Law Commons^™

Athletic Scholarships And Title Ix: Compliance Trends And Context, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

This Article evaluates enforcement practices and compliance trends related to Title IX's requirement for gender equity in the distribution of athletic financial aid. It confirms that universities in the most competitive athletic programs continue to underfund women's athletic scholarships relative to the proportionality standard required by law. It also confirms that the under-allocation of women's athletic opportunities at universities across divisions results in additional disparities in scholarship funding that is not captured by an analysis of compliance. This Article concludes with suggestions that the government clarifies its expectations and enforcement priorities. It further calls for regulators, scholars, and advocates to …

Foreword, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In November 2019, the Western New England Law Review held its symposium, On Account of Sex: Women’s Suffrage and the Role of Gender in Politics Today. The symposium articles ask us to look at history to see what factors enabled path-breaking activists to secure the right to vote in a time of immense national turmoil. They also ask us to weigh how history should assess the strategic decisions that ultimately gained political rights for some women, but deliberately excluded Black women and other activists.

These historical accounts help us consider how the right to vote is faring, particularly after …

Gender & Sexuality In The Aba Standards On The Treatment Of Prisoners, Margaret Colgate Love, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, commentators, advocates, and corrections experts have focused increasingly on issues of gender and sexuality in prison. This is due in part to the growing number of women in a generally burgeoning American prison population. It is also attributable to efforts to end custodial sexual abuse and prison sexual violence, which have focused attention on issues relating to women and LGBT prisoners. Also, in part, this heightened attention reflects the influence of growing free-world social movements emphasizing the "intersectionality" of multiple forms of subordination and seeking to secure fair treatment of gay and transgender people.

This …

Symposium: Radical Nemesis: Re-Envisioning Ivan Illich's Theories On Social Institutions Foreword, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

The eight articles in this Symposium issue reflect the divergent topics that Ivan Illich managed to reflect upon in his life’s works. The topics include discussion of prisons, education, family law structures, privatization of welfare services and its impact on labor consciousness, media, and the rule of law.

The Symposium was a daylong conference of ideas that invited the engagement of those who joined. The students of Illich and students of students of Illich shared with those of us who had not studied at his side, his passion for ideas, his insights, and his invitation for anyone with or without …

Stratification Of The Welfare Poor: Intersections Of Gender, Race & "Worthiness" In Poverty Discourse And Policy, Bridgette Baldwin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the historical, cultural and legal treatments and representations of poor black women from Progressive Era philanthropic aid to early "work-to-welfare" reform protocol. When black women serve as the case study for a larger examination of social policy issues we see that welfare was rarely meant to remedy the structural crunch of poverty. Working class black women have been at the center of the construction of the poor and serve as the designation to determine which people deserve to be compensated for being poor.

Furthermore, the Author discusses both the ramifications and rationale of why the government never …

Marriage Equality For Same-Sex Couples: Where We Are And Where We Are Going, Jennifer Levi

Faculty Scholarship

The legal landscape for same-sex couples seeking to marry has shifted dramatically over the last five years. On October 10, 2008, the Connecticut Supreme Court became the third state high court to rule that its state constitution could not sustain a statutory framework that excludes same-sex couples from marrying, following the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on November 18, 2003, and the California Supreme Court on May 15, 2008. Same-sex couples throughout the country have gotten married in Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and in other countries throughout the world that provide full marriage equality, including in Canada. The Author discusses the developments …

Misapplying Equity Theories: Dress Codes At Work, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides a new perspective on Title VII caselaw concerning employer-mandated, sex-specific dress codes. With few exceptions, courts have held that employer dress codes do not constitute sex discrimination even when they expressly differentiate based solely on an employee's sex. In other contexts, courts readily acknowledge that facially sex-based practices and policies are presumptively unlawful under Title VII. When it comes to dress codes, however, nearly the opposite is true. Courts generally presume a sex-based dress code to be permissible, and the burden falls heavily on the employee to show, beyond the mere fact of differential treatment, some additional …

(E)Racing Jennifer Harris: Sexuality And Race, Law And Discourse In Harris V. Portland, Kristine E. Newhall, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

In 2007 Penn State basketball coach Rene Portland retired shortly after a confidential settlement ended a discrimination lawsuit brought by former player Jennifer Harris against Portland and Penn State. Because of Portland's infamous policy of not allowing lesbians on her team, her departure was celebrated as a victory against homophobia in sports. Yet although Harris's claims of sexual orientation discrimination were validated in the media, her allegations of racial discrimination were ignored or dismissed as implausible. In this Article, the authors examine the omission of race from the discourse surrounding this case and suggest that both legal and cultural factors …

Some Modest Proposals For Challenging Established Dress Code Jurisprudence, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, most courts have sustained employer-imposed, gender-based dress codes. Two well-established exceptions to the rule exist for dress codes that either (1) objectify or sexualize women or (2) allow for flexibility of standards for male employees' appearance but require stricter rules for women. A third, still-evolving exception has recently developed regarding challenges to dress codes by transgender litigants. Despite this recent progress, however, the classical gender-based dress code -- requiring women to conform to feminine stereotypes and men to conform to masculine stereotypes -- has, up to the present, been sustained by a majority of the courts time and again. …

Sex And (Sexed By) The State, Taylor Flynn

Media Presence

This Article discusses how the law not only tries to discipline the body into traditional sex roles, but it also has the power to declare you to be a particular legal sex, even over your objection. The majority of jurisdictions follow the orthodoxy of sex as "genitalia-at-birth." Under this view, a male to female transgender woman (who, for example, has undergone surgery and is anatomically indistinguishable from someone born with female genitalia) is deemed in the majority of states to be legally male. In a handful of more progressive states, the law looks predominantly--although unfortunately, not exclusively--at an individual's gender …

Epilogue, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

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 these cases 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. This created that appeared to be a "transgender" exception to sex discrimination law. Earlier courts ignored what the First Circuit recognized here-that a bank officer who tells an applicant to go home, change, and …

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

Faculty Scholarship

This is the brief for the Plaintiff-Appellant Lucas Rosa v. Park West Bank and Trust Company in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. This appeal is from a Final Judgment, entered October 18, 1999, that disposed of all claims in the case. This case involves an action brought pursuant to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Massachusetts statutes forbidding discrimination in places of public accommodation, and credit, against a bank for refusing to issue and accept a loan application from a bank customer because of the customer's sex.