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Brief For The Plaintiff-Appellant Lucas Rosa In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Circuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Jennifer L. Levi, Mary L. Bonauto
Brief For The Plaintiff-Appellant Lucas Rosa In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Circuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Jennifer L. Levi, Mary L. Bonauto
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The District Court fundamentally misconceived the law as applicable to the Plaintiffs claim by concluding that there may be no relationship, as a matter of law, between telling a bank customer what to wear and sex discrimination. It also misapplied Rule 12(b)(6) to the extent that it resolved any factual questions beyond the allegations of the Complaint regarding the basis of the Bank's different treatment of the Plaintiff. Finally, because the District Court incorrectly dismissed the single federal claim in Plaintiffs Complaint, it improperly dismissed Plaintiffs pendant state claims for want of federal court jurisdiction.
Amicus Curiae Brief Of Now Legal Defense And Education Fund And Equal Rights Advocates In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant And In Support Of Reversal In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Curcuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Katherine M. Franke
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
By dismissing the plaintiffs complaint under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act ("ECOA") on the ground that "the issue in this case is not [Rosa's] sex, but rather how he chose to dress when applying for a loan" (Bench Order at 1), the lower court erroneously established that there are no set of facts in which clothing-based sex stereotyping can form the basis of a legitimate claim of sex discrimination in access to credit. This view of the meaning and scope of the ECOA runs contrary to well-established Supreme Court precedent which prohibits, inter alia, the adverse treatment of a …
Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company, Katherine M. Franke
Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company, Katherine M. Franke
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
In July of 1998 something rather mundane happened: Lucas Rosa walked into Park West Bank in Holyoke, Massachusetts and asked for a loan application. Since it was a warm summer day, and because she wanted to look credit-worthy, Rosa wore a blousey top over stockings. Suddenly, the mundane transformed into the exceptional: When asked for some identification, Rosa was told that no application would be forthcoming until and unless she went home, changed her clothes and returned attired in more traditionally masculine/male clothing. Rosa, a biological male who identifies herself as female was, it seems, denied a loan application on …
Epilogue, Jennifer L. Levi
Epilogue, Jennifer L. Levi
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The First Circuit reversed the district court's order dismissing Lucas Rosa's claim against Park West Bank. The appeals court's reversal seems to be part of an emerging nationwide rejection of cases from the 1970s and 1980s in which courts summarily dismissed sex discrimination claims brought by transgender plaintiffs, no matter how squarely the facts appeared to present a clear-cut case of discrimination based on sex. Creating what appeared to be a "transgender" exception to sex discrimination law, those earlier courts ignored what the First Circuit recognized here-that a bank officer who tells an applicant to go home, change, and return …