Law Commons^™

Coaches In Court: Legal Challenges To Sex Discrimination In College Athletics, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

Sex discrimination continues to operate in the working environment of college athletics. Female coaches experience bias both because of their sex and the intersections of gender stereotypes with stereotypes about women of color, lesbians, and aging. The law continues to be a leverage to challenge barriers to women’s leadership in college sports. This Article provides an overview of the relevant legal protections in three cases brought by coaches Beth Burns, Tracey Griesbaum, and Shannon Miller. Their cases expose discrimination and the double standard related to the value of female coaches’ success.

Challenging Gender In Single-Sex Spaces: Lessons From A Feminist Softball League, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores transgender inclusion within adult recreational women’s leagues by using the example of the Mary Vazquez Women’s Softball League (MVWSL), in Northampton, Massachusetts. A MVWSL policy addressing transgender inclusion became necessary due to a noticeable increase in gender-identity diversity. The resultant policy respects the league’s core lesbian constituency by providing individuals with the freedom to acknowledge openly a gender identity that has or is evolving from lesbian to something else, and reflects the league’s founding feminist principles by refusing to define for others the suitability of a women’s community.

The Author demonstrates the successful creation of a policy …

Better Locker Rooms: It’S Not Just A Transgender Thing, George B. Cunningham, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Title Ix And Procedural Fairness: Why Disciplined-Student Litigation Does Not Undermine The Role Of Title Ix In Campus Sexual Assault, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

As a matter of civil rights, Title IX mandates that federally funded educational institutions address reports of sexual assault. Often disciplined-student plaintiffs argue unsuccessfully that the college or university’s decision to discipline them is tainted by “reverse” sex discrimination. This Article examines the recent spate of disciplined-student cases in an effort to harmonize Title IX compliance with the procedural rights of students accused of sexual assault. It provides a historical context for Title IX’s application to sexual assault on campuses and the requirements the law imposes on the educational institutions. Next, it describes the role Title IX plays in disciplined-student …

"As Who They Really Are": Expanding Opportunities For Transgender Athletes To Participate In Youth And Scholastic Sports, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

The aim of this Article is to assist the efforts of inclusion of transgender athletes by helping decision-makers in scholastic athletics and youth sports understand why and how to create inclusive policies. These decision-makers include leaders and stakeholders in local, state, and national sport organizations.

This Article begins with an overview of policies already adopted by interscholastic athletic associations and sport governing bodies that regulate youth sport programs. It critiques policies that categorically exclude and otherwise impose limitations on transgender persons who seek to participate in sports in a manner consistent with their gender identities (what this Article will refer …

For The Title Ix Civil Rights Movement: Congratulations And Cautions, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sharing Sexism, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Leadership In Women's College Athletics, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

Today there is an enormous gender disparity among collegiate head coaches and athletic administrators in the United States. Women fill less than a quarter of head coach and athletic director positions in college athletics and are even minorities among coaches of women's teams. Few other professions are as impervious to gender integration. Leadership in college athletics is, in the words of one scholar, one of the "few male bastions remaining," which raises the question: Why are women so starkly underrepresented in leadership positions within college athletics? There is no easy answer, but rather a variety of factors that exclude, deter, …

A Reasonable Belief: In Support Of Lgbt Plaintiffs' Title Vii Retaliation Claims, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

When an LGBT employee is punished for complaining about discrimination in the workplace, he or she has two potential causes of action under Title VII: first, a challenge to the underlying discrimination, and second, a challenge to the resulting retaliation. The first claim is vulnerable to dismissal under courts’ narrow interpretation of Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination “because of sex” as applied to LGBT plaintiffs. But such an outcome need not determine the fate of the second claim. Faithful application of retaliation law’s “reasonable belief” standard, which protects a plaintiff from reprisal so long as she reasonably believed that she …

Title Ix Feminism, Social Justice, And Ncaa Reform, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses social justice feminism as it applies to gender discrimination in collegiate and scholastic athletics in the context of Title IX requirements. Title IX activists today are primarily concerned with securing equal resources and opportunities for women in a college athletic environment. Today, that environment is becoming increasingly commercialized; this presents a Title IX problem because it creates an incentive to invest more athletic department resources into certain men’s athletic programs instead of distributing them equitably to women’s (and other men’s) programs. In addition, the NCAA is presently considering or has recently undertaken deregulation initiatives in a variety …

Clothes Don't Make The Man (Or Woman), But Gender Identity Might, Jennifer Levi

Faculty Scholarship

The Ninth Circuit's recent decision in Jespersen v. Harrah's Operating Co., Inc. reflects the blinders on many contemporary courts regarding the impact of sex-differentiated dress requirements on female employees. Although some courts have acknowledged the impermissibility of imposing sexually exploitive dress requirements, they have done so only at the extreme outer limits, ignoring the concrete harms experienced by women (and men) who are forced to conform to externally imposed gender norms. On the other hand, some transgender litigants have recently succeeded in challenging sex-differentiated dress requirements. This success is due in part to their incorporation of disability claims based on …

Federal Equal Protection, Taylor Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

The Author explores the use of due process and equal protection guarantees from the U.S. Constitution as a means to challenge workplace discrimination faced by LGBT government employees. The Author also discusses how private employees must rely on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to assert similar claims. Because sex discrimination is prohibited under both the Constitution and Title VII, federal courts have relied on reasoning in the former context when analyzing the latter, and vice versa. This means that a watershed case regarding one law can contain reasoning for the other. The Author goes on to the discuss …

It's Complicated: Age, Gender, And Lifetime Discrimination Against Working Women - The United States And The U.K. As Examples, Susan Bisom-Rapp, Malcolm Sargeant

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers the effect on women of a lifetime of discrimination using material from both the U.S. and the U.K. Government reports in both countries make clear that women workers suffer from multiple disadvantages during their working lives, which result in significantly poorer outcomes in old age when compared to men. Indeed, the numbers are stark. In the U.S., for example, the poverty rate of women 65 years old and up is nearly double that of their male counterparts. Older women of color are especially disadvantaged. The situation in the U.K. is comparable.

To capture the phenomenon, the article …

Risky Arguments In Social-Justice Litigation: The Case Of Sex Discrimination And Marriage Equality, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay takes up the puzzle of the risky argument or, more precisely, the puzzle of why certain arguments do not get much traction in advocacy and adjudication even when some judges find them to be utterly convincing. Through a close examination of the sex discrimination argument's evanescence in contemporary marriage litigation, this Essay draws lessons about how and why arguments become risky in social-justice cases and whether they should be made nonetheless. The marriage context is particularly fruitful because some judges, advocates, and scholars find it "obviously correct" that laws excluding same-sex couples from marriage discriminate facially based on …

Securing Equal Access To Sex-Segregated Facilities For Transgender Students, Harper Jean Tobin, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

If Title IX is to have any real meaning for transgender students, it must protect a student's ability to live and participate in school as a member of the gender with which they identify. This means that students must be permitted to use gender-segregated spaces, including restrooms and locker rooms, consistent with their gender identity, without restriction. Denial of equal access to facilities that correspond to a student's gender identity singles out and stigmatizes transgender students, inflicts humiliation and trauma, interferes with medical treatment, and empowers bullies. A student subjected to these conditions is, by definition, deprived of an equal …

Panel Three: Introduction, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I think some of my colleagues will ask questions about these cases, to ask who is a man or woman, but if the question is legally, what is male or female, and if you think about the questions that you've read, say, in common law out of the Supreme Court – and I'll just talk about discrimination cases, although I think you can talk about other ones, too – think about the sex discrimination cases. The struggle is about, what is discrimination, but the Court in Craig v. Born is talking about different control restrictions for men and women. Or …

Parallel Lives: Women's Rights And Lesbian Rights Litigation, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I love the title of this panel because it gave me a chance to think about the historical themes and emerging issues in law related to women's rights, which of course is a mere endless set of possibilities.

I spent much of the last decade doing lesbian and gay civil rights litigation, and the question that I will focus on today grows out of that work and is a comparative one or at least a relational one. The question is this: What is the relationship between women's rights litigation as it has evolved in the last thirty years and lesbian …

On Making Anti-Essentialist And Social Constructionist Arguments In Courts, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

One of my most intense disagreements with another lawyer during nearly a decade of lesbian and gay rights litigation concerned social constructionism. The lawyer (a law professor, if truth be told) wanted to argue in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court that sexual orientation, like race, was a social constructed category. He reasoned that since the Court had condemned race discrimination even while recognizing the "socio-political, rather than biological" nature of race, it would similarly be willing to invalidate a measure discriminating against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, even while recognizing the socially constructed nature of sexual …

Feminism At The Millennium, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Sexism of all kinds – subtle and blatant, criminal and legal, commercial and private – is the topic of the three books under review. The books initially sort themselves out by discipline: Everyday Sexism and Subtle Sexism are anthologies whose editors and contributors are primarily sociologists; Speaking of Sex is written by a law professor and offers a more focused argument about the persistence of gender inequalities. Distinctions in authorship aside, the three books pose a pair of similar and painfully familiar questions: Why is so much still organized to the disadvantage of women, and what can (feminist) academics contribute …

Amicus Curiae Brief Of Now Legal Defense And Education Fund And Equal Rights Advocates In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant And In Support Of Reversal, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund ("NOW LDEF") is a leading national non-profit civil rights organization that performs abroad range of legal and educational services in support of efforts to eliminate sex-based discrimination" and secure equal rights. NOW LDEF was founded in 1970 by leaders of the National Organization for Women as a separate organization. NOW LDEF has appeared as amicus in numerous cases involving sex stereotyping as a form of sex discrimination, including Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, and Fisher v. Vassar College.

Equal Rights Advocates ("ERA") is one of the oldest public interest law firms specializing in …

Gender Sex Agency And Discrimination: A Reply To Professor Abrams, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment is the fastest-growing area of employment discrimination. In fact, the annual number of sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC has more than doubled in the last six years. No one, or at least no one who has given this problem her serious attention, can deny that workplace sexual harassment is a grave problem and that it significantly impedes women's entrance into many sectors of the wage labor market.

Notwithstanding these impressive numbers, sexual harassment legal doctrine remains remarkably undertheorized – particularly by the Supreme Court. For these and other reasons, …

Equality For Individuals Or Equality For Groups: Implications Of The Supreme Court Decision In The Manhart Case, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary breaks down the case of the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power v. Manhart and discusses what effects the Supreme Court's decision will have when Title VII is applied to university employers, particularly in their relationship with TIAA-CREF