Constitutional Law Commons^™

The New Gender Panic In Sport: Why State Laws Banning Transgender Athletes Are Unconstitutional, Deborah Brake

Articles

The scope and pace of legislative activity targeting transgender individuals is nothing short of a gender panic. From restrictions on medical care to the regulation of library books and the use of pronouns in schools, attacks on the transgender community have reached crisis proportions. A growing number of families with transgender children are being forced to leave their states of residence to keep their children healthy and their families safe and intact. The breadth and pace of these developments is striking. Although the anti-transgender backlash now extends broadly into health and family governance, sport was one of the first settings—the …

Ochoa, Big Ten Law Deans Pledge Support For Diversity Ahead Of Scotus Affirmative Action Ruling, The Indiana Lawyer

Christiana Ochoa (7/22-10/22 Acting; 11/2022-)

s the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hand down a decision that could fundamentally alter affirmative action, a group of law school deans — including Dean Christiana Ochoa of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law — has issued a statement affirming the deans’ commitment to diversity.

The group of 15 deans represent Big Ten law schools, including IU Maurer. In their statement — which IU Maurer posted to its official Facebook page — the deans say they are “joining together to affirm our commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through legally permissible means, regardless of the outcome of …

Democratizing Abolition, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

When abolitionists discuss remedies for past and present injustices, they are frequently met with apparently pragmatic objections to the viability of such bold remedies in U.S. legislatures and courts held captive by reactionary forces. Previous movements have seen their lesser reforms dashed by the white supremacist capitalist order that retains its grip on power in America. While such objectors contend that abolitionists should not ask for so much justice, abolitionists should in fact demand significantly more.

Remedying our country’s history of subordination will not be complete without establishing abolition democracy. While our classical conception of a liberal republic asks us …

“The Cruelty Is The Point”: Using Buck V. Bell As A Tool For Diversifying Instruction In The Law School Classroom, Tiffany C. Graham

Scholarly Works

Instructors who are looking for opportunities to expose their students to the ways in which intersectional forms of bias impact policy and legal rules can use Buck v. Bell to explore, for instance, the impact of disability and class on the formation of doctrine. A different intersectional approach might use the discussion of the case as a gateway to a broader conversation about the ways in which race and gender bias structured the implementation of sterilization policies around the nation. Finally, those who wish to examine the global impact of American forms of bias can use this case and the …

Gender Identity, Sports, And Affirmative Action: What's Title Ix Got To Do With It?, Michael E. Rosman

St. Mary's Law Journal

There is much talk these days of promoting “equity” rather than “equality.” When applied outside athletics, Title IX promotes non-discrimination, usually associated with equality. As it has been applied to sports, though, it may be our most prominent “equity” statute, making sure each sex gets its fair share.

The questions this article seeks to address are legal ones that the debate about trans females seems to bring to the fore. How did we start with a statute whose language looks very similar to every other civil rights statute—and, indeed, that acts just like every other civil rights statute outside of …

Gender, Voting Rights, And The Nineteenth Amendment, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

One hundred years after the woman suffrage amendment became part of the United States Constitution, a federal court has held—for the first time—that a plaintiff must establish intentional discrimination to prevail on a direct constitutional claim under the Nineteenth Amendment. In adopting that threshold standard, the court simply reasoned by strict textual analogy to the Fifteenth Amendment and asserted that “there is no reason to read the Nineteenth Amendment differently from the Fifteenth Amendment.” This paper’s thesis is that, to the contrary, the Nineteenth Amendment is deserving of judicial analysis independent of the Fifteenth Amendment because it has a distinct …

Menstrual Dignity And The Bar Exam, Margaret E. Johnson, Marcy L. Karin, Elizabeth Cooper

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the issue of menstruation and the administration of the bar exam. Although such problems are not new, over the summer and fall of 2020, test takers and commentators took to social media to critique state board of law examiners’ (“BOLE”) policies regarding menstruation. These problems persist. Menstruators worry that if they unexpectedly bleed during the exam, they may not have access to appropriately sized and constructed menstrual products or may be prohibited from accessing the bathroom. Personal products that are permitted often must be carried in a clear, plastic bag. Some express privacy concerns that the see-through …

Equal Protection And Abortion: Brief Of Equal Protection Constitutional Law Scholars Serena Mayeri, Melissa Murray, And Reva Siegel As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents In Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Reva Siegel, Melissa Murray, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Equal Protection changes the questions we ask about abortion restrictions. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an amicus brief filed on our behalf demonstrated that Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The brief continues a tradition of equality arguments that preceded Roe v. Wade and will continue, in new forms, after Dobbs. Our brief shows how the canonical equal protection cases United States v. Virginia and Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs extend to the regulation of pregnancy, hence provide an independent constitutional basis for abortion rights.

Under equal …

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wise Legal Giant, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Lawyers For White People?, Jessie Allen

Articles

This article investigates an anomalous legal ethics rule, and in the process exposes how current equal protection doctrine distorts civil rights regulation. When in 2016 the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct finally adopted its first ever rule forbidding discrimination in the practice of law, the rule carried a strange exemption: it does not apply to lawyers’ acceptance or rejection of clients. The exemption for client selection seems wrong. It contradicts the common understanding that in the U.S. today businesses may not refuse service on discriminatory grounds. It sends a message that lawyers enjoy a professional prerogative to discriminate against …

Second Redemption, Third Reconstruction, Richard A. Primus

Articles

In The Accumulation of Advantages, the picture that Professor Owen Fiss paints about equality during and since the Second Reconstruction is largely a picture in black and white. That makes some sense. The black/white experience is probably the most important throughline in the story of equal protection. It was the central theme of both the First and Second Reconstructions. In keeping with that orientation, the picture of disadvantage described by Fiss’s theory of cumulative responsibility is largely drawn from the black/white experience. Important as it is, however, the black/white experience does not exhaust the subject of constitutional equality. So in …

An Intersectional Critique Of Tiers Of Scrutiny: Beyond “Either/Or” Approaches To Equal Protection, Devon W. Carbado, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

For the past forty years, Justice Powell’s concurring opinion in University of California v. Bakke has been at the center of scholarly debates about affirmative action. Notwithstanding the enormous attention Justice Powell’s concurrence has received, scholars have paid little attention to a passage in that opinion that expressly takes up the issue of gender. Drawing on the theory of intersectionality, this Essay explains several ways in which its reasoning is flawed. The Essay also shows how interrogating Justice Powell’s “single axis” race and gender analysis raises broader questions about tiers of scrutiny for Black women. Through a hypothetical of a …

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Northwestern University Law Review

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Publications

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Constitution Day Lecture: Constitutional Law And Tort Law: Injury, Race, Gender, And Equal Protection, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

The focus of today’s annual Constitution Day lecture at the University of Maine School of Law is on the Fourteenth Amendment and specifically how the Equal Protection Clause relates to tort law. First, I will talk about the Equal Protection Clause in general—what it says, and some of what it has been held to mean—particularly where government makes distinctions based on race and gender. Second, I will discuss two historical tort cases that violate equal protection on the basis of race. In doing so, I uncover the racial history of tort law that has been hidden in plain sight. I …

Fathers And Feminism: The Case Against Genetic Entitlement, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This Article makes the case against a nascent consensus among feminist and other progressive scholars about men's parental rights. Most progressive proposals to reform parentage law focus on making it easier for men to assert parental rights, especially when they are not married to the mother of the child. These proposals may seek, for example, to require the state to make more extensive efforts to locate biological fathers, to require pregnant women to notify men of their impending paternity, or to require new mothers to give biological fathers access to infants.

These proposals disregard the mother's existing parental rights and …

The Case For Lgbt Equality: Reviving The Political Process Doctrine And Repurposing The Dormant Commerce Clause, Terri R. Day, Danielle Weatherby

Brooklyn Law Review

As a reaction to the Supreme Court’s historic marriage equality decision earlier this summer, many Southern state legislators opposing the trend toward LGBT-protective laws have proposed legislation that would essentially prohibit municipalities from carving out new antidiscrimination protections for the LGBT community. Conservative Senator Bart Hester spearheaded the passing of one of these “anti” antidiscrimination laws in Arkansas, and states like Texas, West Virginia, Michigan, and Oklahoma are not far behind. These “Hester-type laws” are strikingly similar to the Colorado amendment struck down by the Romer v. Evans Court 20 years ago. Both the Colorado amendment and the new wave …

The Reed Case: The Seed For Equal Protection From Sex-Based Discrimination, Or Polite Judicial Hedging?, John P. Murphy Jr.

Akron Law Review

Reed is yet another example of how the Equal Protection Clause may be used to strike down state statutes which embody arbitrary classifications that are neither fairly nor substantially related to the object of the statute, and which bring about the invidious discrimination that is repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. It must stressed that the outcome of Reed is clearly commendable in terms of justice. What is troublesome is the fact that one may contend that the Supreme Court hedged, perhaps avoided, an excellent opportunity in which to expand the constitutional scope of the Equal Protection Clause. Reed afforded the …

Standing; Assertion Of Jus Tertii; Sex Discrimination; Equal Protection; Twenty-First Amendment; Craig V. Boren, Anthony Sadowski

Akron Law Review

"A PPELLANTS brought an action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The complaint charged that the operation of two Oklahoma statutes, which prohibited the sale of 3.2% beer to males under the age of 21 while allowing females over the age of 18 to purchase the commodity, violated the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution. The three-judge court held that the gender-based classification did not violate the equal protection clause. In Craig v. Boren, on direct appeal, the United States Supreme Court reversed, finding that the gender-based classification could …

Equal Protection; Sex Discrimination; Veterans' Preference Statutes, Feeney V. Massachusetts, Eloise Taylor

Akron Law Review

"Historically, the armed services have been predominantly male. The result has been that the operation of veterans' preferences has placed women as a class at a particular disadvantage in comparison to men when in or entering into civil service.' To nullify this stigma, the first successful challenge to veterans' preference, Feeney v. Massachusetts,' was litigated."

Equal Protection; State Alimony Statutes; Sex Discrimination; Orr V. Orr, David A. Detec, Jane L. Thomas-Moore

Akron Law Review

In Orr v. Orr the United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional the Alabama alimony statutes which provided that husbands, but not wives, may be required to pay alimony upon divorce. The Court's principal reason for so holding was the statutes' violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment on the basis of sex discrimination.

The (Non-)Right To Sex, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

What is the relationship between the battle for marriage equality and the expansion of sexual liberty? Some see access to marriage as a quintessentially progressive project—the recognition of the equality and dignity of gay and lesbian couples. For others, promoting marriage or marital-like relationships reinforces bias against individuals making alternative intimate decisions. With powerful policy arguments on either side, there appears to be no clear way to advance the discussion.

By telling the lost story of efforts to expand sexual liberty in the 1960s and 1970s, this Article offers a new way into the debate. The marriage equality struggle figures …

A Comment On Cass Sunstein's Equality, Emily Sherwin

Emily L Sherwin

No abstract provided.

Marital Supremacy And The Constitution Of The Nonmarital Family, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Despite a transformative half century of social change, marital status still matters. The marriage equality movement has drawn attention to the many benefits conferred in law by marriage at a time when the “marriage gap” between affluent and poor Americans widens and rates of nonmarital childbearing soar. This Essay explores the contested history of marital supremacy—the legal privileging of marriage—through the lens of the “illegitimacy” cases of the 1960s and 1970s. Often remembered as a triumph for nonmarital families, these decisions defined the constitutional harm of illegitimacy classifications as the unjust punishment of innocent children for the “sins” of their …

Holistic Pregnancy: Rejecting The Theory Of The Adversarial Mother, Rona Kaufman Kitchen

Rona Kaufman Kitchen

In its zealous effort to protect the lives and health of unborn children, the law frequently views the expecting mother with suspicion. In its most extreme form, the law regards the potential mother as a potential murderess. This perspective does not reflect the nature of pregnancy, it undermines the autonomy of loving mothers, and it is detrimental to children. Regardless of whether there is any conflict between mother and fetus, the State presumes the mother to be a threat to her fetus and subjugates her rights as a result. The State interferes with the mother’s autonomy, bodily integrity, parental rights, …

The Issue Is Being Intersex: The Current Standard Of Care Is A Result Of Ignorance, And It Is Amazing What A Little Analysis Can Conclude., Marla J. Ferguson

marla j ferguson

The Constitution was written to protect and empower all citizens of the United States, including those who are born with Disorders of Sex Development. The medical community, as a whole, is not equipped with the knowledge required to adequately diagnose or treat intersex babies. Intersex simply means that the baby is born with both male and female genitalia. The current method that doctors follow is to choose a sex to assign the baby, and preform irreversible surgery on them without informed consent. Ultimately the intersex babies are mutilated and robbed of many of their fundamental rights; most notably, the right …

Rostker V. Goldberg: A Step Backward In Equal Protection, Or A Justifiable Affirmation Of Congressional Power?, Gilbert L. Purcell, Janet Rappaport

Pepperdine Law Review

The Supreme Court in Rostker v. Goldberg upheld a Congressional decision which excluded women from registration for service in the Armed Forces of the United States. Although the case was brought based upon equal protection grounds, the majority took a separation of powers stance and based its decision upon the fact that the Court has traditionally granted deference to the decisions of Congress in the area of military affairs. The minority opinions disagreed with the majority's analysis and claimed that the central issue in Rostker was not military in nature, but was that Congress' plan to register males only, promoted …

Wengler V. Druggists' Mutual Insurance Company: No More Skirting The Issue Of Sex Discrimination In Workers' Compensation Dependency Statutes, Teresa A. Saggese, Lawson A. Cox Ii

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Stevens And The Emerging Law Of Sex Discrimination , John P. Wagner

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reinforcement Of Middle Level Review Regarding Gender Classifications: Mississippi University For Women V. Hogan , Mary Ellen Shull

Pepperdine Law Review

In Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, the United States Supreme Court was presented with an equal protection challenge initiated by a male who was denied admission to a state-supported all-female school of nursing. After a review of relevant decisions in this area, the author examines the Supreme Court's intermediate level of scrutiny analysis and argues that application of a higher level of scrutiny to gender-based classifications is a prerequisite to true equality between the sexes.