New York Law School

Art Leonard Observations

Posts Tagged ‘Title IX gender identity discrimination’

Alliance Defending Freedom Loses Appeal in Transgender High School Athletics Case

Posted on: December 19th, 2022 by Art Leonard No Comments

A unanimous three-judge panel of the New York City-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has rejected an appeal by the conservative religious litigation group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from a ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny, who last year had rejected a challenge to the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy of allowing transgender students to participate in high school athletic competitions consistent with their gender identity.

The December 16 opinion for the 2nd Circuit panel in Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 34791, 2022 WL 17724715, by Judge Denny Chin found in agreement with Judge Chatigny that the plaintiffs (four cisgender women who competed on their high school track teams in CIAC-sponsored competition) lacked standing for the injunctive relief they were seeking, and that their claim for damages was barred because the defendants were not on notice when they accepted federal funding that their transgender participation policy would violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Indeed, the court found that Title IX most likely has the opposite effect, requiring schools to allow transgender students to compete consistent with their gender identity.  ADF, claiming in a press release that the court “got it wrong” and that it was discriminatory for girls to compete against “males” in athletics, announced that it was considering “all options”, which could include a possible appeal, either requesting n banc review by the 2nd Circuit or requesting the Supreme Court to hear the case. (ADF routinely calls transgender girls “boys” or “males” in its activities attacking affirmative transgender rights policies.)

The plaintiffs – Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicoletti – were high school track competitors who claimed that allowing two transgender girls – Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller – to compete with them in CIAC-sponsored matches unfairly discriminated against plaintiffs on the basis of their sex.  Yearwood and Miller finished ahead of each of the plaintiffs in various track events during 2019 competition, although there were also events in which one or more of the plaintiffs finished ahead of the transgender girls.

The plaintiffs claimed that the CIAC policy violates Title IX, which forbids schools that receive federal funding from denying “equal educational opportunity on the basis of sex.”  Title IX provided the impetus for school programs to significantly increase opportunities for girls to participate in athletics since it was passed in 1972.  More recently, it has been interpreted by many (but not all) federal courts to prohibit discrimination because of gender identity.  This interpretation was bolstered in June 2020 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731, that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex,” extends to claims of discrimination because of “transgender status.”  Federal courts have generally looked to Title VII interpretations of “discrimination because of sex” when interpreting Title IX, despite slight variations in the wording of the statutes (“because of sex” versus “on the basis of sex”).

The plaintiffs alleged that the CIAC policy “is now regularly resulting in boys displacing girls in competitive track events in Connecticut,” that “students who are born female now have materially fewer opportunities to stand on the victory podium, fewer opportunities to participate in post-season elite competition, fewer opportunities for public recognition as champions, and a much smaller chance of setting recognized records, than students who are born male.”  They claimed a “direct violation” of Title IX.

But all the plaintiffs were able to compete, and in the entire state of Connecticut there were only two transgender girls with whom they were competing.  Furthermore, by the time their suit was filed and Judge Chatigny ruled on the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case, both of the transgender girls (who were permitted to intervene as defendants represented by the ACLU) had graduated and there were no transgender girls participating in CIAC-sponsored meets.  The plaintiffs had asked the court to order the CIAC to bar CIAC from enforcing its policy and to delete the transgender girls from the records of the matches in which they had competed, which would elevate one or more of the plaintiffs to higher standing in some of those matches.

The Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities also intervened as a defendant in support of the CIAC policy.  Connecticut’s human rights law forbids gender identity discrimination.

Judge Chatigny concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing for the relief they were seeking.  Some of their claims were deemed mooted by the passage of time and subsequent events.  By the time the motion to be dismiss was decided, the plaintiffs, who were near graduation from high school, were no longer affected by the policy, so lacked standing to seek an injunction against its enforcement.  Also, the plaintiffs alleged that their athletic records were crucial to their ability to gain college admissions and subsequent employment, but by the time the Court of Appeals was considering this appeal, the plaintiffs had all been admitted to college and the impact of their final standing in CIAC competitions on their employment opportunities was deemed too speculative to support a claim of actual injury, which is necessary for the relief they were seeking.  The Court of Appeals agreed with Judge Chatigny and affirmed the denial of injunctive relief.

As to the plaintiffs’ damage claims, under a 1981 Supreme Court precedent, Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, a damage claim under a statute that imposes a federal non-discrimination requirement on a defendant because the defendant is the recipient of federal funds may not be made unless the funding recipient was on notice when they decided to accept the funding about the specific non-discrimination obligation to which they were subjecting themselves by accepting the money.

The burden is on the plaintiff to show that defendants were “on notice” that by letting transgender girls compete, they were violating the Title IX rights of cisgender girls.  “We conclude that only the opposite has been shown here,” wrote Judge Chin for the Court of Appeals.

The judge first noted that “guidance” from the Department of Education (DOE) under Title IX “has fluctuated with the changes in presidential administrations.”  In 2016, during the Obama Administration, DOE advised schools, based on the Equal Employment Opportunity’s decision that Title VII covered gender identity discrimination, that schools could not discriminate against transgender students, and this required allowing them to participate in school athletics.  In 2017, with the Trump Administration, that guidance was withdrawn by DOE on the ground that it needed to be “considered more completely.”  In 2020, DOE sent the CIAC a letter of “impending enforcement action” reacting to publicity about this lawsuit, interpreting Title IX to require that gender-specific sports teams be separated based on “biological sex,” but that was withdrawn by the new Biden Administration in February 2021 before any action was taken by DOE against the CIAC.

Perhaps more significantly, Judge Chin pointed out, although this precise issue has not yet been decided by other courts of appeals in the sports context, there are have been numerous court of appeals decisions in other circuits, many of which were denied review by the Supreme Court, holding that schools covered by Title IX cannot discriminate against transgender students, and cases holding that allowing transgender students to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity do not violate the Title IX rights of cisgender students.

“Although these cases from our sister circuits do not address the exact issue of participation of transgender athletes on gender specific sports teams,” wrote Chin, “such authority nonetheless establishes that discrimination based on transgender status is generally prohibited under federal law, and further supports the conclusion that the CIAC and its member schools lacked clear notice that the Policy violates Title IX.”  The court also rejected ADF’s argument that the plaintiffs were entitled to an exception from the Pennhurst “notice” rule because defendants “intentionally” discriminated against the plaintiffs, commenting that “the Policy could not be considered ‘intentional conduct that violates the clear terms of’ Title IX, given Bostock and the decisions from other Courts of Appeals.  Thus the ‘intentional conduct exception is inapplicable here.’”

In its press release denouncing the decision, ADF pointed out that 18 states have now passed laws requiring that participation in sex-specific athletic competition must be based on “biological sex” as identified at birth.  However, if Title IX protects transgender girls from being excluded from participating in such sports, the state laws would be preempted by federal law.  Although the 2nd Circuit decision does not directly rule on the merits of that question, Judge Chin’s ruling strongly suggests that attempts by schools to exclude transgender girls could subject the schools to Title IX liability.

Senior Judge Chatigny was appointed by President Bill Clinton.  Judge Chin was appointed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by President Barack Obama.

 

 

Supreme Court Will Hear Title IX Transgender Discrimination Case and Case Challenging Social Media Restrictions on Sex Offenders

Posted on: October 30th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

Supreme Court Will Hear Title IX Transgender Discrimination Case and Case Challenging Social Media Restrictions on Sex Offenders

The Supreme Court substantially enlivened its docket for the October 2016 Term on October 28 when it granted petitions for certiorari in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., No. 16-273, and Packingham v. North Carolina, No. 15-1194.  In Gloucester, a school district in Virginia, obligated not to discriminate because of sex under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, seeks review of the 4th Circuit’s decision, 822 F.3d 709 (2016), holding that the district court should defer to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of a regulation on restrooms in educational facilities, 34 C.F.R. Sec. 106.33, that would require the school to let a transgender boy use the boys’ restroom facilities at his high school.  In Packingham, the petitioner seeks to overturn the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision, 368 N.C. 380, 777 S.E.2d 738 (2015), upholding his conviction for violating North Carolina’s rules governing registered sex offenders by posting a message on Facebook.com celebrating the dismissal of a traffic ticket.  Lester Packingham claims that the broad prohibition of his use of social media violates his 1st Amendment rights.

The Gloucester Case

The Gloucester case was closely watched by LGBT lawyers and legal commentators for presenting the Court with a vehicle to respond to the broader question of whether federal laws prohibiting discrimination “because of sex,” mostly passed many decades ago, can now be construed to forbid gender identity discrimination (and maybe, also, sexual orientation discrimination), despite the obvious lack of intent by the enacting legislators in the 1960s and 1970s to reach such discrimination.  That is, to recur to a question repeatedly raised by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, are we governed by the intentions of our legislators or by reasonable interpretations of the actual texts they adopted in their statutes, or that administrative agencies subsequently adopted in regulations intended to aid in the enforcement of the statutes?  Scalia, who was an ardent foe of using “legislative history” as a method of statutory interpretation, decisively argued that courts should focus on the language of the statute, not viewed in isolation of course but rather in the context of the overall statute (including any declaration of congressional purpose contained in it), and he won unanimous concurrence by his colleagues in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998), holding that a man employed in an all-male workplace could maintain an action for hostile environment sexual harassment under Title VII, even though it was unlikely that the enacting Congress in 1964 was thinking about same-sex harassment when it amended Title VII to add “sex” to the list of forbidden grounds for workplace discrimination.  Scalia wrote for the Court that we are governed by the statutory text, and thus Mr. Oncale could maintain his Title VII suit subject to his burden to prove that he was harassed “because of sex” as specified by the statute.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has prominently cited and quoted from Justice Scalia’s Oncale opinion in its federal employment rulings of recent years (Macy, Lusardi, Baldwin) holding that discrimination because of gender identity or sexual orientation is “necessarily” discrimination “because of sex,” even though the 1964 Congress would not necessarily have thought so.  Although Gloucester does not directly involve Title VII, federal courts have generally followed Title VII precedents when they interpret the sex discrimination ban in Title IX, as the 4th Circuit explained in this case.

The controversy arose when fellow students and their parents objected to Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, using the boys’ restrooms during fall term of his sophomore year, in 2014. The principal of the high school had given Grimm permission to use the boys’ restrooms, after being presented with the facts about Grimm’s transition and his discomfort with continuing to use the girls’ restrooms, since he was dressing, grooming, and – most significantly – strongly identifying as male.  Responding to the complaints, the Gloucester County School Board voted to establish a policy under which students were required to use the restroom consistent with their “biological sex” – the sex identified on their birth certificate – or to use a gender-neutral restroom, of which there were a few in the high school.  Grimm was dissatisfied with this turn of events and enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia to sue the school board in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Newport News.  The case was assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar, who was appointed to the district court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.  The plaintiff was identified in the original complaint as “G.G., by his next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm,” but Gavin Grimm decided early on to be open about his role as plaintiff and has spoken publicly about the case.  The complaint relied on Title IX as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction by the plaintiff and a motion to dismiss by the defendants on September 17, 2015, 132 F. Supp. 3d 736, Judge Doumar found that Grimm could not win a ruling on the merits of his Title IX claim because, in the judge’s view, Title IX regulations expressly allowed schools to maintain separate restroom facilities for boys and girls based on “sex,” and so it was not unlawful for them to require Grimm to use restrooms consistent with his “sex” which, in the school district’s view, was female. He rejected the ACLU’s claim that he should defer to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of the “bathroom regulation,” which was articulated in a letter that the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) sent in January 2015 as a “party in interest” in response to Grimm’s request for the Department’s assistance in his case.  OCR took the position, consistent with recent developments in sex discrimination law, that Grimm should be treated as a boy under the circumstances because it was undisputed that this was his gender identity, and thus under the regulation he was entitled to use the boy’s restroom, although he could also request as an accommodation to have access to gender-neutral facilities.   To Judge Doumar, the text of the regulation was clear and unambiguous, so the OCR’s attempt to ‘interpret’ the regulation in favor of Grimm’s claim was not entitled to deference from the court.  He wrote that deferring to the position articulated in the letter would allow OCR to “create a de facto new regulation.”   Doumar opined that if OCR wanted to change the regulation, it should go through the procedures set out in the Administrative Procedure Act, a time-consuming process that would result in a new or amended regulation that would then be subject to direct judicial review in the court of appeals.  As to the facts, Doumar referred to Grimm in his opinion as a “natal female” and seemingly was unwilling to credit the idea that for purposes of the law Grimm should be treated as a boy.  To Doumar, the case presented the simple question whether the school district had to let a girl use the boy’s restroom, and under the “clear” regulation the answer to that question was “No.”  While denying the preliminary injunction and dismissing the Title IX claim, Judge Doumar reserved judgment on the Equal Protection Claim.

Grimm appealed to the 4th Circuit, which reversed Judge Doumar in a 2-1 opinion on April 19, 2016.  Where Doumar saw clarity in the regulation, the 4th Circuit majority saw ambiguity, although a dissenting judge sided with Judge Doumar.  Although the regulation clearly said that schools could maintain separate restroom facilities for males and females, it said nothing directly about which restrooms transgender students could use, thus creating the ambiguity.  Unlike Judge Doumar, the 4th Circuit majority was unwilling to accept the School Board’s argument that a person’s sex is definitely established by their birth certificate.  The court took note of the developing case law in other circuits and in many district courts accepting the proposition that sex discrimination laws are concerned not just with genetic or “biological” sex but rather with the range of factors and characteristics that go into gender, including gender identity and expression.  Many federal courts (including several on the appellate level) have come to accept the proposition that gender identity and sex are inextricably related, that gender dysphoria and transgender identity are real phenomena that deeply affect the identity of people, and that transgender people are entitled to be treated consistent with their gender identity.  The court mentioned, in addition to the OCR letter, a December 2014 OCR publication setting forth the same view, which had been published on the Department of Education’s website.  Thus, the School District’s questioning of deference to an “unpublished letter” was not entirely factual, as the Department had previously published its interpretation on its website, and it was relying on an earlier ruling under Title VII by the EEOC in the Macy employment discrimination case, which was issued in 2012.

Having found that the regulation was ambiguous as to the issue before the court, the 4th Circuit relied on Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452 (1997), a Supreme Court decision holding that an agency’s interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation should be given controlling weight by the court unless the interpretation is “plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation or statute.”  In other words, a reasonable agency interpretation of an ambiguous regulation should be deferred to by the court.  The 4th Circuit panel majority went on to find that the requirements of Auer were met in this case, and remanded the matter to Judge Doumar to reconsider his ruling.  The court’s discussion made clear what direction the reconsideration should take and stressed urgency. Judge Doumar reacted with alacrity, issuing the requested preliminary injunction on June 23.  The School Board sought a stay, which was denied by both Judge Doumar and the 4th Circuit, which also denied a petition for rehearing en banc. With the new school year looming, and desperate to avoid having to let Grimm use the boys’ restrooms during his final year of high school, the School Board petitioned the Supreme Court for a stay of the preliminary injunction, which was granted on August 3 by a vote of 5-3.  See 136 S. Ct. 2442.  Justice Stephen Breyer, taking the unusual step of issuing a brief statement explaining why he had voted for the stay along with the four more conservative members of the Court; said it was an “accommodation.”  There was speculation at the time about what that meant.  In light of the October 28 vote to grant the School District’s petition for certiorari, it probably meant that the four conservatives had indicated they would likely vote to grant a petition for certiorari to review the 4th Circuit’s decision, so in Breyer’s view it made sense to delay implementing the injunction and to preserve the status quo, as the case would eventually be placed on the Court’s active docket for the October 2016 Term (which runs through June 2017).  Breyer was careful to refrain from expressing any view about the merits in his brief statement.  After the School Board filed its petition for certiorari on August 29, the case generated considerable interest, attracting more than a dozen amicus briefs in support or opposition to the petition, including briefs from many states and from members of Congress.  There will undoubtedly be heavy media interest when the parties file their merits briefs with the Court, accompanied by numerous amicus briefs on both sides of the case.

The School Board’s petition to the Court posed three questions, first asking whether the %Auer% doctrine, which some of the Justices have signaled a desire to overrule, should be reconsidered; second asking whether under the Auer doctrine “an unpublished agency letter that, among other things, does not carry the force of law and was adopted in the context of the very dispute in which deference is sought” merits deference; and third asking whether the Department’s interpretation of Title IX and the bathroom regulation should be “given effect”?  The Court granted the petition only as to the second and third questions, so there are not four members of the Court ready to reconsider Auer, at least in the context of this case.

The remaining questions give the Court different paths to a decision, one of which has minimal substantive doctrinal significance, while others could make this a landmark ruling on the possible application of federal sex discrimination statutes and regulations to discrimination claims by sexual minorities.

The Court might agree with the School Board that no deference is due to an agency position formulated in response to a particular case and expressed in an unpublished agency letter. This could result in a remand to the 4th Circuit for a new determination of whether Judge Doumar’s dismissal of the Title IX claim was correct in the absence of any need to defer to the agency’s interpretation, a question as to which the 4th Circuit majority has already signaled an answer in its discussion of the merits.

Alternatively, and more efficiently in terms of the development of the law, the Court could take on the substantive issue and decide, at the least, whether interpreting Title IX to extend to gender identity discrimination claims is a viable interpretation, in light of the Court’s seminal ruling in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), that an employer’s use of sex stereotypes to the disadvantage of an employee’s promotion application was evidence of intentional discrimination because of sex.  It was that ruling that eventually led federal courts to conclude that because transgender people generally do not conform to sex stereotypes concerning their “biological” sex as determined at birth, discrimination against them is a form of “sex discrimination” in violation of such federal laws as the Fair Credit Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  The EEOC also relied on Price Waterhouse in reaching its conclusion that transgender plaintiffs could assert discrimination claims under Title VII, and the 6th and 11th Circuits have relied on it in finding that claims of gender identity discrimination by public employees should be treated the same as sex discrimination claims under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Were the Supreme Court to rule by majority vote that laws banning discrimination “because of sex” also “necessarily” cover discrimination because of gender identity, rather than issuing a narrower ruling focusing solely on Title IX, one could plausibly assert that the inclusion of “gender identity” in the pending Equality Act bill would not be, strictly speaking, necessary in order to establish a federal policy against gender identity discrimination under all federal sex discrimination laws. But it is possible that the Court might write a more narrowly focused decision that would in some way be logically restricted to Title IX claims. At least one district court, in a case involving a transgender student at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that there were significant enough differences between workplaces and educational institutions to merit a different approach under Title VII and Title IX, especially noting that many of the students affected by Title IX are not adults, while most people affected by Title VII are older, more experienced, and less susceptible to psychological injury in the realm of sexual development.  There was the suggestion that sexual privacy concerns in the context of an educational institution are different from such concerns in the context of an adult workplace.  The Supreme Court has generally preferred to decide statutory interpretation cases on narrow grounds, so it is possible that a merits decision in this case would not necessarily decide how other sex discrimination laws should be construed.

This case will most likely be argued early in 2017, and it may not be decided until the end of the Court’s term in June. Thus, it is possible that Gavin Grimm could win but never personally benefit as a student at Gloucester County’s high school, since he may have completed his studies before the final decision is issued.  But, of course, if he goes on to college, a winning decision would personally benefit him in being able to use men’s restrooms if he attends a college subject to Title IX – unless, given another complication of our times, he decides to attend a religious school that raises theological objections to letting him use such facilities and seeks to rely on the Hobby Lobby decision to avoid complying with Title IX.  We suspect, however, that his higher education would likely avoid that complication!

The Supreme Court has not granted as many petitions as usual thus far this fall, leading to speculation that it is trying to avoid granting review in cases where the justices might be predictably split evenly on the outcome and thus would not be able to render a precedential decision. If the Senate Republicans stand firm on their position that President Obama’s nominee for the vacant seat, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, will not be considered for confirmation, it is possible that the Court will have only eight justices when the Gloucester case is argued.  A tie vote by the Court would leave the 4th Circuit’s decision in place, but it would not be precedential outside of the 4th Circuit.  If a newly-elected president nominates a new candidate and the confirmation process takes the average time of several months, a new justice would probably not be seated in time to participate in deciding this case, unless the Court voted to hold it over for re-argument.  (In the past, the Court has sometimes held new arguments in cases that were heard when the Court was shorthanded.  This happened once when Justice Lewis Powell missed many arguments due to ill health, and his colleagues left it up to him whether to participate in those cases, in some instances by holding new arguments.)  This raises the possibility that Grimm’s graduation from high school might be found to have mooted the case, resulting in a dismissal on jurisdictional grounds.  This wouldn’t be an issue, of course, had the lawsuit been filed by DOE and the Justice Department, but where the plaintiff is an individual, his standing remains an issue throughout consideration of the case.

The Packingham Case

In the Packingham case, the North Carolina Supreme Court, reversing a decision by the state’s court of appeals, held that a state law restricting certain on-line social media use by all registered sex offenders was neither facially unconstitutional nor unconstitutional as applied to the defendant, Lester Gerard Packingham.  The North Carolina court, which divided 5-2 on the case, concluded that the statute was a regulation of conduct that incidentally affects freedom of speech, thus subject to heightened but not strict scrutiny, and that it survived such review due to the state’s important interest in protecting minors from sexual exploitation and to the measures taken by the legislature to narrow the scope of on-line communications that would be affected.

Packingham was convicted in 2002 of a sexual offense involving a minor. The opinion for the Supreme Court by Justice Robert H. Edmunds, Jr., does not specify the nature of the offense, but a reference in the dissenting opinion suggests it did not involve violence.  He did, however, have to register as a sex offender.  In 2008, the state legislature amended the sex offender registration law to make it a crime for a registered sex offender to “access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages on the commercial social networking Web site.”  The statute included a detailed definition of the characteristics of the kinds of sites that would be prohibited, and explicitly exempted various kinds of websites.  In effect, the ban is on sites where a registered sex offender might be able to identify and communicate directly with minors.  Sites that require individuals to be at least 18 years old in order to be members would not be affected by the ban, for example, and those that limited their services to things like commercial transactions for selling goods were also exempted.  After the law was passed, a written notice was sent to all registered sex offenders in the state advising of these new restrictions to which they must comply.  There was evidence in this case that Packingham received the notice.

In 2010 a Durham police officer began an investigation to determine whether any local registered sex offenders were violating the new law. His investigation uncovered the fact that Packingham was maintaining a facebook.com page under an assumed name and had posted messages to it, most recently a message celebrating his escape from traffic ticket liability.  The investigation did not, apparently, uncover any communications by Packingham to minors using facebook.com.  Packingham was indicted for violating the statute, and moved to dismiss the charges on 1st Amendment grounds.  The trial judge denied the motion, finding the statute constitutional as applied to Packingham while declining to rule on Packingham’s facial challenge to the statute, and he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 6-8 months, suspended for a year while on probation.  Packingham appealed.  The court of appeals reversed, finding that the statute was unconstitutional on its face and as applied, too broadly sweeping in its effect on the free speech rights of registered sex offenders, and unduly vague.

The North Carolina Supreme Court totally rejected the court of appeals’ analysis. For one thing, the court found that the statute regulated conduct (the act of accessing the social media), not directly speech, although it clearly has an incidental effect on the ability of a sex offender to engage in speech activities using social media.  But the court decided that under the “heightened scrutiny” approach for evaluating regulations of conduct that incidentally affect speech, this statute survived because of the important state interest in protecting children, and the legislature’s care in tailoring the prohibition to focus on the kinds of social media where those so inclined could identify and communicate with minors.  The court concluded that this left open a wide variety of social media and other internet forums in which sex offenders were free to participate, and that the statute (and the notices to sex offenders) were written in such a way that somebody who sought to comply with the statute could determine which social media were off-limits.  Nobody disputed that accessing facebook.com was prohibited under this law, for example, and the court concluded that Packingham knew that facebook.com was off-limits for him, as reflected by his opening an account in an assumed name.  (What gave him away was that his photograph on the site matched the photographic depiction on his sex offender registration form.)  The court acknowledged that several similar laws in other states had been declared unconstitutionally, but sought to distinguish them as not being as fine-tuned as the North Carolina law in terms of the kinds of websites that were made off-limits.

The dissent was written by Justice Robin E. Hudson, joined by Justice Cheri Beasley. She disputed the majority’s conclusion that this was a regulation of conduct, but she determined that didn’t make much difference because she concluded that even under the standard of review used by the majority, the statute failed as overly broad and vague.  Restricting all sex offenders without regard to the nature of their offenses, for example, undercut the state’s justification of protecting minors.  Many people are required to register who committed offenses that do not involve minors, and who have no sexual interest in minors. Why, then, is the state restricting their 1st Amendment activities if its articulated justification for the restriction is to protect minors?  She also pointed out that there is no requirement that their offense leading to registration status involved using a computer, so why is their computer access being restricted?  Further, she contested the majority’s conclusion about how narrowly tailored the restriction is.  She pointed out that, literally applied, it could bar somebody from using amazon.com, because that website makes it possible for users to create profile pages including contact information facilitating communications between users with common interests.  Indeed, she pointed out that some websites allow minors to register with the approval of their parents.  One such is the largest circulation daily newspaper in North Carolina, so theoretically Packingham could be barred from accessing the newspaper on-line.  She argued that the law is both facially unconstitutional and unconstitutional as applied to Packingham.

In petitioning the Supreme Court for review, Packingham’s counsel wrote: “The statute singles out a subclass of persons, who are subject to criminal punishment based on expressive, associational, and communicative activities at the heart of the First Amendment, without any requirement that their activity caused any harm or was intended to.” The certiorari grant extends to the questions of whether the law is facially unconstitutional or just unconstitutional as applied to Packingham.  The case has the potential to bring into question numerous state laws that seek to regulate the expressive activities of sex offenders in the name of protecting minors.  Nobody argues that the state does not have a significant interest in protecting minors from sexual exploitation, or that the internet has created new opportunities for adults who are sexually interested in minors to locate and communicate with them.  At issue is how broadly such laws may sweep.  Should the laws pay more attention to the nature of sex offenses leading to registration in deciding whose activities should be restricted, and how narrowly tailored must the restrictions be to avoid subjecting individuals to long-term (even life-long in some cases) restrictions on their ability to use one of the main vehicles for communication in the 21st century without substantial justification for the limitation.  The petition was supported by an amicus brief from professors concerned with the law’s substantial burden they perceived on communicative freedom imposed by the statute.  Interestingly, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper did not want to bother responding to the certiorari petition, and filed a waiver of the right to respond on April 6, but then was requested to respond after the amicus brief was filed, and ultimately filed a response on June 30.

The interests of LGBT people are significantly implicated by this dispute. Even after the Supreme Court declared in 2003 that laws against gay sex were not enforceable against individuals engaged in private, adult consensual activities, there is a not inconsiderable number of gay people, especially men, who are still affected by sex registration requirements in many states based on pre-2003 criminal convictions and continuing enforcement of laws involving solicitation, conduct in public, prostitution, and, of course, intergenerational sex.  Many offender registration laws sweep broadly encompassing a wide variety of activity that is not specifically protected under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling, and litigation is ongoing challenging the continued registration requirements imposed in some jurisdictions on people whose offender status is based on pre-Lawrence convictions for conduct that may no longer be criminalized.  In this connection it is notable that there are still several states that have not legislatively reformed their sex crimes laws to comply with the Lawrence ruling, as a result of which law enforcement officials continue to make arrests for constitutionally protected conduct.

 

Transgender Student Loses Fight Over Expulsion from UPJ

Posted on: April 10th, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

The federal court  for the Western District of Pennsylvania rejected a discrimination lawsuit by a transgender man who was expelled from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in January 2012 for insisting on using men’s restroom and locker room facilities.  Just one day before the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that the Army had unlawfully discriminated against a transgender woman by denying her the right to use women’s facilities, U.S. District Judge Kim R. Gibson reached an opposite conclusion in his March 31 decision, finding that transgender legal precedents under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act did not apply to this lawsuit, which was brought under Title IX of the Higher Education Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The plaintiff, Seamus Johnston, was identified female at birth but by age nine had begun to self-identify as a boy, coming out to his parents.  He began living in accordance with his male gender identity beginning in May 2009, and a year later obtained counseling, being diagnosed by a psychotherapist as having a gender identity disorder.  A year later, he began hormone treatments.  In 2009 Johnston began the process of amending identification documents to reflect his male identity, and he obtained a common law name change in 2010.  His driver’s license was changed to his new name and gender identification in 2011, and he registered with the Selective Service system as a man in July 2011.  His amended passport was issued in February 2012, and he amended the gender marker in his Social Security records in November 2013.  However, he did not obtain a new birth certificate.

When he applied to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (UPJ) in March 2009, he listed “female” on his application form, as he had not yet been diagnosed or begun hormone treatments.  He attended UPJ as an undergraduate for five semesters until his expulsion.  Although he had applied as female, upon arrival for his first semester in August 2009 he “consistently lived as a male,” he alleged in his lawsuit.  In August 2011, after his sophomore year, he asked the school to change the gender marker in his school records.  This request was not acted upon because he could not meet the school’s requirement that he present a birth certificate in his legal name identifying him as male.  The court’s opinion does not specify where he was born, but it seems likely that it was in a jurisdiction that won’t issue a new birth certificate without evidence of sex reassignment surgery, and Johnston had apparently not undergone that procedure.  He did present the school with a notarized affidavit about his name change, which led UPJ to change the name on his student records in the fall of 2011.

Johnston consistently used the men’s restrooms on campus.  Since he was living as a man, to do otherwise would be to risk a disorderly conduct arrest.  What he didn’t anticipate, however, was that he would be arrested for using the men’s restrooms.  What seems to have triggered this development was his enrollment in a men’s weight training class, attended only by men, and his use of the men’s locker room throughout the spring 2011 semester.  This came to the attention of the administration, and he was summoned to a meeting on September 19, 2011, after he enrolled in the class again for the fall semester.  He was told he could no longer use the men’s locker room.  He agreed to use a unisex locker room in the Sports Center, and was told that he could resume using the men’s locker room if his student records were “updated from female to male.”  For that, however, he would have to get either a court order or a changed birth certificate.

Johnston filed a complaint with UPJ’s president, whose response was the same: get a court order or a new birth certificate.  Doing neither, Johnston resumed using the men’s restroom, and was arrested by campus police.  He was barred from the Sports Center, and disciplinary charges were brought against him.  But he persisted in using the men’s restroom, and was ultimately barred from campus, suspended, and expelled in a proceeding culminating in a hearing before a student disciplinary panel.  A University Appeals Board ruled against him.  He lost his scholarship, and the Campus Police pressed criminal charges, leading to a guilty plea on trespass and disorderly conduct charges.  After he was expelled, he claims the University retaliated against him by giving his name to the FBI in connection with an investigation of a bombing threat received by the University.

He filed a federal lawsuit representing himself, alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title IX of the Higher Education Act as well as various state laws.  Pennsylvania state law does not prohibit discrimination because of gender identity, so his state law claims also asserted sex discrimination.  The Equal Protection Clause has been interpreted by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to prohibit gender identity discrimination by a public employer.   Title IX bans sex discrimination by colleges and universities that receive federal funding.

Johnston sought to build on a growing body of court and administrative decisions in other parts of the country recognizing gender identity discrimination as a form of sex discrimination.  Most of those decisions are relatively recent, and as noted above, an important recent breakthrough decision by the EEOC on the restroom access issue was  issued the day after Judge Gibson ruled against Johnston in this case.

Unfortunately for Johnston, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on a gender identity discrimination claim, and neither has the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, whose rulings bind the federal courts in Pennsylvania.  Thus, Judge Gibson was facing a question of first impression in terms of binding precedent, and he resolved the question against Johnston.

“At the outset,” wrote Gibson, “the Court notes that society’s view of gender, gender identity, sex, and sexual orientation has significantly evolved in recent years.  Likewise, the Court is mindful that the legal landscape is transforming as it relates to gender identity, sexual orientation, and similar issues, especially in the context of providing expanded legal rights.  Within the context of these expanding rights and protections arise the profound question of self-identity, as exemplified by this case.  But, while this case arises out of a climate of changing legal and social perceptions related to sex and gender, the question presented is relatively narrow and the applicable legal principles are well-settled.”

Finding that the University had a legitimate interest in protecting the “privacy” of other students who did not want to share sex-segregated restroom and locker room facilities with persons of the other sex, Gibson concluded that, whether ruling under the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX, the University had a sufficient justification for excluding Johnston from facilities reserved for men.  His conclusion was bolstered by 3rd Circuit rulings from early in the history of Title IX upholding sex-segregated educational facilities, and he emphasized Johnston’s failure to allege that he had completed sex-reassignment surgery or obtained a new birth certificate indicating his sex as male.  Clearly, the University had stated that it would allow Johnston to use male facilities if he met the University’s requirement of a completed surgical gender transition with such documentation.

While acknowledging the growing body of lower federal court rulings in employment discrimination cases, Gibson insisted that employment rights were different from the issues raised in this case of access to educational facilities, where the University could be legitimately concerned about the safety and privacy interests of other students.  UPJ allowed Johnston to attend classes and use campus facilities for more than two years presenting himself as male, even though he applied as female.  It was when Johnston pushed things forward by enrolling in the men’s weight training class and using the men’s locker room that alarm bells went off about the privacy interests of other students, and he was not barred from participating in that class during the Fall 2011 semester, just from using men’s facilities, with the compromise offer of a gender-neutral restroom that was usually used by referees.

Having decided there was no federal claim in the case, Judge Gibson exercised his discretion to refuse to entertain Johnston’s state law claims.

The retaliation claim failed upon Gibson’s conclusion that Johnston’s sex discrimination claims were not viable.

Gibson’s reasoning and conclusions were contradicted the next day by the EEOC’s ruling in Tamara Lusardi’s case against the Army.  The EEOC concluded that under Title VII, a person identified as male at birth who was diagnosed with gender identity disorder, undertook transitional treatment (hormones), and was presenting as a woman with a legal name change, was entitled to be treated as a woman with access to women’s facilities, regardless whether she submitted to surgical procedures.  The EEOC said that it was not up to the employer to impose its own surgical requirement in order to recognize a person’s desired gender identity.   While Judge Gibson emphasized the privacy interests of students and the University’s overriding concern with the well-being of students, one could advance similar arguments in an employment setting.  In fact, the Army argued in Lusardi’s case that restricting her from using the women’s restroom was largely motivated by concern over the privacy interests of female co-workers.

In both cases, the defendant had offered a gender-neutral restroom facility for the plaintiff’s use.  The EEOC said the Army’s insistence on this was unlawful sex discrimination, but Judge Gibson concluded the opposite.    This tension in the interpretation of laws or constitutional provisions dealing with sex discrimination in gender identity cases awaits resolution at a higher level, either by the Supreme Court or by enactment of a broad non-discrimination law by Congress that includes gender identity.  Neither resolution seems imminent, as the state of Georgia did not seek Supreme Court review of the 11th Circuit case, and there seems little interest in Congress in amending federal sex discrimination laws to encompass gender identity.  Passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would solidify Lusardi’s victory at the EEOC, but would do nothing to affect Johnston’s case, which requires an amendment to Title IX.  The EEOC has undertaken a litigation effort to establish appellate precedents in more circuits finding that gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination, perhaps culminating in a Supreme Court ruling, but a final resolution along those lines is probably years off.  Of course, Johnston might try to appeal to the 3rd Circuit, but that court has not taken a particularly expansive view of the sex discrimination provisions in Title IX.