Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

A State's Obligation To Fund Hormonal Therapy And Sex-Reassignment Surgery For Prisoners Diagnosed With Gender Identity Disorder, Rena M. Lindevaldsen

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article explores whether a state law imposing a flat ban on the use of funds to provide cross-gender hormones or sex-reassignment surgery for prisoners diagnosed with GID satisfies the Eighth Amendment standard of deliberately indifferent to serious medical needs. In other words, the issue is whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for a state to refuse to provide hormones or sex-reassignment surgery to GID prisoners. The district court in Kosilek v. Spencer1 held that it does: the state violated the Eighth Amendment in providing feminizing hormones to Kosilek but refusing to provide him sex-reassignment surgery. Part I ...

Sarong Gals: Green Light For The Red Light Abatement Law, Donald Lewis Briggs

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

California V. Larue: The Demise Of The “Bottomless” Bar , Doris M. Felman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Science Studies And The Children Of Lesbians And Gay Men: The Rational Basis Perspective, Carlos A. Ball

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article seeks to determine whether the social science literature on the children of lesbians and gay men precludes the government from relying on child welfare considerations to justify same-sex marriage bans and parenting restrictions affecting lesbians and gay men under the highly deferential rational basis test. Under that test, courts must uphold laws and regulations that have any conceivable basis of fact which is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. After comprehensively reviewing the social science literature, the Article concludes that the empirical evidence showing the lack of an association between parental sexual orientation and the psychological and ...

The Effect Of Pre-Legal Recognition Cohabitation On Alimony And Equitable Distribution In Same-Sex Dissolution Cases, Alison J. Miller

Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Implications Of Conscience Clause Legislation On Access To Contraceptive Pills, Alicia D. Massidas

Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Privacy, Jed Rubenfeld

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The End Of Men, Again, Kara W. Swanson

School of Law Faculty Publications

The current attention to the “end of men” is occurring as men’s role as biological fathers is becoming radically deemphasized through assisted reproductive technologies and alternative family formation. As other historians have noted, since the nineteenth century, there have been serial crises of masculinity in the United States, in which the perceived loss of power by white middle-class heterosexual men has been decried. This essay, written for an on-line forum considering Hanna Rosin's The End of Men, analyzes the current crisis in the context of earlier explorations of the biological end of men, from early twentieth century feminist ...

Turning Back The Clock: The California Supreme Court's Decision In Mcclung V. Employment Development Department And The Difficulty Of Determining Legislative Intent In Retroactive Rulemaking , Jeffrey R. Groendal

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Against the backdrop of McClung, this note will explore the principle of retroactivity, tracing its development at the national level in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level with respect to California courts. Part II of this note addresses the history and development of jurisprudence on retroactivity, focusing on the traditional roles of the Judicial and Legislative Branches and the major cases of both the U.S. Supreme Court and California courts on retroactivity. Part III sets out the facts of McClung. Part IV analyzes and critiques the court's opinions in McClung, with a separate analysis ...

Transsexual And Intersex Athletes, Erin Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

In her chapter, the Author examines the impact of both past and present policies enacted by many sport organizations, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on intersex and transsexual athletes. At the root of many of these policies, and therefore the issues, are the binary gender system and the concern that fraudulent competitors could gain an advantage relative to the rest of the field. While no longer mandatory, women athletes are still subject to varying degrees of sex verification testing on a case-by-case basis, as evidenced by the 2009 testing of South African runner, Caster Semenya.

Recent policies point ...

Deadly Dicta: Roe’S “Unwanted Motherhood”, Gonzales’S “Women’S Regret” And The Shifting Narrative Of Abortion Jurisprudence, Stacy A. Scaldo

Stacy A Scaldo

For thirty-four years, the narrative of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the issue of abortion was firmly focused on the pregnant woman. From the initial finding that the right to an abortion stemmed from a constitutional right to privacy^[1], through the test applied and refined to determine when that right was abridged^[2], to the striking of statutes found to over-regulate that right^[3], the conversation from the Court’s perspective maintained a singular focus. Pro-life arguments focusing on the fetus as the equal or greater party of interest were systematically pushed aside by the Court.^[4] The consequences of ...

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Nan D. Hunter, Et Al., Addressing The Merits In Support Of Respondents, Nan D. Hunter, Suzanne B. Goldberg

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

In this amicus brief filed in United States v. Windsor, pending before the Supreme Court, amici constitutional law professors argue that all classifications that carry the indicia of invidiousness should trigger a more searching inquiry than the traditional rational basis test under the Equal Protection Clause would suggest. Classifications that already receive heightened scrutiny, such as race or sex, fit easily into this approach. But the Court’s equal protection jurisprudence has become muddied in a series of cases in which it says rational basis review, but appears to do a more rigorous review. Sexual orientation classifications seemingly were analyzed ...

A Rational Basis Review That Warrants Strict Scrutiny: The First Circuit’S Equal Protection Analysis In Massachusetts V. U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services, Nicholas Drew

Boston College Law Review

On May 31, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services held Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. In doing so, the court declined to extend heightened scrutiny to sexual preference classifications and instead relied on a more searching form of rational basis review. This Comment argues that the First Circuit’s equal protection analysis is flawed because it purports to apply Supreme Court precedent, but fails to do so faithfully. It also argues that the court could have reached the same result and ...

Wake Up And Smell The Starbucks Coffee: How Doe V. Starbucks Confirms The End Of The "Age Of Consent" In California And Perhaps Beyond, Jennifer Ann Drobac

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

Since 2005, California civil courts have effectively abandoned the “age of consent” set by former California statutory rape law and, arguably, encoded in current penal code sex crime provisions. In declaring that California civil law may credit a child’s consent to sex with an adult, courts conflate or confuse legal consent, capacity, and acquiescence. Given that California federal antidiscrimination cases have begun to treat minors like fully mature adults, other states may adopt these dangerous precedents. This Article analyzes both California and United States Supreme Court cases to conclude that a strict liability civil law approach to juvenile acquiescence ...

Battered Women Charged With Homicide In Australia, Canada And New Zealand: How Do They Fare?, Elizabeth Sheehy, Julie Stubbs, Julia Tolmie

University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series 2013

This article examines trends in the resolution of homicide cases involving battered women defendants from 2000 to 2010 in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Australia and Canada appear to have some commonalities in their treatment of such cases with higher acquittal rates and a greater reliance on plea bargaining to produce manslaughter verdicts, as compared with New Zealand. Although New Zealand’s small number of cases makes it difficult to generalise, its overall trends appear to be different from those observed in Australia and Canada, in both the high proportion of cases proceeding to trial and those resulting in conviction ...

Defences To Homicide For Battered Women: A Comparative Analysis Of Laws In Australia, Canada And New Zealand, Elizabeth Sheehy, Julie Stubbs, Julia Tolmie

University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series 2013

This article takes stock of what is happening in the defence of battered women who are charged with homicide across three jurisdictions – Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In Part 1 the current legal requirements for the most relevant defences in all three jurisdictions are briefly outlined, with a focus on those legal developments that are likely to assist in the defence of battered women. In Part 2 general trends in how homicide cases involving accused battered women were resolved from 2000 to 2010 in the three jurisdictions are examined. This analysis suggests that further work is needed to improve the ...

The Supreme Court Refused To Expand The Right Of Privacy To Include Homosexual Sodomy In Bowers V. Hardwick, Richard J. Wittbrodt

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Benign Sex Discrimination Revisited: Constitutional And Moral Issues In Banning Sex-Selection Abortion , George Schedler

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Repealing Rights: Proposition 8, Perry, And Crawford Contextualized, David B. Cruz

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

California's Proposition 8 stripped same-sex couples of the right under the California Constitution to "marry" civilly, while leaving in place the right to every other state-controlled legal incident of marriage. The U.S. District subsequently court held that Prop 8 violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in an opinion whose broad reasoning would invalidate the exclusion of same-sex couples from civil marriage by any state. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed on narrow grounds specific to California's legal history. Those defending Prop ...

Adult Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse And The Statute Of Limitations: The Need For Consistent Application Of The Delayed Discovery Rule, Gregory G. Gordon

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.