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Running From The Gender Police: Reconceptualizing Gender To Ensure Protection For Non-Binary People, Katie Reineck Dec 2017

Running From The Gender Police: Reconceptualizing Gender To Ensure Protection For Non-Binary People, Katie Reineck

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Non-binary people who are discriminated against at work or school are in a unique and demoralizing position. Not only have some courts expressed reluctance to use existing antidiscrimination law to protect plaintiffs who are discriminated against based on their gender identity and not simply because they are men or women, in most states non-binary genders are not legally recognized. I argue that a fundamental right to self-identification grounded in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would provide non-binary plaintiffs with the ability to assert their gender in court and have that assertion carry legal weight, regardless of how …


Missed Opportunities: The Unrealized Equal Protection Framework In Maher V. Roe And Harris V. Mcrae, Amelia Bailey Jan 2016

Missed Opportunities: The Unrealized Equal Protection Framework In Maher V. Roe And Harris V. Mcrae, Amelia Bailey

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note focuses on two cases, Maher v. Roe and Harris v. McRae, and argues that they represent watershed moments in the reproductive rights movement because they positioned abortion as a fundamental right in name only. In both cases, the Supreme Court sanctioned severe funding restrictions and refused to grant poor women the right to state and federal assistance for elective and “nontherapeutic” abortions. “Non-therapeutic abortion” refers to those abortions performed or induced when the life of the mother is not endangered if the fetus is carried to term or when the pregnancy of the mother is not the …


Teen Pregnancy In Charter Schools: Pregnancy Discrimination Challenges Under The Equal Protection Clause And Title Ix, Kaylee Niemasik Jan 2015

Teen Pregnancy In Charter Schools: Pregnancy Discrimination Challenges Under The Equal Protection Clause And Title Ix, Kaylee Niemasik

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Until three years ago, a policy at Delhi Charter School in Louisiana required that any pregnant student be effectively expelled. A pregnant sixteen-year-old student’s expulsion caught the attention of national media in 2012. The ACLU sued and the school quickly rescinded the policy. Although the policy was revoked, the un-adjudicated nature of the resolution leaves teen girls at the school and nationwide without any final court order to protect them against the (re)enactment of similar discriminatory policies. This Article analyzes the Delhi Charter School policy in order to make three related arguments. First, the Court should adopt a rebuttable presumption …


"Off With His __": Analyzing The Sex Disparity In Chemical Castration Sentences, Zachary Edmonds Oswald Jan 2013

"Off With His __": Analyzing The Sex Disparity In Chemical Castration Sentences, Zachary Edmonds Oswald

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Societies around the world have performed castration, in its various forms, on their male and female members for thousands of years, for numerous reasons. Even within the United States, prisoners have been sentenced to castration (as a form of punishment or crime prevention) since the early twentieth century. In recent years, legislatures have perpetuated this practice but with a modern twist. Now, states use chemical injections to castrate their inmates. It turns out, however, that systemic problems plague the chemical castration sentencing regime. These problems arise from the nature of the crimes eligible for chemical castration sentences, the manner of …


Does The Constitution Protect Abortions Based On Fetal Anomaly?: Examining The Potential For Disability-Selective Abortion Bans In The Age Of Prenatal Whole Genome Sequencing, Greer Donley Jan 2013

Does The Constitution Protect Abortions Based On Fetal Anomaly?: Examining The Potential For Disability-Selective Abortion Bans In The Age Of Prenatal Whole Genome Sequencing, Greer Donley

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note examines whether the state or federal government has the power to enact a law that prevents women from obtaining abortions based on their fetus’s genetic abnormality. Such a ban has already been enacted in North Dakota and introduced in Indiana and Missouri. I argue below that this law presents a novel state intrusion on a woman’s right to obtain a pre-viability abortion. Moreover, these pieces of legislation contain an outdated understanding of prenatal genetic testing—-the landscape of which is quickly evolving as a result of a new technology: prenatal whole genome sequencing. This Note argues that the incorporation …


No Contact Parole Restrictions: Unconstitutional And Counterproductive, Sharon Brett Jan 2012

No Contact Parole Restrictions: Unconstitutional And Counterproductive, Sharon Brett

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Although what Jesse Timmendequas did was abhorrent, the legislation enacted in the wake of his crime went far beyond making sure we know the pedophiles or pedophile-murderers living in our neighborhoods. Megan's name now lends itself to a host of state laws requiring the state to notify neighbors when a sex offender moves into the neighborhood. The term "sex offender" is intentionally broad, covering everyone from voyeurs and exhibitionists to rapists and child molesters. Yet, Megan's Laws treat them the same way, ignoring some crucial questions: Are all sex offenders alike? Are they all monsters? In reality, the majority of …


Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse Jan 2012

Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that civil marriage and democracy are inherently incompatible, whether assessed from a transcultural perspective that reduces them to their most universal aspects or a culturally situated perspective that accounts for their uniquely American elaborations. Across virtually all cultures, civil marriage privileges sexual partners by offering them exclusive access to highly desirable government benefits, while democracy presupposes liberty and equality. When governments privilege sexual partners, they effectively deprive their citizens of liberty by encouraging them to enter sexual partnerships rather than selfdetermining based on their own preferences; they effectively deprive their citizens of equality by establishing insidious status …


Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai Jan 2011

Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In August 2009, a group of parents in California filed a lawsuit, Balde v. Alameda Unified School District, in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. They alleged that the Alameda Unified School District refused them the right to excuse their children from a new curriculum, Lesson 9, that would teach public elementary school children about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) families. The proposed curriculum included short sessions about GLBT people, incorporated into more general lessons about family and health, once a year from kindergarten through fifth grade. Kindergarteners would learn the harms of teasing, while fifth graders …


Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection And The Contact Sports Exemption Of Title Ix, Jamal Greene Jan 2005

Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection And The Contact Sports Exemption Of Title Ix, Jamal Greene

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The disparity between what the Constitution permits of public schools and what Title IX permits of private ones is unquestionably stark. This Article calls this disparity into question. First, it asks under what circumstances, if any, allowance for sex discrimination in athletics may be justified under constitutional standards. Then, it considers the practical relevance of the disparity between how a school may lawfully discriminate under Title IX and how it may do so under the Equal Protection Clause. Finally, it offers a prescription for bringing into balance the gender equity messages sent by Title IX and the Constitution.


Fighting Anti-Gay Abuse In Schools: The Opening Appellate Brief Of Plaintiff Jamie Nabozny In Nabozny V. Podlesny, Patricia M. Logue, David S. Buckel Jan 1997

Fighting Anti-Gay Abuse In Schools: The Opening Appellate Brief Of Plaintiff Jamie Nabozny In Nabozny V. Podlesny, Patricia M. Logue, David S. Buckel

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In Nabozny v. Podlesny, 92 F.3d 446 (7th Cir. 1996), a case of first impression, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recognized the constitutional right of a gay male public school student to equal protection from anti-gay harassment and assaults. The court held that Jamie Nabozny had stated equal protection claims against his school district and three school principals for gender and sexual orientation discrimination based on allegations that, because he is gay and a boy, defendants had failed to afford him the same kinds of protection given to other harassed students. At trial on remand a jury found …


"What's So Magic[Al] About Black Women?" Peremptory Challenges At The Intersection Of Race And Gender, Jean Montoya Jan 1996

"What's So Magic[Al] About Black Women?" Peremptory Challenges At The Intersection Of Race And Gender, Jean Montoya

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article addresses the evolving constitutional restraints on the exercise of peremptory challenges in jury selection. Approximately ten years ago, in the landmark case of Batson v. Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause forbids prosecutors to exercise race-based peremptory challenges, at least when the excluded jurors and the defendant share the same race. Over the next ten years, the Court extended Batson's reach.