according to the opinion by Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, none of the plaintiffs could show that they had suffered or were imminently likely to suffer a “concrete and particularized injury in fact,” which was necessary to confer the necessary “standing” to challenge the law in federal court.  In the absence of standing, he wrote, the preliminary injunction must be dissolved and the case dismissed.

The plaintiffs asked the full 5th Circuit to reconsider the ruling en banc, but the circuit judges voted 12-2 not to do so, announcing that result on September 29.  The dissenters, in an opinion by Judge James L. Dennis, bluntly stated that “the panel decision is wrong” and “misconstrues and misapplies the Establishment Clause precedent.”  Indeed, wrote Judge Dennis, “its analysis creates a conflict between our circuit and our sister circuits on the issue of Establishment Clause standing.”

Judge Dennis pressed home the point by citing numerous cases from other circuits which, he held, would support allowing the plaintiffs in this case to seek a preliminary injunction blocking the law from going into effect.  This gave hope to the plaintiffs that they might be able to get the Supreme Court to take the case and reverse the 5th Circuit, since one of the main criteria for the Supreme Court granting review is to resolve a split in authority between the circuit courts on important points of federal law.

However, on January 8 the Court denied the petitions the two plaintiff groups had filed, without any explanation or open dissent, leaving unresolved important questions about how and when people can mount a federal court challenge to a law of this sort. In the meantime, shortly after the 5th Circuit had denied reconsideration, H.B. 1523 went into effect on October 10.

A challenge to H.B. 1523 continues in the District Court before Judge Reeves, as new allegations by the plaintiffs require reconsideration of their standing and place in question, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s June 2017 ruling, Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075, whether the law imposes unconstitutional burdens on LGBTQ people seeking to exercise their fundamental constitutional rights.

Two days after the Court announced it would not review the 5th Circuit ruling, the parties in Whitaker, 858 F. 3d 1034 (7th Cir. 2017), involving the legal rights of transgender students under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, announced a settlement.  Under their agreement the school district will withdraw its cert petition.

The Supreme Court had been scheduled to hear a similar transgender student case last March, Gloucester County School Bd. v. G. G. ex rel. Grimm, but that case was dropped from the docket after the Trump Administration withdrew a Guidance on Title IX compliance that had been issued by the Obama Administration.  Since the 4th Circuit’s decision in Gavin Grimm’s case had been based on that Guidance rather than on a direct judicial interpretation of the statute, the Supreme Court vacated the 4th Circuit’s ruling and sent the case back to the 4th Circuit for reconsideration. See 137 S. Ct. 1239 (Mar. 6, 2017). That court, in turn, sent it back to the district court, which dismissed the case as moot since Grimm had graduated in the interim.

Ashton Whitaker is a transgender boy who graduated from Tremper High School in the Kenosha School District last June. His case would have given the Supreme Court a second chance to address the Title IX issue.  Whitaker transitioned while in high school and asked to be allowed to use the boys’ restroom facilities, but district officials told him that there was an unwritten policy restricting bathroom use based on biological sex.  He sued the district under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause.  U.S. District Judge Panela Pepper (E.D. Wisconsin) issued a preliminary injunction on Whitaker’s behalf in September 2016, and refused to stay it pending appeal.  See 2016 WL 5239829 (Sept. 22, 2016).

On May 30, 2017, the 7th Circuit upheld Judge Pepper’s ruling, finding that even though the Trump Administration had withdrawn the prior Title IX Guidance, both Title IX and the 14th Amendment require the school to recognize Whitaker as a boy and to allow him to use boys’ restroom facilities.  The school district petitioned the Supreme Court on August 25 to review the 7th Circuit’s decision, even though Whitaker had graduated in June.

In the meantime, Judge Pepper ordered the parties to mediation to attempt a settlement. Whitaker’s graduation in June undoubtedly contributed to the pressure to settle, and the parties asked the Supreme Court several times to extend the deadline for Whitaker to file a formal response to the petition as the negotiations continued.  According to press reports on January 10, the case settled for $800,000 and an agreement that the district would withdraw its petition.

The settlement and withdrawal of the petition leaves the 7th Circuit’s opinion standing as the first federal circuit court ruling to hold on the merits that Title IX and the 14th Amendment require public schools to respect the gender identity of their students and to allow students to use sex-designated facilities consistent with their gender identity.  However, lacking a Supreme Court ruling on the point this decision is only binding in the three states of the 7th Circuit: Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, the same three states bound by another 7th Circuit last year holding that employment discrimination because of sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

 

Trump Administration Withdraws Title IX Guidance in Contradictory “Dear Colleague” Letter

Posted on: February 23rd, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

 

The Trump Administration, keeping a promise made by Donald Trump during his campaign to leave the issue of restroom and locker room access by transgender students up to state and local officials, issued a letter to all the nation’s school districts on February 22, withdrawing a letter that the Obama Administration Education Department submitted in the Gavin Grimm transgender rights case on January 7, 2015, and a “Dear Colleague” letter sent jointly by the Education and Justice Departments to the nation’s school districts on May 13, 2016.

 

The Obama Administration letters had communicated an interpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a statute banning sex discrimination by educational institutions that receive federal money, as well as a DOE regulation issued under Title IX, 34 C.F.R. Section 106.33, governing sex-segregated facilities in educational institutions, to require those institutions to allow transgender students and staff to use facilities consistent with their gender identity. The regulation says that educational facilities may have sex-segregated facilities, so long as they are “equal.”

 

The February 22 letter states that the Departments “have decided to withdraw and rescind the above-referenced guidance documents in order to further and more completely consider the legal issues involved. The Department thus will not rely on the views expressed within them.”  It also states that the departments “believe that, in this context, there must be due regard for the primary role of the States and local school districts in establishing educational policy,” embodying Trump’s articulated campaign position on this issue.

 

At the same time, however, the February 22 letter stated: “All schools must ensure that all students, including LGBT students, are able to learn and thrive in a safe environment,” and insisted that the withdrawal of the earlier guidance documents “does not leave students without protections from discrimination, bullying, or harassment” and that the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights “will continue its duty under law to hear all claims of discrimination and will explore every opportunity to protect all students and to encourage civility in our classrooms.” It asserts that the two departments “are committed to the application of Title IX and other federal laws to ensure such protection.”

 

However, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said on February 22 that the administration was analyzing its overall position on Title IX, which could result in parting ways from the Obama Administration’s view that Title IX prohibits gender identity discrimination in schools.

 

Thus, an internal contradiction appears. The letter at least implies that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination do violate Title IX, but that the question whether transgender students should be allowed access to sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity needs further study and perhaps needs to be addressed in a new regulation accompanied by detailed analysis that is put through the Administrative Procedure Act process of publication of proposed rules, public comment and hearing, and final publication in the Federal Register, with Congress having a period of several months during which it can intervene to block a new regulation.

 

The Solicitor General’s office, which represents the government in Supreme Court cases, also informed the Court on February 22 that the Obama Administration guidance documents had been withdrawn, that the views expressed in them would no longer be relied upon by those executive branch agencies, and that, instead, the administration would “consider further and more completely the legal issues involved.”

 

This development comes just six weeks before the Supreme Court argument scheduled for March 28 in Gloucester County School District v. G.G. (the Gavin Grimm case), and just before the due date for the Solicitor General to file an amicus brief presenting the government’s position on the issues before the Court.

 

The Court might react to this development in a variety of ways. Since the government is not a party in the case, the Court might just ignore the letter and go ahead with the argument.  Or it might consider that this development renders moot one or both of the questions on which it granted review, which could lead to a reshaping of the case to focus solely on the appropriate interpretation of Title IX and the facilities regulation.  It might even decide that the entire case should be sent back to the 4th Circuit for reconsideration in light of these developments.

 

The new Dear Colleague letter, sent over the signatures of Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Sandra Battle (Education Department) and Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights T.E. Wheeler, II (Justice Department), shows the signs of compromise reflecting the reported battle between Betsy DeVos, the recently-confirmed Secretary of Education, and Jeff Sessions, the recently-confirmed Attorney General. Several media sources reported that DeVos did not want to withdraw the earlier Guidance, but that Sessions was determined to do so.

 

In light of his record on LGBT issues as a Senator and former Attorney General of Alabama, Sessions is reportedly bent on reversing the numerous Obama Administration regulations and policy statements extending protection to LGBT people under existing laws. It was probably a big disappointment to him that the President decided not to rescind Obama’s Executive Order imposing on federal contractors an obligation not to discriminate because of sexual orientation or gender identity, and we may not have heard the last on that issue.

 

DeVos, by contrast, is reportedly pro-LGBT, despite the political views of her family, who are major donors to anti-LGBT organizations. According to press accounts, for example, in Michigan she intervened on behalf of a gay Republican Party official whose position was endangered when he married his partner.

 

Several newspapers and websites have reported that DeVos and Session brought their dispute to the President, who resolved it in favor of Sessions, leaving it to them to work out the details. Trump was undoubtedly responding to the charge by many Republicans that the Obama Administration had “overreached” in its executive orders and less formal policy statements, going beyond the bounds of existing legislation to make “new law” in areas where Congress had refused to act and overriding state and local officials on a sensitive issue.  In this case, Republicans in both houses had bottled up the Equality Act, a bill that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as explicitly forbidden grounds for discrimination in a variety of federal statutes, including Title IX.

 

While withdrawing the Obama Guidance documents, the February 22 the letter does not state a firm position on how Title IX should be interpreted, either generally in terms of gender identity discrimination or specifically in terms of access to sex-segregated facilities, such as restrooms and locker rooms. It criticizes the withdrawn documents as failing to “contain extensive legal analysis or explain how the position is consistent with the express language of Title IX,” and points out that they did not “undergo any formal public process,” a reference to the Administrative Procedure Act steps that are necessary to issue formal regulations that have the force of law.

 

While the withdrawn guidance documents did not have the force of law, they communicated to schools that the Education Department believed that Title IX bars gender identity discrimination and requires access to facilities consistent with a person’s gender identity, which meant that the Education Department or the Justice Department might initiate litigation or seek suspension of federal funding against districts which failed to comply. In the end, it would be up to courts to decide whether to follow this interpretation.  Furthermore, federal courts have found an “implied right of action” by individuals to bring suit to enforce their rights under Title IX, and that is not changed by withdrawal of the guidance documents.

 

The 4th Circuit’s decision of May 2016, up for review by the Supreme Court, came in a lawsuit initiated by an individual high school student, Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy who was barred from using the boys’ restrooms at his high school by a resolution of the Gloucester County, Virginia, School Board after it received complaints from members of the community. District Judge Robert Doumar had dismissed Grimm’s Title IX complaint, even though the Obama Administration sent its January 7, 2015, letter, informing the court that the Education Department believed that Title IX required the school district to let Grimm use the boys’ restrooms.  The 4th Circuit ruled that Judge Doumar should have deferred to the Education Department’s interpretation, as the regulation governing sex-segregated facilities was ambiguous on the question and the Department’s interpretation, which relied on federal appeals court and administrative agency decisions under other sex discrimination statutes finding that gender identity discrimination was a form of sex discrimination, was “reasonable.”  The School District petitioned the Supreme Court to review this ruling.

 

The Supreme Court agreed to consider two questions: (1) Whether deference to an informal letter from the Education Department was appropriate, and (2) whether the Department’s interpretation of Title IX and the regulation was correct. With the letter having been withdrawn, the question of deferring to it may be considered a moot point, but some commentators on administrative law had been hoping the Court would use this case as a vehicle to abandon its past ruling that courts should give broad deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous regulations, and the Court could decide that this issue has not really been rendered moot since it is a recurring one. Indeed, the February 22 letter implicitly raises the new question of whether the courts should defer to it in place of the withdrawn Guidance.

 

The Supreme Court’s agreement to consider whether the Education Department’s interpretation was correct might also be considered moot, since the Education Department has abandoned that interpretation, but certainly the underlying question of how Title IX and the regulation should be interpreted is very much alive, as several courts around the country are considering the question in cases filed by individual transgender students, states, and the Obama Administration (in its challenge to North Carolina’s H.B. 2, which is based on Title IX, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution).

 

Two groups of states filed suit in federal courts challenging the Dear Colleague letter of May 13, 2016. In one of those lawsuits, with Texas as the lead plaintiff, Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their challenge, and issued a nationwide preliminary injunction last August forbidding the government from enforcing this interpretation of Title IX in any new investigation or case.  The DOE/DOJ February 22 letter points out that this nationwide injunction is still in effect, so the departments were not able to investigate new charges or initiate new lawsuits in any event.  What it doesn’t mention is that the Obama Administration filed an appeal to the 5th Circuit, challenging the nationwide scope of the injunction, but the Trump Administration recently withdrew that appeal, getting the 5th Circuit to cancel a scheduled oral argument.  Of course, these lawsuits specifically challenging the Obama Administrative Guidance documents are now moot with those documents having been withdrawn by the Trump Administration, since the plaintiffs in those cases sought only prospective relief which is now unnecessary from their point of view.  Presumably a motion to dismiss as moot would be granted by Judge O’Connor, dissolving the preliminary injunction.  O’Connor’s order never had any effect on the ability of non-governmental plaintiffs, such as Gavin Grimm, to file suit under Title IX.

 

In North Carolina, the Obama Administration, former governor Pat McCrory, Republican state legislative leaders, a group representing parents and students opposed to transgender restroom access, and transgender people represented by public interest lawyers had all filed lawsuits challenging or defending H.B.2. The Trump Administration’s February 22 actions may signal that at least the federal government is likely either to abandon or cut down on the scope of its lawsuit challenging H.B.2.  Since North Carolina is in the 4th Circuit, all of these cases were likely to be affected by a reconsideration by the 4th Circuit in light of these new developments.  Around the country, several pending lawsuits have been put “on hold” by federal district judges as well, while awaiting Supreme Court action on the Gavin Grimm case.  If the Supreme Court were to reject the argument that “sex discrimination” in a statute can be broadly construed to encompass gender identity, these cases, arising under either Title IX or Title VII, may be dismissed.

 

Since the confirmation hearing for 10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch, nominated by Trump for the Supreme Court vacancy, is scheduled to take place on March 20, and Democratic opposition may stretch out the confirmation process, it seems likely that there will be only eight members on the Supreme Court to consider the Grimm case. In that event, it was widely predicted that the result would be either a tie affirming the 4th Circuit without opinion and avoiding a national precedent, or a 5-3 vote with an opinion most likely by Justice Anthony Kennedy, joining with the more liberal justices to adopt the more expansive reading of Title IX.  However, this will be the first time the Supreme Court has tackled directly a gender identity issue under sex discrimination laws, so predicting how any member of the Court may vote is completely speculative.

 

 

Lesbian Mom’s Case Closer To Supreme Court Review

Posted on: December 14th, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

A lesbian mother’s quest for joint custody of the children she had adopted in Georgia and raised together with her former same-sex partner took a step closer to the Supreme Court on Monday, December 14, when the Court granted her “Application for Recall and Stay of Certificate of Judgment of Alabama Supreme Court.”  V.L. v. E.L., No. 15-648.  V.L. is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a September 18 ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, which refused to recognize the validity of the adoptions, having filed her Petition for Certiorari with the Supreme Court on November 16.

The Supreme Court justices did not explain their grant of this stay request.  They normally issue no explanations for their rulings on such applications, but, as Chief Justice John Roberts explained in 2012 in an “in chambers” ruling on such a petition (see Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1, 2 (2012)), a stay of a lower court decision while the Supreme Court is deciding whether to grant review is warranted when there is “(1) a reasonable probability that this Court will grant certiorari, (2) a fair prospect that the Court will then reverse the decision below, and (3) a likelihood that irreparable harm will result from the denial of a stay.”  The Court did state that if it denies review in this case, the stay will terminate automatically.  If it grants review, the stay will be in effect as long as the case is pending before the Supreme Court.

The Alabama Supreme Court’s refusal to recognize the Georgia adoption meant that V.L. had no legal standing to seek joint custody or visitation in the Alabama circuit court, and that the interim visitation order issued by the circuit court and affirmed by that state’s court of appeals was terminated, disrupting V.L.’s relationship with her children.  Unless the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling was stayed pending appeal, V.L. and her children could suffer a prolonged period of separation, an injury not reparable through damages or other retrospective judicial relief and thus “irreparable” for purposes of this stay application.

Perhaps more to the point, the Alabama Supreme Court’s refusal to recognize the Georgia adoption was a clear departure from the constitutional requirement that sister-state court judgments be accorded “full faith and credit.”  The Alabama court did this by opining that the Georgia trial judge had misconstrued Georgia’s adoption statute when granting the adoption and thus that court did not have “jurisdiction” (legal authority) to grant the adoption.  This is a novel twist on the concept of jurisdiction, and a clear departure from the Supreme Court’s past interpretations of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

A dissenting Alabama Supreme Court justice argued that the ruling theoretically opened up to challenge any out-of-state adoption when a majority of the Alabama Supreme Court disagreed with how the courts of another state interpreted their adoption statute, leading to uncertainty in an area of the law where courts have traditionally stressed the need for certainty and stability – child custody.

By granting V.L.’s stay application in this case, the Supreme Court is signaling the likelihood that it will grant review and the strong possibility that it would reverse the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling, to judge by Chief Justice Roberts’ description of their decisional process.

Respondent’s briefs in opposition to review are normally due to the Court a month after a petition is filed (which would be this week), although the Court can grant a motion to extend time.  After all the briefs have been filed, the Court may schedule the petition for consideration at a private conference of the Court.  At the pace this process usually runs, a decision whether to review the case might be expected a few months down the line.  Review would normally have to be granted by mid-January for a case to be argued in this term of the Court.  Unless the justices feel particular urgency to take up this case, it might not be argued until the fall of 2016, with a decision late in 2016 or early in 2017.  The temporary stay reduces the urgency, if it means that V.L.’s temporary visitation order goes back into effect — a conclusion that is not certain until the lower Alabama courts address the scope of the stay.

V.L. is represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, cooperating attorneys from Jenner & Block LLP (Washington, D.C.), and local counsel Tracie Owen Vella (Vella & King) and Heather Fann (Boyd, Fernambucq, Dunn & Fann, P.C.), both of Birmingham, Alabama.  The lead Jenner & Block attorney on the case is Paul M. Smith, who argued the appeal in Lawrence v. Texas that resulted in the Supreme Court striking down laws against consensual gay sex in 2003.

Supreme Court Refuses to Review Some Pending LGBT-Related Cases: Virginia Sodomy Law; University Discharge of Homophobic Administrator

Posted on: October 9th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

 

On October 7, the first day of its October 2013 Term, the Supreme Court announced that it had denied petitions for certiorari in two pending LGBT-related cases, MacDonald v. Moose from the 4th Circuit and Dixon v. University of Toledo from the 6th Circuit.

In MacDonald v. Moose, 710 F.3d 154 (4th Cir. 2013), cert. denied sub nom Moose v. MacDonald, No. 12-1490, 2013 WL 3211338, the 4th Circuit held that Virginia’s sodomy law was facially unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which had invalidated the Texas Homosexual Conduct Act.  Unlike the Texas statute, which only applied to same-sex conduct, the Virginia sodomy law broadly applies to all acts of anal or oral sex, regardless of the genders or ages of the participants or the location of the activity.  In this case, the state prosecuted and convicted William MacDonald for soliciting a young woman to engage in oral sex with him in a parked car.

The solicitation statute applies only to criminal conduct, and thus incorporated by reference the sodomy law.  MacDonald argued in defense that his conduct was protected under Lawrence, but the Virginia courts took the position that because the woman was only 17, and thus a minor, his conduct was not protected because Lawrence did not protect sexual conduct involving minors.  After his conviction was upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court, he filed a federal habeas corpus action challenging the constitutionality of his conviction.  The district court denied his petition, but a 4th Circuit panel voted 2-1 to reverse, finding that the broad Virginia sodomy law was facially unconstitutional under Lawrence.  Attorney General (and now Republican candidate for governor) Ken Cuccinelli petitioned for certiorari, arguing that Lawrence was an “as applied” decision, and that the Virginia sodomy law should be construed to apply only to conduct not protected under Lawrence, including the conduct of Mr. MacDonald.  His petition was denied without comment or recorded dissent.  It will be interesting to see whether the Virginia legislature, which has stubbornly refused to amend or repeal the sodomy law to bring it into compliance with Lawrence, will take any action now that this case is over.

In Dixon v. University of Toledo, 702 F.3d 269 (6th Cir. 2012), petition for rehearing en banc denied (2013), cert. denied, No. 12-1402, 2013 WL 2357630, the 6th Circuit held that the University did not violate the 1st Amendment free speech rights of Crystal Dixon, an administrator who was discharged after she published a letter to the editor in a community newspaper articulating views about homosexuality that the University administration considered to be unacceptable for a person in her position.  The district court and court of appeals rejected her 1st Amendment claim, having found that she was speaking as an employee of the public university, and thus her speech was not protected by the 1st Amendment and the University could discharge her if it found her statements to be inconsistent with its policies concerning sexual orientation.  Her petition was denied without comment or recorded dissent.  The decisions below seem consistent with the Court’s precedents on public employee speech under the 1st Amendment.   When an employee is speaking in her capacity as an employee, the public employer has a right to determine the content of her speech as representing the public employer, and to discharge the employee for disseminating a message contrary to the employer’s policies.

Supreme Court Strikes Section 3 of DOMA, Dismisses Proposition 8 Appeal

Posted on: June 28th, 2013 by Art Leonard 1 Comment

[Second draft of history.  My prior posting on this week’s ruling in the DOMA and Prop 8 cases was written shortly after the opinion was release, and was intended as a basis for my journalistic comment to be published in Gay City News that day.  Herewith my more extensive draft, reflecting further thought and containing many more quotes from the Court’s opinion, written two days later.  And amended after a few hours to reflect some startling new developments today.]

On June 26, the last decision day of its October 2012 Term, the United States Supreme Court issued a pair of 5-4 rulings, holding unconstitutional Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and thus requiring the federal government to treat lawfully-contracted same-sex marriages as equal to different-sex marriages for purposes of federal law, and rejecting an appeal by initiative proponents of a federal trial court decision invalidating California Proposition 8 of 2008, setting the stage for the resumption of same-sex marriages in that state.  United States v. Windsor, 2013 WL 3196928; Hollingsworth v. Perry, 2013 WL 3196927. 

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Jr., writing for the Court in Windsor, found that Section 3 of DOMA, which required the federal government to deny legal recognition to same-sex marriages validly contracted by the law of the jurisdiction where they took place, violates the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of due process and equal protection.  Chief Justice John R. Roberts, Jr., writing for the Court in Hollingsworth, found that the initiative proponents lacked standing to appeal the trial court’s decision, leaving both the Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit without jurisdiction to rule on the merits of the case.  The Court vacated the 9th Circuit’s decision (which had affirmed the trial court’s broad due process and equality ruling on a narrower equal protection theory), and ordered that the appeal be dismissed, which would logically result in terminating the 9th Circuit’s stay of the trial court’s Order, which had enjoined state officials from enforcing the constitutional amendment enacted by Prop 8. At the request of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, the 9th Circuit panel dissolved the stay on Friday, and the plaintiff couples promptly got married; in San Francisco, Attorney General Harris officiated for the wedding of Kris Perry and Sandy Stier at City Hall; in Los Angeles, outgoing Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa officiated at the wedding of Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo. 

The line-up of justices in Windsor was predictable, with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, all appointees of Democratic presidents and sometimes referred to as the Court’s “liberal wing,” signing Kennedy’s opinion.  There were three dissenting opinions.  Chief Justice Roberts, writing for himself; Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for himself and Justice Clarence Thomas, with partial joinder by the Chief; and Justice Samuel Alito, writing for himself with partial joinder by Justice Thomas.  Roberts, Scalia and Thomas agreed on the proposition that the case was not properly before the Court, because the Petitioner, the United States, did not disagree with the substance of the 2nd Circuit’s opinion holding Section 3 unconstitutional.  Thus, in their view, the case did not present the Court with a real “controversy” to resolve between the government and Plaintiff-Respondent Edith Schlain (“Edie”) Windsor, as the government was not asking the Court to do other than affirm the decision below.  Evidently none of these three justices considered that the presence in the case of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives (BLAG), which was allowed to intervene to defend Section 3, would cure this jurisdictional fault.  Justice Alito, by contrast, opined that BLAG’s participation as an interested party cured the jurisdictional defect, arguing that BLAG as representative of the House of Representatives (pursuant to a resolution adopted by the House in January 2013, a month after the Court granted the petition for certiorari in this case), had a real interest in the resolution of the case, since the lower court’s opinion had invalidated legislation enacted by the House, thus in effect constricting its authority to pass legislation.  Although Roberts, Scalia and Thomas believed the case was not properly before the Court, this did not stop them from pronouncing on the merits, all agreeing that Section 3 was constitutional.  Justice Alito also opined that Section 3 was constitutional, but on somewhat different grounds.  The Chief Justice signed on to the portion of Scalia’s dissent addressing jurisdiction, and Thomas, who signed on to Scalia’s entire dissent, also signed on to the portion of Alito’s dissent addressing the merits. 

The line-up of justices in Hollingsworth was less predictable, and initially puzzling to many.  The Chief Justice’s opinion was joined by Justices Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan, while Justice Kennedy’s dissent was joined by Justices Thomas, Alito and Sotomayor.  Roberts’ opinion for the Court insisted that in order to have Article III standing, an appellant must show that the lower court’s ruling imposes a personal and tangible harm on him, rejecting the alternative argument that the initiative proponents were suing in a representative capacity on behalf of the state of California.  There were no concurring opinions.  Justice Kennedy argued in dissent that the California Supreme Court’s decision, entitled to binding effect as an authoritative construction of California law, provided a basis for finding that the initiative proponents had standing to sue on behalf of the state as crucial to the “integrity” of the state’s initiative process.  Neither Roberts nor Kennedy said anything in their opinions about the merits of the case.  Indeed, the only member of the Court to give even an oblique discussion to the Prop 8 merits was Justice Alito, in his dissent in Windsor, in which he devoted a lengthy textual footnote to ridiculing the fact finding process of the district court in Hollingsworth.

The DOMA Decision

Justice Kennedy’s decision first took on the jurisdictional issue, acknowledging the unusual posture of the case, in which the Petitioner (the United States represented by the Solicitor General) was asking the Court to affirm the decision below.  This led the court to appoint as amicus curiae Prof. Vicki Jackson of Harvard Law School to argue against jurisdiction, since none of the “parties” would make such an argument.  Ultimately, Kennedy concluded that the United States had standing to appeal the 2nd Circuit’s decision because of the government’s commitment to continue enforcing Section 3 unless and until there was a definitive ruling by the federal courts as to its constitutionality. 

The case began when the Internal Revenue Service, relying on Section 3, refused to allow Edith Windsor to use the marital exemption to avoid paying taxes on her inheritance from her wife, Thea Spyer, who died in 2009 in New York City after New York State courts had begun to recognize same-sex marriages contracted elsewhere.  (Windsor and Spyer married in Canada after having been a couple for over forty years.  New York subsequently adopted marriage equality legislatively in 2011.)  Because of the Obama Administration’s determination that it should continue enforcing Section 3, despite the conclusion by Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama that the provision was unconstitutional, the government would not comply with the lower courts’ orders to refund Windsor’s $363,000 tax payment on her inheritance.  Thus, something tangible with respect to the parties turns on the Court’s decision in this case; either Windsor gets her refund or she doesn’t.  This was enough, in Kennedy’s view, to satisfy Article III’s standing requirement for the government. For Scalia, it was a “contrivance” intended to manufacture an opportunity for the Court to rule on the constitutionality of Section 3.

Further, Kennedy found, the government had a very legitimate and direct interest in getting a definitive national precedent on Section 3, in light of the 1st Circuit’s previous ruling finding it unconstitutional.  Beyond meeting the requirements of Article III, the case would also have to meet the Court’s jurisprudence on when it might be “prudential” for the Court to abstain from deciding a case.  In the absence of a ruling on Section 3, he pointed out, “The district courts in 94 districts throughout the Nation would be without precedential guidance not only in tax refund suits but also in cases involving the whole of DOMA’s sweep involving over 1,000 federal statutes and a myriad of federal regulations. . .  Rights and privileges of hundreds of thousands of persons would be adversely affected, pending a case in which all prudential concerns about justiciability are absent.  That numerical prediction may not be certain, but it is certain that the cost in judicial resources and expense of litigation for all persons adversely affected would be immense.”  It was clear that Justice Kennedy was persuaded by the practical problem faced by married same-sex couples and the government, were a ruling on the constitutionality of Section 3 to be further delayed.  “In these unusual and urgent circumstances,” he wrote, “the very term ‘prudential’ counsels that it is a proper exercise of the Court’s responsibility to take jurisdiction.”

Scalia decisively rejected these holdings, claiming that one could scour the U.S. Reports and never find a case in which the Court had asserted jurisdiction at the behest of a Petitioner who was asking the Court merely to affirm the holding of the court of appeals.  He observed that “the plaintiff and the Government agree entirely on what should happen in this lawsuit.  They agree that the court below got it right; and they agreed in the court below that the court below that one got it right as well.  What, then are we doing here?”  He characterized as “jaw-dropping” Kennedy’s assertion that the role of the Court was to say “what the law is” in the sense that the famous quotation of Chief Justice John Marshall used by Kennedy was presented in the majority opinion.  Scalia asserted that the Supreme Court operates to decide actual cases, incidentally deciding questions of law as required to determine the rights of the parties in a particular case, and that the Court does not have a general jurisdiction to decide “what the law is” in the absence of an actual controversy between the parties.  He chided Kennedy (an internationalist with a penchant for citing foreign precedents, to Scalia’s continued dismay) for mistaking the function of American courts for those of some other countries, citing as an example a treatise on the German constitutional court.

Kennedy’s approach to the merits of the case strikingly resembled his approach to the two earlier major gay rights opinions he wrote: Romer v. Evans (1996) and Lawrence v. Texas (2003).  In both of those cases, Kennedy eschewed the terminology that legal commentators, some justices, and many lower court judges have adopted to describe the process of judicial review, such as “strict scrutiny,” “heightened scrutiny,” “rational basis” and “suspect classification.”  He was true to form here, writing a decision that never employs this terminology and thus leaves it open to commentators and later courts to try to determine its doctrinal significance. 

Kennedy began his discussion of the merits with an extensive exposition of the traditional role of the states in deciding who could marry, and the traditional deference to state decisions on marriage by the federal government, as part of the allocation of roles in our federal system.  For several pages of his opinion, it appeared that he was ruling that Section 3 violates the allocation of authority between federal and state governments by overriding the determination of particular states that same-sex couples should be entitled to the same “status” and “dignity” as different-sex couples have in their marriages.  “DOMA rejects the long-established precept that the incidents, benefits, and obligations of marriage are uniform for all married couples within each State, though they may vary, subject to constitutional guarantees, from one State to the next.  Despite these considerations,” he continues, “it is unnecessary to decide whether this federal intrusion on state power is a violation of the Constitution because it disrupts the federal balance.”  But, Kennedy says, quoting his opinion in Romer, “discriminations of an unusual character especially suggest careful consideration to determine whether they are obnoxious to the constitutional provision.”  In other words, Kennedy will not rest his decision on federalism, but will refer to Congress’s unusual “intrusion” into a traditional state function to justify a more demanding level of judicial review than might otherwise be applied in this case as part of his 5th Amendment analysis.

“The States’ interest in defining and regulating the marital relation, subject to constitutional guarantees, stems from the understanding that marriage is more than a routine classification for purposes of certain statutory benefits,” he explained.  “Private, consensual sexual intimacy between two adult persons of the same sex may not be punished by the State, and it can form ‘but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring,’” quoting his own opinion in Lawrence.  “By its recognition of the validity of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions and then by authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond.”  But, he points out, “DOMA seeks to injure the very class New York seeks to protect.  By doing so it violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government.”  Thus, Kennedy cited as the constitutional basis for the ruling both aspects of the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment, the substantive due process and the equal protection guarantees that prior Supreme Court decisions have found to inhere in that provision.  “DOMA’s unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage here operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with the federal recognition of their marriages.  This is strong evidence of a law having the purpose and effect of disapproval of that class.  The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States.”

Thus, for Kennedy, this case was very closely analogous to Romer, where he found that Colorado voters enacted Amendment 2 to make gay people unequal to everybody else, without any plausible legitimate justification.  In this case, after reviewing the blatantly homophobic legislative history of DOMA’s enactment in 1996, he found a similar fatal flaw.  “DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code,” he exclaims.  “DOMA’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.  The principal purpose is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like government efficiency.  Responsibilities, as well as rights, enhance the dignity and integrity of the person.  And DOMA contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not other couples, of both rights and responsibilities.  By creating two contradictory marriage regimes within the same State, DOMA forces same-sex couples to live as married for the purpose of state law but unmarried for the purpose of federal law, thus diminishing the stability and predictability of basic personal relations the State has found it proper to acknowledge and protect.  By this dynamic DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage.  The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects (citing Lawrence) and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify.”  He also found that it “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.” 

So the analogy with Romer is very close; Colorado enacted Amendment 2 to make gay people unequal to others without any policy justification, and Congress enacted Section 3 to make gay peoples’ marriages unequal to those of others without any policy justification.  Interestingly, Kennedy omitted to discuss the specific policy justifications that BLAG advanced in its brief and oral argument, a failure that earned the scorn of Justice Scalia in his impassioned dissent. Having found that “the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage,” Kennedy concluded, “This requires the Court to hold, as it now does, that DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the 5th Amendment of the Constitution.”  He went on to explain that this is a deprivation both of liberty and of equal protection of the laws, as that concept has been found by the Court to be an essential part of the Due Process guarantee.  Early in the opinion, Kennedy made clear that all his references to “DOMA” refer only to Section 3, as the Court was not asked to rule on Section 2, the provision that purports to free states from any constitutional obligation to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states.

Kennedy ended with a final statement that the opinion “and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages,” i.e., “same-sex marriages made lawful by the State.”  Without expressly discussing whether the federal government is obligated to recognize same-sex marriage of individuals who reside in states that do not recognize such marriages, Kennedy’s closing paragraph creates some ambiguity on a very important point, since this decision, by its silence, leaves to the Executive Branch the task of figuring out how to implement federal laws and regulations without clear guidance.  Kennedy’s opinion might be read to restrict the federal obligation to recognizing marriages that are recognized by the state in which a couple resides, but it might alternatively be read to require the federal government to recognize lawfully contracted marriages regardless of where the couple happen to be when the issue arises.  The more expansive reading makes more sense, and seems consistent with the overall rhetorical stance of Kennedy’s opinion, but the history of subsequent reception of %Romer% and Lawrence shows Kennedy’s brand of inscrutable opinion-writing can give rise to contradictory views as to the precise holding of the Court.

Shortly after the opinion was announced, President Obama embraced the more expansive obligation of recognizing lawful marriages regardless of the couples’ residence, but emphasized that he was talking “as a president, not a lawyer,” and that it would be up to the Attorney General, working in concert with other department heads (and perhaps ultimately the federal courts), to sort this out.  Some department heads were quick on the draw.  Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel quickly indicated that the Defense Department would recognize lawful same-sex marriages for purposes of military benefits regardless of residence, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano chimed in similarly as to immigration issues administered by her department, including recognition of married bi-national couples for purposes of residency and citizenship applications.  The Office of Personnel Management for the federal government quickly fell into line, sending a notice to federal agencies on Friday that same-sex spouses of federal employees are now eligible for benefits coverage, retroactive to June 26, and establishing special open enrollment periods to get them signed up for benefits.  But it was less clear how this issue would be resolve for purposes of federal taxes, Social Security, and other programs that have traditionally relied on the place of residence in determining whether a couple is married.  The Internal Revenue Service issued a statement, saying that it would issue formal guidance as soon as possible, but without tipping its hand, setting off lots of speculation without hard data. 

Chief Justice Roberts’ dissenting opinion, after briefly stating agreement with Scalia’s view on jurisdiction, was devoted to attempting to cabin the impact of the decision by striving to characterize it as a “federalism” decision that would be of no relevance to the question whether same-sex couples have a right to marry under the 14th Amendment.  “The Court does not have before it,” he wrote, “and the logic of its opinion does not decide, the distinct question whether the States, in the exercise of their ‘historic and essential authority to define the marital relation,’ may continue to utilize the traditional definition of marriage.”  And it is accurate to say that Kennedy made clear that the Court was not addressing that question.  Nonetheless, virtually ignoring Kennedy’s 5th Amendment analysis and ultimate statement that Section 3 violates the 5th Amendment while expressly eschewing a decision based on federalism, Roberts asserted: “The dominant theme of the majority opinion is that the Federal Government’s intrusion into an area ‘central to state domestic relations law applicable to its residents and citizens’ is sufficiently ‘unusual’ to set off alarm bells.  I think that the majority goes off course, as I have said, but it is undeniable that its judgment is based on federalism.”  If that were the case, of course, the decision might be seen as having little relevance to the question whether states can deny gay people the right to marry.

But Justice Scalia emphatically disagreed, which explains why the Chief did not join that portion of his dissent devoted to the merits.  Characterizing Kennedy’s holding on the merits as “rootless and shifting” in terms of its “justifications,” he said, “For example, the opinion starts with seven full pages about the traditional power of States to define domestic relations – initially fooling many readers, I am sure, into thinking that this is a federalism opinion.”  One of those fooled, evidently, was the Chief Justice, unless, as seems more likely, his puzzlement was more strategic than real.  But, said Scalia, although Kennedy’s opinion continues to refer to federalism from time to time as part of its 5th Amendment analysis, the frequent references to equality and liberty make this a 5th Amendment case. 

However, Scalia complains, “if this is meant to be an equal-protection opinion, it is a confusing one.  The opinion does not resolve and indeed does not even mention what had been the central question in this litigation: whether, under the Equal Protection Clause, laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman are reviewed for more than mere rationality.”  Scalia said that he would “review this classification only for its rationality,” and the Court purports to do that, since it cites Moreno as authority, expressly a rational basis case.  “As nearly as I can tell, the Court agrees with that; its opinion does not apply strict scrutiny, and its central propositions are taken from rational-basis cases like Moreno. But the Court certainly does not apply anything that resembles that deferential framework.”  He then noted how Kennedy slipped back and forth between equality language and liberty language, but “never utters the dread words ‘substantive due process,’ perhaps sensing the disrepute into which that doctrine has fallen.”  (Disrepute in the Scalia household, perhaps, but not among those who disagree with the so-called originalist jurisprudence of Scalia and his acolytes on the Court.)  He also argued that this could not really be a due process case, because of the lack of a history of respect for same-sex marriage, a test that the Court has used in the past for determining whether particular conduct is entitled to protection under the Due Process Clause.  But Scalia was fighting a rear-guard action here, as Kennedy had eschewed the “history and tradition” test when writing for a majority of the Court in Lawrence, saying that longstanding historical regard for a right was not a necessary requirement for Due Process protection.  This is really part of the “living constitution” debate, in which Scalia recently took the position during a public talk that the Constitution is “dead, dead, dead” – not to say that the Constitution is meaningless, but rather to say that, in his view, the essence of a written Constitution is that its meaning is fixed upon its adoption and does not evolve over time.  This view has never won a firm majority on the Court, but Scalia writes as if it is well-established, as it is in his own mind.  Kennedy clearly disagrees, as do the four Democratic appointees and even, from time to time, Chief Justice Roberts.   Only Thomas and, perhaps, Alito, seem to adhere to Scalia’s views on this.

After ridiculing Kennedy’s opinion for never providing a fully-developed analysis of any of the doctrinal bases cited for the Court’s holding, Scalia wrote, “Some might conclude that this loaf could have used a while longer in the oven.  But that would be wrong; it is already overcooked.  The most expert care in preparation cannot redeem a bad recipe.  The sum of all the Court’s nonspecific hand-waving is that this law is invalid (maybe on equal-protection grounds, maybe on substantive-due-process grounds, and perhaps with some amorphous federalism component playing a role) because it is motivated by a ‘bare . . . desire to harm’ couples in same-sex marriages.”  Scalia then went on to hotly dispute – as he did in his Romer and Lawrence dissents – that antigay animosity was behind the challenged law, rejecting the idea that anti-gay legislation is necessarily the result of bigotry.  He suggested that Kennedy failed to engage the arguments put forth by BLAG to defend Section 3 “because it is harder to maintain the illusion of the Act’s supporters as unhinged members of a wild-eyed lynch mob when one first describes their views as they see them,” and accused the Court of labeling the proponents of DOMA as “enemies of the human race.” 

Also, as is his wont, Scalia predicted that the ultimate result of the opinion would be to decide the issues not presented to the Court, but beyond making predictions, and in a manner perhaps without precedent in the annals of the Supreme Court, Scalia inserted in his dissent several extended quotes from Kennedy’s opinion, edited to make the case that state laws denying same-sex couples the right to marry are unconstitutional.  Scalia provided a veritable roadmap for lower courts to use in striking down state anti-marriage amendments!  “By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency,” he insisted, “the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.”  Scalia concluded that the Court had improperly ventured into the political sphere, which is where he insisted that the issue of same-sex marriage should be resolved.

Alito’s dissent on the merits is more tempered than Scalia’s, adverting to the theories advocated by Prof. Robert George of Princeton University, a prominent foe of same-sex marriage who has argued that the traditional definition of marriage focused on its procreative potential and the complementarity of the two sexes, is an essential component of western civilization, with which we tamper at our peril.  After appointing out the different views as to the essential character of marriage, contrasting the traditional view of its procreative purpose and the modern view embraced by popular culture, Alito insisted that the Constitution takes no position between these two views and mandates neither.  Thus, the determination which view should be embraced by society is up to the polity speaking through the democratic process.  He argued that the Court should not intervene in this process.  “In our system of government,” he wrote, “ultimate sovereignty rests with the people, and the people have the right to control their own destiny.  Any change on a question so fundamental should be made by the people through their elected officials.”  And, “By asking the Court to strike down DOMA as not satisfying some form of heightened scrutiny, Windsor and the United States are really seeking to have the Court resolve a debate between two competing views of marriage. . .  The Constitution does not codify either of these views of marriage (although I suspect it would have been hard at the time of the adoption of the Constitution or the Fifth Amendment to find Americans who did not take the traditional view for granted).  The silence of the Constitution on this question should be enough to end the matter as far as the judiciary is concerned. . .  I would not presume to enshrine either vision of marriage in our constitutional jurisprudence.”

As noted above, Alito devoted a lengthy textual footnote, rather out of the blue, to deprecating the conduct of the Prop 8 trial, presenting this as an illustration of why, in his view, it is inappropriate for the courts to take on the same-sex marriage question.  “At times, the trial reached the heights of parody,” he wrote, “as when the trial judge questioned his ability to take into account the views of great thinkers of the past because they were unavailable to testify in person in his courtroom.”  He deprecated the contention in academic amicus briefs filed in Hollingsworth “that we are bound to accept the trial judge’s findings – including those on major philosophical questions and predictions about the future – unless they are ‘clearly erroneous.’  Only an arrogant legal culture that has lost all appreciation of its own limitations could take such a suggestion seriously,” he harrumphed.  Take that, you arrogant professors of constitutional law and civil procedure!  One suspects that Alito, who joined the dissent in Hollingsworth, was disappointed that he could not embody these comments in a majority or concurring opinion, and was eager to make these observations somewhere, so here they are in the other case.

The Proposition 8 Decision

The majority and dissenting opinions in Hollingsworth are shorter and need less discussion, since there was no comment in either concerning the merits of the 14th Amendment claim that Proposition 8, which inserted into the California Constitution an amendment providing that only different-sex marriages would be “valid or recognized in California,” violated the equal protection rights of same-sex couples. 

As noted above, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, accepted the contention that because the initiative proponents could not satisfy the traditional Article III standing test of having a tangible, personal interest in the outcome of the case (i.e., they were not asking the Court for a remedy specific to them, as Proposition 8 does not directly affect any of their own rights; presuming none of the proponents has any interest in marring a person of the same sex), they could not appeal the trial court’s decision.  If this means that sometimes state officials may rid themselves of noxious initiative products through the expedient of failing to defend them in the courts and then refusing to appeal the resulting decisions striking them down, then so be it.  That’s the way the system works, according to Roberts, because federal courts are only authorized to decide real cases between real parties.  “We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to,” concluded Roberts. “We decline to do so for the first time here.” 

At the same time, Roberts made clear, the trial court did have jurisdiction, despite the failure of the named defendants to provide a substantive defense, and thus there is no jurisdictional fault identified by the Supreme Court with District Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the case.  Justice Kennedy, in dissent, argued that the alternative standing theory was adequate to make this appeal proper, resting on the California Supreme Court’s admitted role as the authoritative exponent of California law.  That didn’t impress Chief Justice Roberts.  Since federal standing is a question of federal law, the California Supreme Court’s ruling was not binding on the federal courts.  “The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is vacated,” he wrote, “and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.”  That should mean, in the normal course of events, that the 9th Circuit will lift its stay of Judge Walker’s Order, shifting the focus of attention to the implementation of that Order.

There was some comment about the “odd” line-up of the justices in this 5-4 ruling.  The Chief Justice was joined by Justice Scalia and three members of the “liberal wing” of the Court, Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan.  Justice Kennedy’s dissent was joined by Justices Thomas and Alito and the remaining member of the “liberal” wing, Justice Sotomayor.  Thus, three justices who voted to strike down Section 3 of DOMA, and presumably would find Prop 8 to be unconstitutional, agreed with the Chief Justice that there was no jurisdiction to rule on the merits.  As to the dissenters, Justice Alito had found jurisdiction in Windsor and was clearly itching to uphold Proposition 8.  Justice Sotomayor, to judge by her general jurisprudential stance and her questions and comments at oral argument, would probably have voted to affirm the lower courts and strike down Prop 8 were she able to reach the issue.  Justice Thomas would most likely have agreed with Alito as to the merits.  Justice Kennedy’s views are more difficult to pin down, but one suspects that he would not be arguing so fiercely in favor of jurisdiction in this case if he did not have a strong view how it should be decided.  Perhaps reading the tea-leaves of his Windsor opinion and taking Scalia’s dissent at face value, Kennedy was also poised to strike down Prop 8.  So, the question occurs, if both Sotomayor and Kennedy were poised to strike down Prop 8, why did the other three “liberals” side with Roberts to dismiss the case? 

For months, commentators have been struggling with Justice Ginsburg’s views on Roe v. Wade and what they might portend for her position in the same-sex marriage cases.  Ginsburg has frequently stated that Roe was a premature and unduly expansive ruling, in light of the evolving political views on abortion rights at the time it was decided.  She has suggested that had the Court written a narrower decision, leaving the future scope of abortion rights to the legislative process, abortion might not have become the hot-button political issue that it quickly became, with all the divisive effects flowing from that development.  One speculates that Breyer and Kagan joined the Chief Justice in dismissing the appeal, having concluded that a decision on the merits might not strike down Prop 8 because Ginsburg might not supply the necessary fifth vote.  It may even be that Ginsburg joined out of the pragmatic view that a dismissal would result in allowing the district court’s opinion to go into effect and same-sex marriage to resume in California.  Thus, Prop 8 would be vanquished by default without the Supreme Court having to go on record as to whether same-sex couples have a right to marry under the 14th Amendment.  This might seem to be the most prudent way for the Court to deal with an issue as to which there remains much public controversy.  The art of avoiding merits decisions while obtaining desired results is a subtle weapon in the judge’s arsenal, perhaps cannily deployed here by Justice Ginsburg.  In this light, Justice Scalia’s concurrence with the Chief might seem odd, given his ardent opposition to same-sex marriage, but on the other hand his concurrence seems consistent with his impassioned dissent on jurisdiction in Windsor, in which the Chief concurred.

So, the bottom line on the Hollingsworth non-decision is that the Court, in effect, decided to let the district court opinion be the final, unreviewable word on the narrow question of whether Prop 8 was unconstitutional, without creating any precedent binding on other federal courts, since only appellate rulings create binding precedents.

But where did that leave the case after the stay was lifted and Judge Walker’s Orderwent into effect?  As to that, there was not complete agreement among the “parties” – if that term is loosely deployed to take in the original plaintiffs, the named defendants, and the intervenors whose standing to appeal had been definitively rejected by the Supreme Court.  The plaintiffs argued all along that if the appeal was dismissed, Judge Walker’s Order required the state of California to make marriage licenses available to same-sex couples and to recognize those marriages as fully equal to the marriages of different-sex couples throughout the state, not limited to the two counties (Alameda and Los Angeles) whose clerks were named defendants, and certainly not limited to the two plaintiff couples who brought the case.  In its 2009 decision finding that Prop 8 had been duly enacted, the California Supreme Court made clear that same-sex couples who married prior to the passage of Prop 8 remained married, and that their marriages were entitled to equal treatment under California law.  Indeed, that Court also ruled that pursuant to its prior decision on the merits in the marriage cases, domestic partnerships in California would be entitled to the same status as marriages under state law in order to satisfy the court’s equal protection and due process holdings.  It became clear after the Supreme Court’s decision was announced that Governor Jerry Brown (who was an original named defendant as attorney general) and Attorney General Kamala Harris agreed with that view.   Comments by the justices during the oral argument hinted that dismissal on grounds of jurisdiction was a likely outcome, and Governor Brown, anticipating the ruling, asked the attorney general for an analysis of “the scope of the district court’s injunction.”  She prepared a letter, which is dated June 3, advising the governor that “the injunction would apply statewide to all 58 counties, and effectively reinstate the ruling of the California Supreme Court in In re Marriage Cases (2008), 43 Cal.4th 757,857.” Harris concluded that the Department of Public Health could instruct all county officials to resume issuing marriage licenses and recording the subsequent marriages upon the lifting of the stay.  The governor accepted this advice, and hours after the Supreme Court’s opinion was announced, the Department sent instructions to all County Clerks and County Recorders accordingly.  As soon as the stay was lifted, the plaintiffs were alerted, rushed to get their marriage licenses, and were promptly married.  Some clerks offices planned to stay open late Friday to process license applications from same-sex couples.

The initiative proponents had a different view, not unexpectedly, and Andrew Pugno, their California counsel, argued that a trial court ruling is not binding beyond the immediate parties.  He contended that the only couples entitled to the benefit of Walker’s Order were the plaintiffs. This was not brought as a class action, he contended, and all the clerks in the state were not joined as co-defendants.  He also argued that it was established in California law that only appellate rulings have statewide effect.  Whether that would be true concerning a federal district court ruling as opposed to a California trial court ruling seems questionable, in light of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  If Prop 8 is unconstitutional as a basis for denying marriage licenses to the plaintiffs, surely it is unconstitutional if used to deny marriage licenses to any other similarly-situated same-sex couple anywhere in California, and principles of res judicata should prevent the need to re-litigate the matter in each county.  Pugno threatened to take some sort of legal action to block implementation of the Order beyond the immediate parties, and criticized the lifting of the stay by the 9th Circuit panel and subsequent performance of marriages as lawless and inappropriately rushed.

As to timing, the Supreme Court’s procedures give disappointed parties up to 25 days to file motions for rehearing, after which the Court sends its mandate out to the lower court, in this case ordering dismissal of the appeal.  It seemed unlikely that the Court would grant rehearing in either case, as that would require the disappointed party to persuade a member of the majority to change his or her views.  The 9th Circuit Clerk filed an entry acknowledging receipt of the Court’s decision promptly after it was announced, a welcome artifact of our modern age of near-instantaneous electronic accessibility of high court rulings, and responded promptly to Attorney General Harris’s request to the lift the stay.  Perhaps facts on the ground will successfully outflank any attempt by the proponents to interfere with the speedy implementation of the Order.

Also on Friday, the 28th, came what is probably the first judicial reliance on U.S. v. Windsor, as a federal district judge in Michigan cited the case in ruling on pending pretrial motions in an action challenging the Attorney General’s position that an anti-marriage amendment prevents the implementation of a recently enacted domestic partnership law.  More details on that when I’ve had an opportunity to read the opinion.

Justice Ginsburg Calls for New Civil Rights Restoration Act

Posted on: June 24th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

Dissenting from two 5-4 decisions by the Supreme Court in employment discrimination cases issued on June 24, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called for a new Civil Rights Restoration Act, referring to a 1991 statute that overruled or modified several Supreme Court decisions on federal employment discrimination law.  In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the Court interpreted Title VII’s anti-retaliation provision narrowly to apply only to cases where the plaintiff showed that the employer’s retaliatory conduct was motivated solely by the employee’s claim of discrimination.  In Vance v. Ball State University, the Court ruled that an employer could not be held vicariously liable for workplace harassment unless the harasser is a “supervisor” who is “empowered by the employer to take tangible employment actions against the victim” of the harassment.

In both cases, the Court was resolving a diversity of views about the correct interpretation of Title VII by the lower federal courts.  The Nassar ruling on retaliation reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, while the Vance ruling affirmed a decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had disagreed with the 2nd and 4th Circuits and the EEOC as to when the vicarious liability rule governing harassment by supervisors should be applied.  In both cases, the Court’s 5-4 majority came down on the side favored by employers, cutting back on the protection Title VII provides to workers against workplace discrimination.  Thus Justice Ginsburg’s call for corrective action.

Both majority opinions reach their results by avoiding the realities of the workplace, as dissenting opinions by Ginsburg, joined by Justice Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, point out.

As to the retalation case, the Court seized upon the complexities of a statute amended in response to prior Supreme Court decisions with which Congress disagreed.  The Court had ruled, in a prior case, that when an employee proves that his or her race or color, religion, national origin or sex was a motivating factor for adverse action by the employer, an employer could defeat the discrimination claim by showing that it would have taken the same action for a non-discriminatory reason.  This is the so-called “mixed motive” case.  Congress disagreed with this result, amending the statute in 1991 to provide that as long as an employee showed that one of the prohibited grounds for discrimination was a factor in the employer’s action, the statute was violated.  Congress also provided, however, that an employer’s proof of a non-discriminatory motive could result in limiting the remedy imposed by the court, eliminating damages and reinstatement orders in such situations. 

The EEOC and some lower federal courts took the view that the 1991 amendments applied to all discrimination claims under Title VII, whether they involved status discrimination (discrimination because of an individual race or color, religion, national origin or sex) or discrimination against an employee who had opposed unlawful discrimination or filed a discriminate claim against the employer.  However, in this case, the Court seized upon the particular wording of the 1991 amendment to hold that it applied only to status discrimination claims.  The Court pointed out that Title VII has separate provisions dealing with status discrimination and retaliation, and that Congress appeared (at least to the Court) to have been concerned only with the former when it amended the statute in 1991.  The Court also drew an analogy to its treatment of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, a separate statute, which the Court has construed to impose liability on employers only when an employee proves that discrimination was solely because of the employee’s age.  The Court had reached that result by observing that the 1991 amendment did not, by its terms, apply to the ADEA.  The Court also suggested that adopting the mixed motivation standard of the 1991 amendment for retaliation claims would open the floodgates to retaliation claims by making them too easy for plaintiffs to win.

Responding to Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court, Justice Ginsburg charges that “the court appears drive by a zeal to reduce the number of retaliation claims filed against employers,” although, she asserted, “Congress had no such goal in mind” when it adopted the 1991 amendment.  “Today’s misguided judgment, along with the judgment in Vance v. Ball State University, should prompt yet another Civil Rights Restoration Act.”

In Vance, where Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the 5-4 majority, the Court dealt with the ever-contentious issue of employer liability for workplace harassment of one employee by another.  In earlier cases, the Court had ruled that when an employee is harassed by a supervisor because of the employee’s sex, the employer could be held “vicariously liable” for such harassment because the supervisor is acting as the employer’s agent, empowered by the employer to make decisions affecting the employment of the victim.  But the Court had left it to subsequent cases to work out exactly how “supervisor” should be defined for this purpose.

Many lower courts, and the Equal Empoyment Opportunity Commission, have taken the view that any employee who has authority or power over another employee, such as to direct where, when or how that employee does their work, should be deemed a supervisor for this purpose, but the majority of the Court disagreed, holding that only a worker who can take “tangible” actions against an employee, such as actions affecting their pay or benefits, discharge or demotion or the like, would be deemed a supervisor for whose harassing conduct an employee could be held “vicariously liable.”  (In the absence of vicarious liability, an employee suffering harassment would have to show that the employer was negligent in order to hold the employer liable for harassment by a co-worker.  Even in cases of potential vicarious liability, if an employee subject to harassment does not also suffer “tangible” adverse consequences, an employer can escape liability by showing that it has a policy against harassment and a workplace grievance system to address complaints that was not properly invoked by the employer.)

Justice Alito said that the prior caselaw contemplated a clear distinction between supervisors and other employees, and a definition based on authority to make such decisions concern tangible factors provided the basis for such a clear distinction.  He criticized the approach taken by the EEOC and some lower courts as a “nebulous definition” that was not easy to apply, noted that the term is not expressly defined by Congress in Title VII, and thus concludes that it should be construed in light of the elaborate framework the Court had adopted in prior cases to determine whether it was appropriate to hold the employer liable for harassing conduct by employees.  In both of the cases, it was clear that the harassing employees were “supervisors” as the majority of the Court defines the term in this case: individuals having authority regarding “tangible employment actions.”   The Court found such a characterization to be “implicit in the characteristics of the framework that we adopted” in those cases, that the ability to impose “direct economic harm” was the “defining characteristic of a supervisor, not simply a characteristic of a subset of an ill-defined class of employees who qualify as supervisors.”  Justice Alito commended the relative ease of determining supervisory status under this test, pointing out that “the question of supervisor status, when contested, can very often be resolved as a matter of law before trial.”  In other words, this decision is intended, like many prior decisions of the Court, to enhance the ability of federal trial judges to dispose of employment discrimination cases without a trial by deciding, as a matter of law, that the employer cannot be held liable because the harasser was not a supervisor and the plaintiff introduced no substantial evidence of employer negligence.

Justice Ginsburg sharply responded:  “The Court today strikes from the supervisory category employees who control the day-to-day schedules and assignments of others, confining the category to those formally empowered to take tangible employment actions.  The limitation the court decrees diminishes the force” of its prior decisions on employer liability for harassment by supervisors, “ignores the conditions under which members of the work force labor, and disserves the objective of Title VII to prevent discrimination from infecting the Nation’s workplaces.”  Ginsburg points out that low-level supervisory personnel can, nonetheless, make a subordinate’s life in the workplace very uncomfortable, because they are empowered by the employer to make decisions that affect employees in their day-to-day work. 

The Court’s decision, says Ginsburg, “is blind to the realities of the workplace, and it discounts the guidance of the EEOC,” which had taken a broader view under which any worker to whom the employer has given authority “to controlt he conditions under which subordinates do their daily work” is a supervisor for purposes of imputing liability for harassment.  Ginsburg argued that prior decisions by the court had reached such conclusions, including — contrary to Justice Alito’s assertions — one of the very cases in which the  Court had established the framework for analyzing employer liability.  Ginsburg also pointed out that the narrow definition of supervisor adopted by the Court in this case will result in employers having a “diminished incentive to train those who control their subordinates’ work activites and schedules, i.e., the supervisors who actually interact with employees.”    She argued that the Court majority is “insistent on constructing artifical categories where context should be key,” and charged that it “proceeds on an immoderate and unrestrained course to corral Title VII.” 

As in her dissent in the other case, Ginsburg points out that Congress has repeatedly had to step in and amend the statute to restore the protection against discrimination that Congress intended to provide for workers.  “The ball is once again in Congress’s court to correct the error into which this Court has fallen,” she concludes, “and to restore the robust protections against workplace harassment the Court weakens today.”