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9th Circuit Panel Orders Gender Confirmation Surgery for Transgender Inmate in Idaho

Posted on: August 28th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled on August 23 that the Idaho Department of Corrections violated the 8th Amendment rights of Adree Edmo, a transgender inmate, when it denied her gender confirmation surgery.  The court’s opinion, issued collectively by the three judges as “per curiam,” provides such an extensive discussion of the medical and legal issues that it could serve as a textbook for other courts.

The ruling is a particularly big deal because it is the first such wide-ranging appellate ruling in the nation’s largest circuit by population, as the 9th Circuit includes California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Montana.  Other circuit courts are divided over whether transgender inmates may have a right to complete their transition surgically while incarcerated.

The three judges on the panel, Circuit Judges M. Margaret McKeown and Ronald M. Gould, and U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik of the Western District of Washington, were all appointed to the court in the late 1990s by President Bill Clinton.

The court’s ruling affirmed a May 2019 order by U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, also a Clinton appointee, who issued the ruling after an extensive trial process with several expert witnesses and numerous amicus briefs.

The plaintiff, Adree Edmo, was designated male at birth but has viewed herself as female since age 5 or 6, according to the hearing record.  Edmo pled guilty in 2012 to a charge of sexual abuse of a 15-year-old boy at a house party.  At that time, Edmo was 21.  It was about that time that she resolved an internal struggle about gender identity and began living as a woman.  By the time of the trial court’s evidentiary hearing in this case, Edmo was 30, and due to be released from prison in 2021.

Edmo first learned the term “gender dysphoria” and what was involved in gender transition around the time of her incarceration.  Shortly after coming into the custody of the Idaho Department of Corrections, she was diagnosed with “gender identity disorder,” the term that was used in the prior edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the “Bible” for the psychiatric profession.  The latest edition of DSM changes the terminology to “gender dysphoria,” as being a more accurate characterization in the consensus view of the profession.  The diagnosing doctor was Dr. Scott Eliason, employed by Corizon, Inc., the medical contractor for the Idaho prison system.  A psychologist employed by Corizon, Dr. Claudia Lake, confirmed the diagnosis.

Edmo has changed her legal name and obtained a new birth certificate designating her as “female” to affirm her gender identity.  She has consistently tried to present as female throughout her incarceration, even though this has resulted in disciplinary measures as she continues to be housed in a male prison.  There is no dispute among the parties to this case, which include Corizon and the  Idaho Corrections Department, that Edmo suffers from gender dysphoria, which causes her to feel “depressed,” “disgusting,” “tormented” and “hopeless,” and this has moved her twice to attempt self-castration.

Although hormone therapy has helped to ameliorate the effects of her gender dysphoria, it has not completely alleviated the condition, and much of her distress focuses on her male genitalia, the removal of which is her dedicated goal, as reflected in her castration attempts.   The expert testimony indicated that removal of the male genitalia would make it possible to reduce the level of her hormone therapy, as her body would no longer be producing the male hormone testosterone, and reduced hormone therapy would reduce side effects and be beneficial to her long-term health.

The main cause of dispute is that the Corizon doctors, under direction of the Idaho Corrections Department, have imposed standards going beyond those specified by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) for determining when an individual with gender dysphoria is eligible for surgery.  The state’s case here relies mainly on Dr. Eliason’s testimony and the standards he sought to impose.  Judge Winmill concluded that those standards failed in certain respects to conform to the medical consensus as represented by the WPATH standards and that, as to one of Eliason’s standards, his diagnosis fails to give adequate weight to Edmo’s self-castration attempts.

Experts testifying at the district court hearing included two doctors extremely experienced with treating gender dysphoria, both of whom are active as WPATH members, who offered testimony that convinced Winmill that gender confirmation surgery is necessary for Edmo.  Winmill issued an injunction after the hearing ordering the state to provide the surgical procedure for Edmo, but the injunction was stayed while the state appealed to the 9th Circuit on an expedited schedule.

The appellate panel rejected all of the state’s objections to Judge Winmill’s ruling.  Under the Supreme Court’s 8th Amendment jurisprudence, a prison system will be found to violate the 8th Amendment if it displays deliberate indifference to an inmate’s serious medical condition by failing to provide necessary treatment.  A large amount of judgment based on the facts of the individual case goes into determining whether the prison’s failure to provide a particular procedure to a particular inmate violates the Constitution, and some courts have upheld refusal to provide surgery when medical experts disagree about the appropriate treatment for a prisoner’s particular medical condition, finding that a disagreement among experts bars the conclusion that the prison is being deliberately indifferent to the inmate’s medical needs.  The state, citing its own experts, pushed for this conclusion, but the court identified the state’s experts as underqualified and their views as “outliers” from the professional consensus.

In backing up Judge Winmill’s conclusion, the 9th Circuit panel made clear that they were ruling based on the facts of this individual case, and not endorsing a general rule that transgender inmates are always entitled to surgery.  They found that the evidence shows that not all people who identify as transgender suffer from gender dysphoria, and that the degree of intensity of gender dysphoria can range from mild to severe.  Many transgender people do not desire surgery even though they have a gender dysphoria diagnosis, and sometimes other medical conditions cut against performing the surgery for health and safety reasons.

A major point of contention in this case is the specification in the WPATH standards that surgery should not be performed until the individual has experienced living consistent with their gender identity for at least a year.  Dr. Eliason’s interpretation of this requirement focused on living in a non-institutional setting for at least a year, considering the prison setting as “artificial” and not like the setting the inmate would encounter upon release from prison.  According to this view, the only inmates entitled to surgery would be those who had lived consistent with their gender identity for at least a year before they were incarcerated.  This would categorically rule out surgery for those who were first diagnosed with gender dysphoria after incarceration, such as Edmo, even though identified as female for many years before the crime for which she pled guilty.

The experts who testified on her behalf persuasively argued that it was possible for a transgender inmate to fulfill that requirement in prison, and pointed out that the WPATH standards state that the experiential year can take place while incarcerated.  Also, the court noted that Edmo’s persistent attempts to present as female, even in the face of hostility from corrections personnel, since 2012 would more than fulfill this requirement, since there was medical documentation that she has been presented as female since 2012.

This new ruling may set up the issue for Supreme Court review, because it sharply conflicts with a ruling earlier this year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, Gibson v. Collier, which ruled that gender confirmation surgery is never required under 8th Amendment standards.  The Gibson ruling, in turn, relied heavily on an earlier ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which held that the Massachusetts prison system did not have to provide surgery for Michelle Kosilek, a transgender inmate who had been sentenced to life without parole upon conviction of murdering her wife while presenting as male.  Kosilek went through years of litigation just to get hormone therapy, before then litigating for years for surgery. The 1st Circuit accepted the state’s testimony that hormone therapy was sufficient in her case and that in light of the nature of her offense, there would be enormous security problems in the prison system if she were to have surgery and then be transferred to a female prison.

The 4th Circuit has also ruled that a categorical rule against providing surgery for transgender inmates is unconstitutional, but that case did not involve an actual order that a prison system provide the surgery to a particular inmate.  This new 9th Circuit ruling sharpens the split with the 5th and 1st Circuits, raising the odds that a petition to the Supreme Court might be granted.  So far, the only Supreme Court ruling on the merits in a transgender case dates back several decades, when the Court ruled in a case involving a transgender inmate who was severely assaulted in prison that prison officials might be held to violate the 8th Amendment by failing to protect transgender inmates from serious injury while incarcerated.

In the course of its ruling, the court determined that Corizon, the health care contractor for the Idaho prisons, was not liable under the 8th Amendment.  Liability was focused on the Idaho Corrections Department itself and Dr. Eliason.

The court emphasized the urgency of providing surgery to Edmo, clearly signaling that it would not be receptive to requests for delay pending further appeal by the state.  As a practical matter, if the state cannot obtain an emergency stay, the surgery will go forward unless Idaho decides to do what California did in an earlier case where the 9th Circuit had refused to stay a district court’s order pending appeal: accelerate the inmate’s parole date to avoid having to provide the surgery!  Anticipating that this kind of ruling might come from the 9th Circuit in that earlier case, California revised its rules to drop its categorical ban on providing gender confirmation surgery to inmates, and has already provided the procedure to one inmate, the first known instance in which a state has actually provided the surgery.

Edmo is represented by a team of attorneys from California and Idaho law firms as well as the National Center for Lesbian Rights.  Attorneys from a wide variety of civil rights organizations represented the various amicus parties.  The struggle to obtain this decision and opinion was a very large team effort, resulting in an array of briefs that can be usefully deployed in future litigation in other circuits.

Transgender Teen’s Mother Asks Supreme Court to Recognize a Parent’s Due Process to Control Her Child’s Life

Posted on: July 27th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

Anmarie Calgaro is one angy mama!  Despite being defeated at every turn in the lower courts, and despite her child having reached age 18 and thus no longer being subject to her parental control as a matter of law, she is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse decisions by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, and to establish that governmental and private entities should not be allowed to shut out a parent from continuing to control her transgender teen, even after the teen has left home and is living on her own.

 

The decisions in the lower courts are Calgaro v. St. Louis County, 2017 WL 2269500 (D. Minn. 2017), affirmed, 919 F. 3d 1054 (8th Cir. 2019), petition for certiorari filed, July 26, 2019, No. 19-127.  The Respondents have a filing deadline of August 26.

 

Calgaro is suing St. Louis County, Minnesota; St. Louis County Public Health and Human Service’s former director, Linnea Mirsch; Fairview Health Services and Park Nicollet Health Services, non-governmental health care providers; St. Louis County School District; Principal Michael Johnson of the Cherry School in that district; and, not least, her child, identified in court papers as E.J.K.

 

The Petition filed with the Supreme Court in Calgaro v. St. Louis County, No. 19-127 (docketed July 26, 2019), presents a factual narrative that differs a bit from that provided by the lower court opinions.  The Petition refers to E.J.K. by male pronouns, despite E.J.K.’s female gender identity, and tells the story from the perspective of a mother confronting misbehaving adults who were wrongfully treating her child, male from her perspective, as if he was emancipated and could make decisions on his own without notice to or approval by his mother.  She was particularly concerned that these adults (governmental and non-governmental) were assisting her child in gender transition without giving her an opportunity to object.

 

The gist of the story is that the teen, identified as male at birth but who came to identify as female, was living with her mother and younger siblings, but decided at age 15 to move out to live with her biological father for reasons not articulated by the courts or the Petition, but one can imagine them.  (From the court’s reference to “biological father,” one hypothesizes that E.J.K.’s biological parents were not married to each other.)  She stayed with her father only briefly, then staying with various family and friends, refusing to move back in with Calgaro, who claims that she has always been willing to provide a home for E.J.K.

 

After leaving her mother’s home, E.J.K. consulted a lawyer at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid.  The lawyer “provided her with a letter that concluded she was legally emancipated under Minnesota law,” wrote District Judge Paul A. Magnuson.  E.J.K. never sought or obtained a court order declaring her to be emancipated.  But this letter, which by itself has no legal effect, was used effectively by E.J.K. to get government financial assistance payments that ordinarily would not be available to a minor who is not emancipated, to persuade two health care institutions to provide her with treatment in support of her gender transition, and to persuade her high school principal to recognize her gender identity and to treat her as emancipated and to refuse to deal with her mother’s requests for information and input about E.J.K.’s educational decisions.  All of these steps were achieved by E.J.K. without notice to Anmarie Calgaro, who claims to have been rebuffed at every turn in her attempt to find out what was going on with the child to whom she referred as her “son.”

 

The essence of Calgaro’s claim is that in the absence of a court order declaring that E.J.K. was emancipated from her parents, none of these things should have happened.  Relying on  cases finding that parents have Due Process rights under the 14th Amendment concerning the custody, control and raising of their minor children, she claims that each of the defendants violated her constitutional rights by failing to give notice to her of what was happening, failing to afford her some kind of hearing in which she could state her position, and shutting her out from information about her child.

 

She had specifically requested from Cherry School Principal Johnson to have access to E.J.K.’s educational records, but was turned down.  She asked the government agency and the health care institutions for access to E.J.K’s records concerning her health care and her government assistance, but was turned down again.  Who knew a Legal Aid lawyer’s opinion letter could be so powerful!

 

District Judge Magnuson dismissed Calgaro’s lawsuit on May 23, 2017.  As a practical matter, E.J.K. was then less than two months from turning 18, at which point she would become a legal adult and emancipated as a matter of law, so Calgaro’s request for injunctive relief would quickly become moot.

 

The trial court rejected Calgaro’s argument that the county, the school district, the health care institutions, or the individual named plaintiffs had violated Calgaro’s constitutional rights by declaring her child to be emancipated, for, the judge concluded, the defendants “did not emancipate E.J.K. and Calgaro continues to have sole physical and joint legal custody of E.J.K.”  The question remaining is what flows from the fact that until turning 18, E.J.K. continued to be a minor in the custody of Calgaro, even though she was no longer living at home and was effectively managing her own life without parental guidance.

 

Turning first to the health care institutions, the court pointed out that they are not “state actors” but rather private, non-profit entities, so the Due Process Clause does not impose any legal obligations on them, and they could rely on the Legal Aid lawyer’s letter and act accordingly without accruing any liability under the federal constitution.

 

As to the school district, the court found that the district could not be held liable for actions of its employees, only for its own policies or customs, and there was no evidence that the school district had any particular policy or custom regarding how to deal with transgender students or their parents.  “Calgaro fails to provide any facts that the School District executed a policy or custom that deprived Calgaro of her parental rights without due process,” wrote Magnuson.

 

As to Principal Johnson, the court found that he enjoyed “qualified immunity” from any personal liability for the actions he took as principal of Cherry School, so long as he was not violating any clearly-established constitutional right of Calgaro, and the court found no support in published court opinions for a constitutional rights of parents to have access to their child’s school records.

 

The judge also rejected Calgaro’s argument that the County violated her rights by providing financial assistance to E.J.K. without Calgaro’s consent or participation.  The County was providing assistance based on its interpretation of a Minnesota statute that allows payment of welfare benefits to some who does not have “adequate income” and is “a child under the age of 18 who is not living with a parent, stepparent, or legal custodian” but “only if: the child is legally emancipated or living with an adult with the consent of an agency acting as a legal custodian,” with “legally emancipated” meaning “a person under the age of 18 years who: (i) has been married; (ii) is on active duty in the uniformed services of the United States; (iii) has been emancipated by a court of competent jurisdiction; or (iv) is otherwise considered emancipated under Minnesota law, and for whom county social services has not determined that a social services case plan is necessary, for reasons other than the child has failed or refuses to cooperate with the county agency in developing the plan.”

 

Judge Magnuson pointed out that under this statute, the county was not necessarily required to give E.J.K. financial assistance – it was a discretionary decision by the local officials – but that as with her suit against the school district, Calgaro failed to identify a policy or custom that would subject the county to liability.  The court found the county could not be held liable for violating Calgaro’s Due Process rights based on the decision by county officials to provide benefits to E.J.K., and that the head of the county welfare agency, also named a defendant, could not be sued because there was no evidence she had anything to do with the decision to provide the benefits.

 

Furthermore, Calgaro could not sue E.J.K. “Calgaro stops short of making the absurd argument that E.J.K. deprived Calgaro of her parental rights without due process while acting under color of state law,” wrote Magnuson, who found that as all of Calgaro’s other claims had to be dismissed, any claim against E.J.K. had to fall as well.

 

Calgaro appealed to the 8th Circuit, which issued a brief decision on March 25, 2019, affirming the district court in all particulars.  Furthermore, noting the passage of time, Circuit Judge Steven Colloton wrote, “Calgaro’s remaining claims for declaratory and injunctive relief against the several defendants are moot.  E.J.K. has turned eighteen years old, ceased to be a minor under Minnesota law, and completed her education in the St. Louis County School District.  There is no ongoing case or controversy over Calgaro’s parental rights to make decisions for E.J.K. as a minor or to access her medical or educational records.”

 

Calgaro tried to argue that because she has three minor children other than E.J.K., she has a continuing interest in establishing as a matter of law that the various defendants should not be able to override her parental rights with respect to her remaining minor children, but the court found that “Calgaro has not established a reasonable expectation that any of her three minor children will be deemed emancipated by the defendants.”

 

Calgaro is represented by the Thomas More Society, a religious freedom litigation group, which is trying to use this case to establish the rights of parents, presenting two questions to the Supreme Court: first, whether parents’ Due Process rights to custody and control of their minor children “apply to local governments and medical providers” such that these entities cannot invade “parental rights, responsibilities or duties over their minor children’s welfare, education and medical care decisions without a court order;” and, second, in a rather long and convoluted question, whether the Minnesota statute defining emancipation is unconstitutional to the extent that it might be construed to authorize entities in the position of the defendants to do the things they did in this case.

 

Although the Petition does not stage this case as a religious free exercise case, the advocacy of Thomas More Society suggests that religious objections to transgender identity and transitional care underlie its interest in the case, and that if the Court were to grant the Petition, many religious organizations would be among those arguing that a parent should be able to prevent schools, government agencies, and health-care providers from assistant minors who identify as transgender from effectively freeing themselves from parental control as they seek to live in the gender with which they identify.

 

The National Center for Lesbian Rights provided legal representation to E.J.K. in the lower courts, and continues to represent E.J.K. as one of the named respondents in this Petition.

 

The odds against this Petition being granted are long, but the Court’s recent trend of taking an expansive view of religious free exercise rights suggests that it would not be totally surprising were the Court to take this case for review.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Federal Court Rules for “Unique” Family in Fair Housing Act Case

Posted on: April 12th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

A federal district judge in Colorado granted summary judgment under the Federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) on April 5 to a couple in a “unique relationship” who were turned down by a landlord who had two residential properties available for rent that would have met the needs of the couple and their family. Judge Raymond P. Moore found that in turning down two woman (one of whom is transgender) who are married to each other and their two children as tenants, the landlord had discriminated against them because of their sex, as well as their familial status, both of which are forbidden grounds of discrimination under the federal law.

The court also granted judgment to the plaintiffs under Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act, which explicitly bans discrimination because of sexual orientation or transgender status as well as familial status.

The landlord, Deepika Avanti, owns three rental properties close to each other in Gold Hill, Colorado. Two are single family houses, and the third is a building subdivided into two separate living spaces, referred to as “townhouses.”  As of April 24, 2015, one of the townhouses was rented to a heterosexual couple, Matthew and Chiara, and the other was being advertised for rent on Craigslist.

The plaintiffs are Rachel Smith, a transgender woman, and Tonya Smith. They had been married for five years and were living with their two children in rental housing that they had to vacate because the building was being sold and withdrawn from the rental market.  They responded to the Craigslist advertisement by emailing Avanti.  “In the email, among other things, Tonya discussed her family, including mentioning that Rachel is transgender,” wrote Judge Moore.  Avanti responded to the email, mentioning that both the townhouse and one of the single family houses, which had three bedrooms, were available for rent. She also asked Tonya to send photos of her family.  Replying by email, Tonya agreed to meet Avanti that evening and attached a photo of the Smith family.

Tonya and Rachel and their children met with Avanti that evening and got to view the townhouse and the single-family house that were available for rent. They also got to meet Matthew and Chiara, the tenants of the other townhouse.  After she returned to her home, Avanti emailed Tonya Smith twice that night.  In the first email, she told Tonya that they were “not welcome to rent the Townhouse because of Matt and Chiara’s concerns regarding their children and ‘noise.’”  In the second email, Avanti said she had talked to her husband and “they have ‘kept a low profile’ and ‘want to continue it’ that way,” so they would not rent either residence to the Smiths.

The next morning, Tonya emailed Avanti, asking what she meant by “low profile.” Avanti replied “that the Smith’s ‘unique relationship and ‘uniqueness’ would become the town focus and would jeopardize [Avanti’s] low profile in the community.”

It took the Smiths months to find a suitable place to rent. Because they had to vacate their existing residence, they moved in with Rachel’s mother for a week and had to shed possessions to fit into a small space.  The new apartment they found did not meet their needs as well as Avanti’s property would have done, due to the location.  Their new apartment placed them in a less desirable school district for the children and required a longer daily commute to her job for Rachel, although she subsequently switched to a job closer to their new apartment.

They sued in federal court, asserting claims under the Fair Housing Act and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The basis for the federal court having jurisdiction to hear the case was the federal statutory claim, which was divided into a sex discrimination claim and a familial status claim.

The more significant part of the ruling for purposes of LGBT law is the federal sex discrimination claim. Federal discrimination statutes do not at present expressly forbid sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination, but courts are increasingly willing to apply bans on sex discrimination to claims brought by GLBT plaintiffs.  Although the Department of Housing during the Obama Administration took the position that the FHA should be construed to apply to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, the Trump Administration has not announced a position on this.  Judge Moore’s opinion thus may be breaking new ground by granting summary judgment in favor of the Smiths on their sex discrimination claim.

Because Colorado is within the 10th Circuit, Judge Moore had to follow 10th Circuit precedent in determining whether the Smiths could sue for sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.  The Smiths had argued that discrimination based on “sex stereotypes” is “discrimination based on sex” under the FHA.  Moore pointed out that the 10th Circuit has followed court rulings under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when interpreting the FHA discrimination ban, and that the 10th Circuit has an employment discrimination ruling on a claim by a transgender plaintiff, Etsitty v. Utah Transit Authority, 502 F.3d 1215 (2007).  In that case, the court ruled that “discrimination against a transsexual based on the person’s status as a transsexual is not discrimination because of sex under Title VII,” and that “Title VII protections” do not extend to “discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation.”  However, the Etsitty opinion did recognize the possibility that a gay or transgender plaintiff might claim sex discrimination because of gender stereotyping, relying on the Supreme Court’s 1989 Title VII ruling, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, where the court held that discriminating against a woman for her failure to conform to the employer’s stereotyped views of how women should act and present themselves in a business setting could violate the statute.

Judge Moore noted that in the Etsitty opinion the 10th Circuit had “cited with approval” to Smith v. City of Salem, 378 F.3d 566 (6th Circuit 2004), a decision upholding a Title VII claim by a transgender woman who was being pressured to quit by the City’s Fire Department after confiding in a supervisor that she was transitioning.  The court held that the fact that the plaintiff is a “transsexual” was “not fatal to a sex discrimination claim where the victim has suffered discrimination because of his or her gender non-conformity.”  In a 2014 decision, McBride v. Peak Wellness Center, 688 F.3d 698, the 10th Circuit has, according to Judge Moore, “implicitly recognized that claims based on failure to conform to stereotypical gender norms may be viable.”

This was enough for Moore. “In this case,” he wrote, “the Smiths contend that discrimination against women (like them) for failure to conform to stereotype norms concerning to or with whom a woman should be attracted, should marry, and/or should have children is discrimination on the basis of sex under the FHA.  The Court agrees,” he continued, finding that “such stereotypical norms are no different from other stereotypes associated with women, such as the way she should dress or act (e.g., that a woman should not be overly aggressive, or should not act macho), and are products of sex stereotyping.”

Moore also stated agreement with the Smiths’ argument that “discrimination against a transgender (here, Rachel) because of her gender-nonconformity is sex discrimination. In other words,” he explained, “that discrimination based on applying gender stereotypes to someone who was assigned a certain sex (here, male) at birth, constitutes discrimination because of sex.”  So long as the argument was phrased in terms of stereotyping, Moore believed that he could rule on the claim under the FHA.  However, he cautioned, “To the extent the Smiths argue something more – that the FHA has been violated based on sex stereotyping as they have been discriminated against solely because of Rachel’s status as transgender, and that the Smiths were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or identity – the Court declines to do so.”  Thus, the court did not hold, as such, that discrimination because sexual orientation or gender violate the FHA’s ban on sex discrimination, but embraced such a broad view of sex stereotyping that the opinion appears to have much the same effect.

As to the motion for summary judgment, Moore concluded that the “undisputed material facts” show that Avanti violated the FHA, as her reference to the Smiths’ “unique relationship” and their family’s “uniqueness” showed reliance on stereotypes “of to or with whom a woman (or a man) should be attracted, should marry, or should have a family.”

As to the “familial status” discrimination claim, there is clear precedent that it violates the FHA for a landlord to have an “adults only” policy or to discriminate against prospective tenants because they have children, so that was a clear winner. Judge Moore also found it relatively simple to rule in the Smiths’ favor on their state law claims, since Colorado explicitly forbids housing discrimination because of sexual orientation (which is defined to include “transgender status”) as well as familial status.  The next stage of the lawsuit will be to determine the damages or relief that the court might order.

The Smiths are represented by Karen Lee Loewy and Omar Francisco Gonzalez-Pagan, from Lambda Legal’s New York office, and cooperating attorneys from Holland & Hart LLP’s Denver office: Matthew Paul Castelli and Benjamin Nichols Simler.

4th Circuit Revives Transgender Teen’s Title IX Claim Against Virginia School Board

Posted on: April 19th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 on April 19 that U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar erred by not deferring to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of its regulations to require schools to let transgender students use restrooms consistent with their gender identity.  Judge Doumar had dismissed a claim by G.G., a teenage transgender boy attending high school in Gloucester County, Virginia, that the school violated his statutory right under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act by adopting a rule that he could use only restrooms designated for girls or unisex single-user restrooms.  The court referred to the plaintiff by his initials throughout the opinion to guard his privacy, but the ACLU’s press releases about the case identify him as Gavin Grimm.  G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 7026 (April 19, 2016).

The high school had accommodated G.G. when, at the beginning of his sophomore year in August 2014, he informed school officials that he was transitioning, had gotten a legal name change, and would be expressing his male gender identity, by letting him use the boys’ restroom. After several weeks without serious incident,  some parents alerted to the situation by their children objected and pushed the school board to adopt its resolution after two public meetings in which indignant parents threatened the board members with political retribution if they did not adopt the restrictive policy.  G.G., now 16, has not undergone reassignment surgery, which is not available to minors under the prevailing medical standards for treating gender dysphoria, but has transitioned in all other respects and identifies fully as male.

The 4th Circuit is the first federal appeals court to rule that the Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX, as expressed in an opinion letter by the Department’s Office of Civil Rights on January 7, 2015, in response to this controversy, should be followed by the federal courts.  Since North Carolina is also within the 4th Circuit, this ruling, as it now stands, suggests that the “bathroom” provisions of the notorious H.B. 2, at least as they apply to public educational institutions, violate federal law, as the ACLU and Lambda Legal have argued in a lawsuit challenging that statute pending in the U.S. District Court in North Carolina.

Writing for the majority of the panel, Circuit Judge Henry F. Floyd observed that the court’s role in a case involving an administrative agency’s interpretation of a statute is most deferential when the statute and the official regulations that have been adopted by the agency are ambiguous regarding the particular issue in dispute. Title IX says that educational institutions that receive federal funds may not discriminate because of sex.  The regulations, adopted decades ago, provide that educational institutions may designate separate facilities for use by males and females, so long as the facilities are equal in quality, but never directly address how to deal with transgender individuals whose “biological sex” differs from their gender identity.  In this respect, concluded a majority of the court, the regulations are “ambiguous.”  As such, the Department’s interpretation of the regulations should be deferred to by the court when they are a reasonable interpretation of the statute.  Indeed, wrote Floyd, the Department’s interpretation is entitled to deference “unless the [school] board demonstrates that the interpretation is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation or statute.”

District Judge Doumar had concluded that the regulations were not ambiguous, and refused to defer to the Department interpretation. Judge Floyd devoted a section of his opinion to explaining why the regulations are ambiguous.  “We conclude that the regulation is susceptible to more than one plausible reading because it permits both the Board’s reading – determining maleness or femaleness with reference exclusively to genitalia – and the Department’s interpretation – determining maleness or femaleness with reference to gender identity.”  When language can support alternative readings, there is ambiguity.  “The Department’s interpretation resolves the ambiguity by providing that in the case of a transgender individual using a sex-segregated facility, the individual’s sex as male or female is to be generally determined by reference to the student’s gender identity.”

Protesting against this conclusion, dissenting Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer (who was, incidentally, also a dissenter in the 4th Circuit’s Virginia marriage equality decision in 2014), found that it would produce unacceptable results by violating the “physiological privacy interest” of students who did not want to share restroom facilities with students whose biological sex differed from theirs.  Judge Niemeyer essentially articulated, in more elevated terms, the arguments that North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has been making in defense of the “bathroom” provisions in H.B. 2: that the privacy concerns of students who object to sharing facilities with transgender students should take priority over the interests of the transgender students.

But Judge Niemeyer doesn’t put it quite so crudely. Indeed, he suggests that the opinion letter from the Department authorized just what the school board did, by opining that schools could accommodate the needs of transgender students by providing unisex single-occupancy facilities for them to use.  Judge Floyd points out, however, that the Department’s advice was to provide such facilities for students who did not want to use multiple-use facilities.  In this case, G.G. wants to use the male-designated multiple-use facility as being congruent with his gender identity.  As to the privacy concerns, the court noted that the school board has made physical modifications in the boys’ restrooms by adding partitions between urinals and taping over visual gaps in the toilet stalls so as to enhance the privacy of all users.

Judge Floyd emphasized that because G.G. was only contesting the school board’s policy on restrooms, the court did not have to deal with the question whether other single-sex facilities, such as locker rooms and shower rooms, would have to be open to transgender students as well. Judge Niemeyer observed that discrimination “because of sex” had to mean the same thing throughout the statute and regulations, so he argued that the majority opinion opened up the door to allowing transgender students to claim a right of access to all such sex-designated facilities.

In a somewhat unintentionally humorous footnote, Judge Floyd noted the school board’s argument, reiterated in Judge Niemeyer’s dissent, that allowing biological males into the girls’ restrooms and biological females into the boys’ restrooms could produce “danger caused by ‘sexual responses prompted by students’ exposure to the private body parts of students of the other biological sex.’” Floyd observed, perhaps tongue in cheek, “The same safety concern would seem to require segregated restrooms for gay boys and girls who would, under the dissent’s formulation, present a safety risk because of the ‘sexual responses prompted’ by their exposure to the private body parts of other students of the same sex in sex-segregated restrooms.”  Yes!  Here is a federal judge with real empathy for hormone-infused teenagers of every sexual orientation and gender identity!

In addition to appealing Judge Doumar’s dismissal of his Title IX claim, G.G. was also appealing the Judge Doumar’s refusal to issue a preliminary injunction that would require the school board to let him use the boys’ restroom facilities while the case proceeded. Judge Doumar had refrained from ruling on G.G.’s constitutional equal protection claim, so his case was still alive before the district court even though his Title IX claim was dismissed.  Judge Doumar had focused his refusal of injunctive relief on his determination that G.G. failed to show that he would suffer irreparable harm if he was excluded from the boys’ restrooms while the case was pending.

The majority of the panel concluded that Doumar had wrongly refused to give appropriate consideration to the evidence presented by G.G. and his medical expert on this point, applying too strict a standard for considering evidence in the context of a motion for a preliminary injunction. The majority concluded that the appropriate step was to reverse the dismissal of the Title IX claim and send the case back to the district court for reconsideration of the motion for preliminary injunction, applying the correct evidentiary standard.  This means that G.G. will be back to square one before the district court, but with the wind of the court of appeals decision behind his back on key issues in the case.

G.G. had asked the court of appeals to reassign the case to another district judge. Judge Doumar made various comments in court that suggested bias, or at least a refusal to believe in the validity of the concept of gender identity, with references to G.G. as a girl who wanted to be a boy.  However, Judge Floyd pointed out, none of that objectionable language appeared in the written opinion that Judge Doumar released to explain his ruling, and the court was not going to conclude at this point that Doumar would not give appropriate consideration to the evidence when called upon by the court of appeals to reconsider his ruling, so the court denied G.G.’s request and the case will return to Judge Doumar.

The third member of the panel, Senior Circuit Judge Andre M. Davis, agreed with Judge Floyd that the Title IX claim should be revived, but would have gone further, contending that G.G. had satisfied the requirements for a preliminary injunction. However, since the grant of such an injunction is a matter within the discretion of the trial judge, he ultimately agreed to “defer to the district court in this instance.  It is to be hoped,” he continued, “that the district court will turn its attention to this matter with the urgency the case poses.  Under the circumstances here, the appropriateness and necessity of such prompt action is plain.  By the time the district court issues its decision, G.G. will have suffered the psychological harm the injunction sought to prevent for an entire school year.”

Judge Niemeyer’s dissent, reminiscent of his dissent in the Virginia marriage equality case, harps on the “unprecedented” nature of the ruling, asserting that the court’s “holding overrules custom, culture, and the very demands inherent in human nature for privacy and safety, which the separation of such facilities is designed to protect.” He also accused the majority of misconstruing the language of Title IX and its regulations, and concluded that “it reaches an unworkable and illogical result.”

G.G. is represented by the ACLU of Virginia and the ACLU’s national LGBT rights project. Joshua Block argued the appeal on his behalf on January 27.

Mississippi Defies the 1st Amendment with “Freedom of Conscience” Law

Posted on: April 8th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

On April 5 Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed into law H.B. 1523, a measure that received overwhelming approval in both houses of the state legislature.  Titled the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience From Government Discrimination Act,” the law was clearly intended to encourage businesses and individuals in the state to discriminate against same-sex couples, LGBT people, and even sexually-active unmarried heterosexuals.

Despite the broad wording of its title, the measure does not on its face protect freedom of conscience in general.  Instead, in Section 2, the legislature stated that “the sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that (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) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.”  The first of these, of course, defies the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.  The second defies the 2003 ruling, Lawrence v. Texas, which held that the state may not penalize sexual relations between consenting adults in private, regardless of their sex.  And the third defies the general medical consensus that gender identity is a human characteristic that exists apart from biological sex in terms of anatomy and genetics.

The law does not specify how it will be determined that somebody sincerely holds these beliefs or is merely asserting them opportunistically to avoid liability for mistreating somebody.

In effect, Mississippi has moved to protect from any adverse consequences at the hands of the state anybody who sincerely believes that a person born with a penis can only be considered a man for the rest of their life, and similarly a person born with a vagina can only be considered a woman.  This takes things one step further than North Carolina, which provided in its notorious H.B. 2, enacted in March, that “biological sex” means the sex indicated on a person’s birth certificate.  Since North Carolina will allow people to obtain new birth certificates consistent with their gender identity upon medical certification of surgical transition, that state evidently does not officially believe that sex is quite so “immutable.”

The new law goes on to protect people who act on these beliefs in various ways.  For example, religious organizations and clergy can refuse to have anything to do with same-sex marriages, including refusing to provide facilities or services in connection with same-sex marriage or to married same-sex couples.  Businesses can refuse to provide their goods or services or accommodations to same-sex couples, and can exclude transgender people from the use of single-sex-designated facilities consistent with their gender identity.  Nobody can be subjected to loss of their tax-exempt status or denial of government contracts or benefits because they have these “protected” beliefs.  People who spout anti-LGBT rhetoric will be protected from adverse consequences as well.  They can’t be fired from government jobs for articulating such beliefs, for example.

Government employees whose jobs involve authorizing or licensing marriages can seek “recusal from authorizing or licensing lawful marriages based upon or in a manner consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” as defined in the statute, provided they send a written notice of such recusal to the State Registrar of Vital Records. They may not suffer any adverse consequences for recusing themselves, but “the person who is recusing himself or herself shall take all necessary steps to ensure that the authorization and licensing of any legally valid marriage is not impeded or delayed as a result of any recusal.”  Apparently, then, the person recusing themselves is responsible for being sure that somebody else who is willing to perform their duty is available to do so when the service is needed.  This provision is undoubtedly intended to shield the state from liability for refusing to provide a service that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to receive.

The law also relieves people who officiate at weddings from any obligation to perform ceremonies in violation of their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs about the invalidity of same-sex marriages. This presumably would include refusing to officiate if one of the prospective spouses is transgender and that raises religious or moral objections for the officiant because of their lack of belief in the reality of the individual’s gender identity.  OF course, such protection is completely superfluous, since nobody would seriously contend that the government can compel clergy to perform services.

The “discriminatory action” that the government is not allowed to take against people holding and acting on these beliefs goes far beyond taxes to encompass any state benefit, license, certification, accreditation, custody award or agreement, and on and on and on. The list seems to anticipate the variety of cases that have arisen around the country over the past few years in which people have suffered adverse consequences because of their religious objections to homosexuality or same-sex marriage.  For example, some people have been expelled from graduate counseling programs for refusing to provide non-judgmental counseling to gay clients, and such expulsions would clearly be prohibited by this law.  The law would also forbid denying government employment to anybody because of these sincerely held religious beliefs by the prospective employee.

The practical effect is to say that married same-sex couples can be denied a host of benefits and entitlements under a variety of programs, in blatant violation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell. Ironically, this law was enacted just days after a federal district judge in Mississippi ruled that the state’s ban on adoption of children by same-sex married couples violates the 14th Amendment in light of Obergefell.   And the law erects a structure somewhat akin to apartheid around same-sex marriages.

The measure seems clearly unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, since it exalts and privileges particular religious beliefs and those who hold them for “special rights.”  On the other hand, some of the law is “merely” symbolic for several reasons.  First, since neither Mississippi nor any of its political subdivisions expressly outlaws discrimination in employment, housing or public accommodations because of sexual orientation or gender identity, people or businesses acting to deny goods, services or accommodations to LGBT people and same-sex couples could do so freely without any consequence under state law before this measure was enacted.  Second, due to the Supremacy Clause of the federal constitution, federal constitutional and statutory rights take priority over state law.

Thus, for example, under Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments Act as interpreted by the U.S. Department of Education, educational institutions in Mississippi that receive federal money (which would be just about all of them) may not discriminate against transgender individuals because of their gender identity, and under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as interpreted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, employers in Mississippi may not discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity.

And, of course, as a federal court ruled days earlier, state policies denying equal rights and benefits to married same-sex couples can be challenged under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The main question now is who will file for the first lawsuit to challenge this travesty. Robbie Kaplan, the fearless slayer of DOMA, victorious advocate in the Mississippi marriage equality lawsuit, and representative of the plaintiffs in the same-sex parents adoption case, would be our candidate.

Federal Court in Connecticut Finds Transgender Plaintiff’s Sex Discrimination Claim Actionable Under Title VII

Posted on: March 20th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill has ruled that a transgender doctor could go forward with her sex discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against a Connecticut hospital. Noting a split of authority among federal circuit courts of appeals and the lack of a controlling ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Judge Underhill found more persuasive the more recent opinions finding that “sex” in the Civil Rights Act should be broadly construed to include gender identity, as opposed to older rulings rejecting such an argument.  Fabian v. Hospital of Central Connecticut, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34994 (D. Conn., March 18, 2016).

According to her complaint, Dr. Deborah Fabian had applied and was very nearly hired as an on-call orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital of Central Connecticut. She was recruited for the position by Delphi Healthcare Partners, a third-party provider of physicians and management services to health care institutions.  Fabian, who initially presented herself in the hiring process as Dr. David Fabian, claims that she was “all but hired” and had even been sent a proposed contract, which she had signed, and that she considered the final interview with hospital officials to be a “formality.”  Indeed, relying on representations from Delphi, she and her wife sold their home in Massachusetts, contemplating the move to Connecticut.  During the interview she disclosed that she was a transgender woman in the process of transition and would be reporting to begin work as Dr. Deborah Fabian.  She was later informed that she would not be hired.

She took her discrimination claim and the hospital and Delphi to the EEOC, alleging a violation of the federal sex discrimination statute as well as Connecticut’s statute. At the time, Connecticut’s statute had not yet been amended to add an explicit prohibition of discrimination because of gender identity, so under both statutes her claim was that the employer failed to hire her due to her gender identity and that this was sex discrimination.

In moving for summary judgment, the hospital focused on several lines of attack. It argued that she was not being considered for a staff employee position, but rather to be an independent contractor retained through Delphi, and thus in effect a subcontractor of a subcontractor.  Since the anti-discrimination laws apply only to employment, the hospital argued that they did not apply to this case.  Secondly, the hospital argued that its decision not to hire her was based on its conclusion from the interview that she was reluctant to take late-night calls to the Emergency Department, was uncomfortable with their new electronic records system, and that she wanted a job that involved performing more surgery.  Finally, and cutting to the chase, the hospital argued that gender identity discrimination claims are not actionable under Title VII or under the Connecticut state law as it was when this case arose.

Attacking the subcontractor point, Judge Underhill found that many factual issues would have to be resolved before determining whether Dr. Fabian was applying to be an employee of the hospital. Formal titles and contractual arrangements are less significant in these types of cases than a broad array of factors that the Supreme Court has identified in determining whether somebody is an employee or an independent contractor.  In the health care field, companies frequently try to structure their relationship with professional staff in such a way as to avoid the legal entanglements of an employment relationship, and some health care professionals may prefer the autonomy of not being full-time employees.  The Supreme Court has identified more than a dozen distinct factors to consider in making this determination, with particular emphasis on the degree to which the alleged employer controls the work of the employee.  The court found that there were enough disputed factual issues here to preclude making a determination based on a pre-trial motion without the benefit of an evidentiary hearing.  The judge found that Fabian’s factual allegations were sufficient to create a material factual issue on such questions as “control,” so denied the motion on this ground.  The judge also found that factual issues would need to be resolved concerning the hospital’s contentions, disputed by Fabian, about her willingness to handle late-night calls, deal with the information system, or enthusiastically take the job despite the amount of surgery involved.

The main question, to which the judge devoted most of his opinion, was whether Fabian was alleging a kind of discrimination covered by these statutes. Judge Underhill reviewed the history of the inclusion of sex in Title VII and its subsequent interpretation, noting that for many decades after the statute went into effect in 1965 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the courts had taken the view that gender identity claims were not covered.  However, things began to change after the Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, where the Court accepted the plaintiff’s contention that her promotion had been denied because various of the firm’s partners objected to her failure to conform to their stereotyped views about how a “woman partner” should act, groom and dress.  With sex stereotyping accepted as evidence of a sex-discriminatory motivation, courts began to accept the argument that discrimination against transgender persons involves sexual stereotypes in violation of Title VII. By early in the 21st century, some federal circuit courts had adopted this view, which was finally embraced by the EEOC in a 2010 decision involving federal employment, which was subsequently endorsed by the Justice Department.

Judge Underhill stated his agreement with the courts “that have held that %Price Waterhouse% abrogates the narrow view” that had been taken in earlier decisions.  “The narrower view relies on the notion that the word ‘sex’ simply and only means ‘male or female,’” he continued.  “That notion is not closely examined in any of the cases, but it is mistaken.  ‘Male or female’ is a relatively weak definition of ‘sex’ for the same reason that ‘A, B, AB, or O’ is a relatively weak definition of ‘blood type’: it is not a formulation of meaning, but a list of instances.  It might be an exhaustive list, or it might not be, but either way it says nothing about why or how the items in the list are instances of the same thing; and the word ‘sex’ refers not just to the instances, but also to the ‘thing’ that the instances are instances of.  In some usages, the word ‘sex’ can indeed mean ‘male or female,’ but it can also mean the distinction between male and female, or the property or characteristic (or group of properties or characteristics) by which individuals may be so distinguished. Discrimination ‘because of sex,’ therefore, is not only discrimination because of maleness and discrimination because of femaleness, but also discrimination because of the distinction between male and female or discrimination because of the properties or characteristics by which individuals may be classified as male or female.”  The judge cited historical references to support his contention that such broader understandings of sex date back as far as 1755, in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of the English language, and he found a similarly broad understanding in dictionaries contemporary with the adoption of Title VII in the 1960s.  Thus, even in the absence of direct evidence about what the drafters of the “sex” amendment thought in 1964, there is indirect evidence that a broader understanding of the word and concept then existed.

The judge also quoted a favorite hypothetical case put by proponents of coverage for gender identity discrimination: just as an employer who had no bias against Christians or Jews could be held to have discriminated because of religion if she discharged an employee for converting from one religion to the other, an employer who has no particular bias against men or women could be held to discriminate because of sex if he discharged an employee for transitioning from male to female.   He insisted that no court would make the mistake of finding no discrimination because of religion in the case of the religious convert.  “Because Christianity and Judaism are understand as examples of religions rather than the definition of religion itself,” he wrote, “discrimination against converts, or against those who practice either religion the ‘wrong’ way, is obviously discrimination ‘because of religion.’  Similarly, discrimination on the basis of gender stereotypes, or on the basis of being transgender, or intersex, or sexually indeterminate, constitutes discrimination on the basis of the properties or characteristics typically manifested in sum as male and female – and that discrimination is literally discrimination ‘because of sex.’”

Thus he concluded, “on the basis of the plain language of the statute, and especially in light of the interpretation of that language evident in Price Waterhouse’s acknowledgment that gender-stereotyping discrimination is discrimination ‘because of sex, . . . discrimination on the basis of transgender identity is cognizable under Title VII.”  In a footnote, he observed that he would reach the same conclusion under the pre-amended Connecticut statute.  The legislature’s subsequent addition of the term “gender identity” to the statute did not require a different conclusion “because legislatures may add such language to clarify or settle a dispute about the statute’s scope rather than solely to expand it.”

With the denial of the hospital’s summary judgment motion, the case can proceed to trial unless a settlement is reached. The court noted that Delphi did not join in the motion for summary judgment.

Dr. Fabian is represented by Theodore W. Heiser of Sullivan Heiser LLC, of Clinton, Connecticut.

Judge Underhill was appointed to the District Court by President Bill Clinton.

NYLS Impact Center Salon on Transgender Issues

Posted on: September 28th, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

The New York Law School Impact Center is presenting a Salon on Transgender Issue on Tuesday, September 29.  I am participating together with attorneys M. Dru Levasseur of Lambda Legal and Ezra Young.  I prepared a case table on transgender law for distribution at the event and am sharing it here:

Selected Legal Decisions on Transgender Issues

Prepared by Arthur Leonard for NLYS Impact Center Salon, September 29, 2015.

Criminal Law:

City of Chicago v. Wilson, 75 Ill. 2d 525, 389 N.E.2d 522 (Ill. 1978) (Chicago ordinance penalizing cross-dressing could not be constitutionally applied to transgender people whose medical treatment required them to dress according to their gender identity).

People v. Arena, 107 A.D.3d 1440, 967 N.Y.S.2d 301 (N.Y. App. Div., 4th Dep’t. 2013) (allowing transgender witness, sworn as a man, to testify in feminine garb, did not violate due process rights of defendant).

Doe v. Balaam, 524 F. Supp. 2d 1238 (D. Nev. 2007) (magistrate rejected a claim by a transgender woman that her constitutional rights were violated when she was subjected to a strip search in connection with her arrest on a misdemeanor charge).

United States v. Guiterrez-Romero, 2008 WL 2951393 (9th Cir. 2008) (not officially published) (ordering trial court to explain sentencing factors and address how transgender status of prisoners is weighed when deciding what difficulties they may face in prison).

Discrimination Law:

Barnes v. City of Cincinnati, 401 F.3d 729 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1003 (2005) (allowing Title VII sex discrimination claim by transgender woman police officer discharged after transitioning).

Broadus v. State Farm Insurance Co., 2000 WL 1585257 (W.D. Mo. 2000) (Title VII does not provide a cause of action for transgender employee subjected to workplace harassment).

Buffong v. Castle on the Hudson, 12 Misc.3d 1193(A), 824 N.Y.S.2d 752 (Table), 2005 WL 4658320 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2005) (not officially published) (transgender plaintiff can sue for sex discrimination under NY Human Rights Law).

Cook v PC Connection, Inc., 2010 WL 148369 (D.N.H. 2010) (not officially published) (transgender job applicant’s failure to disclose prior identities on application provided non-discriminatory justification for refusing to hire her).

Cox v. Denny’s, Inc., 1999 WL 1317785 (M.D. Fla. 1999) (Title VII does not protect transgender woman from discrimination because of her gender identity).

Creed v. Family Express Corp., 2007 WL 2265630 (N.D. Ind. 2007) (transgender woman plaintiff may pursue Title VII claim against employer who discharged her for failing to comply with the company’s dress code).

Cummings v. Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, 2015 WL 410867 (N.D. Ohio, Jan. 29, 2015) (transgender woman who had received a new birth certificate designating her sex as female would be considered a woman for purposes of a Title VII sex discrimination claim).

Dawson v. H & H Electric, Inc., 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 122723, 2015 WL 5437101 (E.D. Ark., Sept. 15, 2015) (denying employer’s motion for summary judgment on transgender woman’s Title VII sex discrimination suit for discharge in response to transitioning).

Doe v. Brockton School Committee, 2000 WL 33342399 (Mass. App. Ct. 2000) (unofficially published disposition) (junior high school administration preliminarily enjoined from barring transgender student from school based on student’s refusal to wear gender-appropriate clothing as defined by school).

EEOC v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, 2015 WL 1808308, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53270 (E.D. Mich.) (court denies motion to dismiss Title VII sex discrimination claim brought by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of transgender complainant).

Etsitty v. Utah Transit Auth., 502 F.3d 1215 (10th Cir. September 20, 2007) (gender identity is not a suspect classification).

Fowlkes v. Ironworkers Local 40, 790 F.3d 378 (2nd Cir. 2015) (Union violates duty of fair representation under National Labor Relations Act by discriminating against transgender woman in operation of hiring hall program).

Freeman v Realty Resource Hospitality, LLC, d/b/a/ Denny’s of Auburn, 2010 WL 2328407 (Me. Super. Ct., 2010) (transgender woman has viable discrimination claim against fastfood restaurant whose manager barred her from using women’s restroom facilities).

Glenn v. Brumby, 663 F.3d 1312 (11th Cir. 2011) (discrimination against a transgender woman because of her gender identity was sex discrimination for purposes of a 14th Amendment equal protection claim, invoking heightened scrutiny).

Goins v. West Group, 635 N.W.2d 717 (Minn. 2001) (state law ban on gender identity discrimination did not require employer to allow transgender woman to use restroom facilities designated for use by women).

Grossman, In re, 127 N.J. Super. 13, 316 A.2d 39 (App.), pet. Denied, 65 N.J. 292, 321 A.2d 253 (1974); Grossman v. Bernards Township Board of Education, 11 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1196, 11 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) para. 10,686 (U.S. Dist. Ct., D. N.J. 1975), aff’d without opinion, 538 F.2d 319 (3rd Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 897 (1976) (saga of transgender public school teacher discharged after transitioning male to female, discharge upheld based on speculative conclusion that students exposed to the teacher after she transitioned would experience psychological trauma).

Hispanic Aids Forum v. Estate of Bruno, 16 A.D.3d 294 (App. Div. 1 Dept. 2005) (landlord did not violate NYC Human Rights Law prohibition of gender identity discrimination by insisting that patrons of tenant use public restrooms consistent with their biological sex rather than their gender identity).

Hunter v. United Parcel Service, 697 F.3d 697 (8th Cir. 2012) (granting s.j. to employer on transgender employee’s Title VII claim on ground decision-maker was unaware of plaintiff’s gender identity and had non-discriminatory reason for discharge).

Lie v. Sky Publishing Corp., 2002 WL 31492397 (Mass. Superior Ct. 2002) (not officially published) (transgendered woman who claims she was discharged because of her refusal to dress as a man at work could claim unlawful discrimination on account of sex and disability).

Logan v. Gary Community School Corporation, 2008 WL 4411518 (N.D. Ind. 2008) (refusing to dismiss constitutional discrimination claims by male high school student who dressed as a girl and was barred from attending the senior prom thus attired).

Lopez v. River Oaks Imaging & Diagnostic Group, Inc., 542 F.Supp.2d 653 (S.D. Tex April 3, 2008) (transgender plaintiff may assert sex discrimination claim under Title VII).

Lusardi v. McHugh, EEOC DOC 0120133395, 2015 WL 1607756 (EEOC, April 1, 2015) (employer must allow transgender employee to use the restroom consistent with employee’s gender identity).

Macy v. Holder, Appeal No. 0120120821, 2012 WL 1435995 (EEOC, April 12, 2012) (reversing old agency rulings, holds that gender identity discrimination claims are actionable under Title VII as sex discrimination).

Maffei v. Kolaeton Indus., Inc., 164 Misc.2d 547 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1995) (transgender plaintiff can sue for sex discrimination under NY Human Rights Law).

Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989) (not a gender identity case, but crucial to the theory that Title VII and other federal bans on sex discrimination should be construed to encompass gender identity claims under a “sex stereotype” theory).

Richards v. United States Tennis Association, 93 Misc. 2d 713, 400 N.Y.S. 2d 267 (Sup. Ct., N.Y. Co., 1977)(transgender woman entitled to compete as a woman in U.S. Open tennis tournament without being subjected to chromosomal testing for gender; tournament officials’ position per contra would violate NY Human Rights Law ban on sex discrimination).

Rosa v. Park West Bank & Trust Co., 214 F.3d 213 (1st Cir.2000) (bank discrimination against transgender woman violates sex discrimination provision of Fair Credit Act).

Schroer v. Billington, 525 F. Supp. 2d 58 (D.D.C. 2007) (allowing Title VII sex discrimination claim by transgender woman whose job offer was rescinded when she told employer she would transition before beginning job).

Schwenk v. Hartford, 204 F.3d 1187 (9th Cir.2000) (Violence Against Women Act covers violence against transgender women).

Smith v. City of Salem, Ohio, 378 F.2d 566 (6th Cir. 2004) (allowing Title VII sex discrimination claim by transgender woman discharged as firefighter after transitioning)

Sommers v. Budget Marketing, Inc., 667 F.2d 748 (8th Cir. 1982); Sommers v. Iowa Civil Rights Commission, 337 N.W.2d 470 (Iowa 1983) (federal and state civil rights laws banning sex discrimination are not applicable to discrimination against a person because they transition from one gender to the other).

Ulane v. Eastern Airlines, Inc., 742 F.2d 1081 (7th Cir. 1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1017 (1985) (denying employment sex discrimination claim under Title VII by transgender woman discharged as commercial airline pilot after transitioning).

Family Law:

Application for a Marriage License for Jacob B. Nash and Erin A. Barr, 2003-Ohio-7221, 2003 WL 23097095 (Ohio Ct. App. 2003) (not reported in N.E.2d) (transgender man may not marry a woman under Ohio marriage statute that contemplates only marriages of different-sex couples).

Daly v. Daly, 102 Nev. 66, 715 P.2d 56, cert. denied, 479 U.S. 876 (1986) (holding that a father’s parental rights should be terminated when father transitions to female gender).

Gardiner, In re Estate of, 273 Kan. 191, 42 P.3d 120, cert. denied, 537 U.S. 825 (2002) (marriage between man and transgender woman was void so she was not surviving spouse for purposes of inheritance rights).

K.B. v. J.R., 887 N.Y.S.2d 516, 2009 WL 3337592 (Sup. Ct., Kings Co. 2009) (exceptional circumstances gave transgender man standing to petition for custody of the child his wife conceived through donor insemination).

Kantaras v. Kantaras, 884 So.2d 155 (Fla. App. 2nd Dist. 2004) (marriage between woman and transgender man was void ab initio, so he was not deemed father of children she bore during marriage).

Karin T. v. Michael T., 127 Misc.2d 14 (Fam. Ct., Monroe Co., 2007) (transgender man who married woman and argued invalidity of marriage could not escape support obligations).

Ladrach, In re., 32 Ohio Misc.2d 6, 513 N.E.2d 828 (Ohio Probate Ct.1987) (transgender woman could not marry a man).

Littleton v. Prange, 9 S.W.3d 223 (Tex. App. 1999) (marriage between man and transgender woman contracted in another state was void under Texas law, so transgender woman was not surviving spouse of decedent and could not bring a wrongful death action).

M.T. v. J.T., 140 N.J.Super. 77, 355 A.2d 204, 205 (1976) (marriage between man and transgender woman was valid).

Pierre v. Pierre, 898 So.2d 419 (La. App. 1st Cir. 2004) (trial court did not abuse discretion by enforcing visitation rights of transgender man with children conceived during his marriage to birth mother of children; dissent argued that as husband had been born female, married was void ab initio and he could not claim parental rights).

Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015) (state bans on same-sex marriage violate the 14th Amendment; one consequence of this ruling, not discussed by the court, is that transgender people will face no barriers in marrying persons of either sex).

Smith v. Smith, 2007 WL 901599 (Ohio App. 7 Dist. 2007) (custody of a boy exhibiting signs that he wanted to be treated as a girl should be switched from his mother, who accepted son’s desire to transition, to his father, who did not believe his son was transgender).

Identity Claims/Birth Certificates/Name Changes:

A.B.C. v. New York State Department of Health, 35 Misc.3d 565, 939 N.Y.S.2d 691 (N.Y. Sup.Ct. 2012) (trial court refuses to issue legal declaration of sex reassignment, claiming lack of jurisdiction to do so for petitioner resident in NY but born in California).

A.M.B., In re, 997 A.2d 754 (Me. 2010) (trial court could not refuse name-change petition without justification as a matter of “discretion” – court’s decision never mentions petition was transgender man, as revealed in appellate brief).

Birney v. NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 34 Misc.3d 1243 (A), 2012 WL 975082 (Sup. Ct. 2012) (table) (ordering NYC Health Department to reconsider refusal to issue new birth certificate to transgender applicant who had undergone reassignment surgery).

Brown, In re Robert Floyd, 770 S.E.2d 494 (Va. Sup. Ct. 2015) (transgender federal prisoner was entitled to receive legal name change).

Change of Birth Certificate, In re, 22 N.E.3d 707 (Ind. Ct. App. Dec. 4, 2014) (construing state law to allow transgender persons to apply for new birth certificates consistent with their gender identity).

Doe, Matter of John, [Index Number Redacted by Court], NYLJ 1202601879249, at *1 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Westchester Co., May 16, 2013) (ordering NY State Education Department to issue professional license in new name of transgender licensed professional).

E.P.L., In the Matter of the Application for Change of Name, 26 Misc.3d 336, 891 N.Y.S.2d 619 (N.Y.Sup. Ct., Westchester Co. 2009) (usual requirement that name change notices be published was waived and court record sealed at applicant’s request, due to risk that publication of transgender applicant’s name change might attract adverse attention).

Golden, In the Matter of Earl William, III, 56 A.D.3d 1109, 867 N.Y.S.2d 767 (N.Y.A.D., 3d Dept., 2008) (trial judge’s rejection of name change on ground that it would cause “confusion” is not legitimate basis for denying petition, where change wasn’t being sought for purposes of fraud or deception).

Grey v. Hasbrouck, 2015 IL. App. (1st) 130267, 2015 Ill. App. LEXIS 399 (Ill. May 22, 2015) (awarding attorneys’ fees to plaintiff as prevailing party in suit challenging state’s require of genital surgery as a prerequisite to issuance of new birth certificate to a transgender person).

Heilig, In re, 816 A. 2d 68 (Md. Ct. App. 2003) (ruling Maryland courts have jurisdiction to issue declarations of gender status for Maryland citizens born out-of-state).

Powell, In re, 95 A.D.3d 1631, 945 N.Y.S.2d 789 (N.Y. App. Div., 3rd Dept. 2012) (transgender inmate entitled to legal name change with evidence of sex reassignment surgery, as male or female identity associated with particular names is a matter of social convention, not law).

Shaw v. District of Columbia, 944 F.Supp.2d 43 (D.D.C. 2013) (transgender woman was entitled to be treated as a legal woman by police and court officers).

Somers v. Superior Court of City and County of San Francisco , 172 Cal.App.4th 1407, 92 Cal.Rptr.3d 116 (2009) (California-born non-resident transgender applicant entitled to replacement birth certificate; insisting on residency requirement would unconstitutionally discrimination based on equal protection and right to travel).

California-born transsexual who lives out of state can receive replacement birth certificate showing current gender, even though the statute allowing for issuance of such birth certificates requires that applications for the new certificate must be filed in the county where the petitioner resides; because this discriminates against California-born transsexuals who reside out of state, equal protection and right to travel were implicated)

Winn-Ritzenberg, In the Matter of the Application for Change of Name, 26 Misc.3d 1891, N.Y.S.2d 220 (N.Y. Sup.Ct., App. Term., N.Y. Co. 2009) (medical evidence of sex-reassignment is not legal prerequisite for transgender applicant’s requested name change).

Medical Treatment/Access to Care/Health Insurance Coverage:

D.F. v. Carrion, 43 Misc.3d 746, 986 N.Y.S.2d 769 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2014) (NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) must pay for gender reassignment procedures, including surgery, for transgender girl in the foster care system.)

O’Donnabhain v Commissioner, 134 T.C. 34 (U.S. Tax Court 2010) (cost of medical treatments for gender transition mostly fall under the definition of tax exempt medical expenses as, depending on the individual’s case, treatment for GID can be necessary for one’s health).

Radtke v. Miscellaneous Drivers & Helpers Union Local #638 Health, Welfare, Eye & Dental Fund, 2012 WL 1094452 (D.Minn. 2012) (unpublished decision) (union wrongly removed wife of a member from health insurance benefit program after learning she was transgender woman; although born a man, the wife is legally recognized as a woman and as legal spouse is eligible for the benefit plan).

Wilson v Phoenix House, 2011 WL 3273179 (S.D.N.Y., Aug. 1, 2011) (unpublished decision) (transgendered inmate may proceed on claim that in-patient substance abuse treatment center discriminated in violation of New York Human Rights Law and Equal Protection Clause by not allowing her to participate in the support groups consisting of members of her preferred gender).

Prisoner Rights:

Babcock v Clarke, 2009 WL 911214 (E.D. Wash. 2009) (prison officials have legitimate penological interest to use transgender woman inmates legal male name as part of standardized identification procedures).

Barrett v. Coplan, 292 F.Supp.2d 281 (D. N.H. 2003) (transgender inmate denied any treatment for her condition may assert claim for deprivation of constitutional rights against prison officials).

Battista v Clarke, 645 F.3d 449 (1st Cir. 2011) (prison authorities must provide hormone therapy and appropriate clothing for inmate diagnosed with gender dysphoria).

Doe v Yates, 2009 WL 3837261 (E.D. Cal., Nov 16, 2009) (transgender woman housed with dangerous male inmates who raped and assaulted her stated a claim for failure to protect under 8th Amendment and retaliation and Equal Protection claims).

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 840-44 (1994)(transgender inmate has a right under 8th Amendment to protected against obvious dangers while incarcerated).

Fields v. Smith, 653 F.3d 550 (7th Cir. 2011), cert. denied, 132 S. Ct. 1810 (2012) (state’s blanket prohibition on hormone treatment and sex reassignment procedures for transgender prison inmates violates 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment).

Giraldo v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 168 Cal.App.4th 231, 85 Cal.Rptr.3d 371 (Cal. App. 1st Dist. 2008) (holding that jailors have duty of care to transgender inmate who was brutally raped and abused while incarcerated).

Greene v. Bowles, 361 F.3d 290 (6th Cir. 2004) (transgender woman prisoner has the right to a trial of her claim that the prison warden violated her 8th Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment by knowingly placing her in a position to be physically assaulted by another prisoner).

Houston v. Trella, 2006 WL 2772748 (D.N.J. 2006) (denying treatment on other than medical grounds creates a triable 8th Amendment issue in suit by transgender woman who sought hormone treatment held by the New Jersey prison system at the request of the INS).

Konitzer v Frank, 711 F.Supp.2d 874 (E.D.Wis. 2010) (transgender woman’s constitutional rights not violated by male corrections officers performing strip and pat-down searches).

Kosilek v. Spencer, 891 F.Supp.2d 226 (D. Mass. 2012), aff’d, 740 F.3d 733 (1st Cir.), rev’d, 774 F.3d 63 (1st Cir. en banc, 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 2059 (May 4, 2015) (state prison could refuse to provide sex reassignment procedures for transgender woman incarcerated for life without parole).

Lynch v. Lewis, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35561, 2015 WL 1296235 (M. D. Ga., March 23, 2015) (denied qualified immunity defense of prison doctors who refused hormone therapy for transgender inmate; constitutional right to receive such therapy is established).

Meriwether v Faulkner, 821 F.2d 408 (7th Cir. 1987) (prison officials cannot deny all treatments to a transgender inmate, but stating in dicta that this does not guarantee the inmate “any particular type of treatment”).

Norsworthy v. Beard, 2015 WL 1500971 (N.D. Calif. April 2, 2105), stayed pending appeal by 9th Circuit (state policy against providing sex reassignment surgery for transgender inmates violates the 8th Amendment).

Powell, In re, 95 A.D.3d 1631, 945 N.Y.S.2d 789 (N.Y. App. Div., 3rd Dept. 2012) (transgender inmate entitled to legal name change with evidence of sex reassignment surgery, as male or female identity associated with particular names is a matter of social convention, not law).

Rosati v. Igbinoso, 2015 WL 3916977 (9th Cir. June 26, 2015) (district court erred in screening out as non-actionable a pro se transgender inmate’s suit seeking sex reassignment surgery).

Smith v. Hayman, 489 Fed. Appx. 544, 2012 WL 3024429 (3rd Cir. 2012) (difference of opinion between medical staff and inmate about appropriate treatment for inmate’s claimed gender dysphoria does not constitute “deliberate indifference” required for an 8th Amendment claim).

White v. United States, 958 A.2d 259 (D.C. App. 2008) (affirming first-degree assault charges against corrections officer charged with forcing transgender woman inmate to perform oral sex on him).


 

Refugee Status/Asylum/Withholding of Removal/Convention Against Torture (CAT):

Gutierrez v. Holder, 540 Fed. Appx. 613 (Mem), 2013 WL 4873881, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 19033 (9th Cir. 2013) (denies petition to review determination against CAT protection by the BIA, because conditions for transgender individuals in Mexico have improved significantly).

Hernandez v. Lynch, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 15685, 2015 WL 5155521 (9th Cir., Sept. 3, 2015); Godoy-Ramirez v. Lynch, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 15717 (9th Cir., Sept. 3, 2015); Mondragon-Alday v. Lynch, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 15713 (9th Cir., Sept. 3, 2015) (an apparent rejection of Gutierrez, above, holding that ongoing persecution of transgender women in Mexico would justify protection under the CAT, with recognition that advances for LGB people do not necessarily mean similar advances for transgender people).

Morales v. Gonzales, 472 F.3d 689 (9th Cir. 2007) (in determining whether transgender woman from Mexico was entitled to protection under CAT, Immigration Judge must take into consideration willful blindness of Mexican correctional officials who allegedly looked the other way and failed to intervene when woman was been raped by fellow inmates).

Students’ Rights:

Doe v. Regional School Unit 26, 86 A.3d 600 (Maine Supreme Jud. Ct., 2014) (transgender public school student entitled to use restroom consistent with student’s gender identity).

G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124905, 2015 WL 5560190 (E.D. Va., Sept. 17, 2015) (Dismissing Title IX sex discrimination by transgender boy denied use of boys’ restroom facilities by Board of Education policy; refusing preliminary injunctive relief on equal protection claim).

Johnston v. University of Pittsburgh of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41823, 2015 WL 1497753 (W.D. Pa., March 31, 2015) (University did not violate Title IX ban on sex discrimination by refusing to allow transgender man to use men’s restroom and locker room facilities on campus).

Reference:

Dru Levasseur, GENDER IDENTITY DEFINES SEX: UPDATING THE LAW TO REFLECT MODERN MEDICAL SCIENCE IS KEY TO TRANSGENDER RIGHTS, 39 Vt. L. Rev. 943 (2015).

Reference:

Executive Order 13672, signed by President Obama on July 21, 2014, forbids gender identity discrimination in the executive branch of the federal government. The Defense Department is expected to end its regulatory ban on service by transgender uniformed personnel in the spring of 2016.

Nineteen states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have statutes that protect against gender identity discrimination in employment in the public and private sector: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.

Six states have an executive order, administrative order, or personnel regulation prohibiting discrimination in public employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity only: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. One state prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in public employment only: New York. Ohio previously included gender identity, until Governor John Kasich allowed the executive order covering it to expire in January 2011. In February 2015, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback rescinded an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, previously introduced by Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

At least 185 cities and counties (including New York City) prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity for both public and private employees.

(Source: Wikipedia visited on September 28, 2015)