Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

Verbal Hate Crimes In The Workplace: The Effect Of Mental And Emotional Injury Of The Lgbt Community On The Commerce Clause, Elizabeth Olsen

Journal of Law and Policy

Mental and emotional abuse, particularly of the LGBT community in the workplace, is not a new phenomenon; however, it is one that is detrimental to both workers and companies, and is becoming increasingly prevalent as more workers are openly identifying as members of the LGBT community. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act should be amended to prevent verbal violence against protected characteristics in the workplace specifically, as workplace verbal abuse has as a significant an impact on companies and businesses, and, in turn, interstate commerce and the Commerce Clause.

A Second Opinion: Can Windsor V. United States Survive President Trump’S Supreme Court?, Artem M. Joukov

Journal of Law and Policy

This Article examines President Donald Trump’s recent recomposition of the United States Supreme Court and the potential effects on Windsor v. United States and its progeny. The Article considers whether the shifting balance of the Court may lead to reconsideration of Windsor, particularly via attempted exploits of the weaknesses in the standard of review applied to reach the decision. The Article will conclude that while revolutionary, Windsor lacked the doctrinal clarity of its offspring, Obergefell v. Hodges, and therefore may be at greatest risk of reversal by the increasingly conservative Court. In particular, the Court may rely on the conflict …

Arbitration In Internal Dispute Resolution Programs: The Scarlet Letter “A” In Sexual Harassment Claims, Sarah Sachs

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This Comment evaluates the use of arbitration and mediation as effective alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving workplace sexual harassment claims. Part II discusses the legal development of sexual harassment claims in the workplace. Part III evaluates companies who use internal dispute resolution programs with mediation and arbitration to resolve workplace harassment claims. Finally, Part IV analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of companies designing and implementing internal dispute resolution programs to adjudicate workplace sexual harassment claims.

Trapped In Public: The Regulation Of Street Harassment And Cyber-Harassment Under The Captive Audience Doctrine, Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

No abstract provided.

Law School News: 'Hate And Bigotry Have No Place In America' April 18, 2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

2nd Annual Stonewall Lecture 04-16-2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Case Of The Religious Gay Blood Donor, Brian Soucek

William & Mary Law Review

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prohibits sexually active gay men from donating blood. This Article envisions an original legal challenge to that rule: not the predictable equal protection suit, but a religious freedom claim brought by a gay man who wants to give blood as an act of charity. Because the FDA’s regulations substantially burden his exercise of religion—requiring a year of celibacy as its price—the FDA would be forced to show that its policy is the least restrictive means of preventing HIV transmission through the blood supply. Developments in testing technology and the experience of other countries suggest …

Sex Selection: Regulating Technology Enabling The Predetermination Of A Child's Gender, Owen D. Jones

Owen Jones

The debate over the prohibition of sex (or gender) selection (also known as "preselection" or "predetermination"), has focused almost exclusively on the context of aborting a "wrong-sex" fetus after a fetal gender-identification procedure. Despite the fact that sex selection abortions represent only a small subset of sex selection procedures, attitudes toward the former are driving general policy approaches to the latter. However, the issues are analytically distinct, and only during the former infancy of the pre-conceptive (and non-abortive post-conceptive) technology for sex selection were members on both sides of the debate afforded the economy of using one logic to support …

There's Nothing Rational About It: Heightened Scrutiny For Sexual Orientation Is Long Overdue, Daniel J. Galvin Jr.

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In this Article, I argue that sexual orientation meets the burden established by Supreme Court jurisprudence for suspect classification and, therefore, should receive heightened scrutiny under Fourteenth Amendment equal protection analysis. After decades of using the fundamental rights analysis to aid lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in their pursuit of equality, addressing the fundamental right to marry and the fundamental right to privacy, the Supreme Court must address the elephant in the courtroom: that sexual orientation meets all of the factors set by the Court in equal protection cases for suspect classification.

Gays, lesbians, and bisexual individuals (LGBs) meet the …

Now, I'M Liberal, But To A Degree: An Essay On Debating Religious Liberty And Discrimination, Francis J. Beckwith

Cleveland State Law Review

This essay is a critical analysis of the book authored by John Corvino, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan T. Anderson, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination. The book offers two contrary views on how best to think about some of the conflicts that have arisen over religious liberty and anti-discrimination laws, e.g., Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018). One position is defended by Corvino, and the other by Girgis and Anderson. After a brief discussion of the differing views of religious liberty throughout American history (including the American founding), this essay summarizes each …

"I Assumed Chicago Would Be In The Forefront": Comments On The Movement To End Prostitution With Survivor-Leader Brenda Myers-Powell, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

For many years in the 2000’s, researcher Jody Raphael, teamed with prostitution-survivor Brenda Myers-Powell, undertook a myriad of speaking engagements in the Chicago metropolitan area, intended to raise awareness of the violence and coercion in the sex trade industry. Ten years ago, they were asked to make a video of their presentation. Recently, Dignity editors came across the video and asked for an update on the conversation. This piece is the result.

Brief For Professor Kent Greenfield As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Respondents, State Of Washington Vs. Arlene's Flowers And Ingersoll Vs. Arlene's Flowers, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

This amicus curiae brief addresses a fundamental state-law premise of Appellants’ constitutional claims that has gone largely unexplored in the prior briefing: whether Arlene’s Flowers, a Washington for-profit corporation, may obtain an exemption from generally applicable laws based on the religious beliefs of a shareholder, Mrs. Stutzman. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Appellants assert that “Arlene’s free-exercise rights are synonymous with Mrs. Stutzman’s.” Those two cases, however, had nothing to do with Washington corporate law and took no stance on the authority of …

More Color More Pride: Addressing Structural Barriers To Interracial Lgbtq Loving, Praatika Prasad

Fordham Law Review Online

Through an examination of State-supported racial structures, this Essay illustrates that even after the legalization of interracial and same-sex marriages, the State’s control over housing, education, and employment prospects impedes the formation of interracial LGBTQ relationships. This Essay suggests that reducing residential segregation can be a first step in dismantling structural barriers to interracial LGBTQ loving, as truly integrated housing would increase cross-racial contact, lead to better educational and employment outcomes, and give LGBTQ people of color a chance to improve their social capital. This, together with altering how issues of race are framed within the LGBTQ community, will help …

Split Over Sex: Federal Circuits And Executive Agencies Split Over Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under Title Vii, Darria Turner

Catholic University Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of an individual’s sex. Since its enactment, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has definitively stated whether sex discrimination based on sexual orientation is protected under Title VII. Though the judicial interpretation of sex has evolved, courts have routinely held that the protections of Title VII do not extend to claims based on sexual orientation discrimination. As three circuits faced these claims, a split was created in the circuits as well as in the two agencies tasked with the enforcement of Title VII. This …

Respect Existence Or Expect Resistance: Fundraising For Trans Law Center, Lara Martz, Sage Kramer-Urner

Student Engagement Posters

Lara Martz and Sage Kramer-Urner discuss student engagement at Linfield College with regard to a fundraising campaign to benefit the Trans Law Center.

Public Interest Litigation & Women’S Rights: Cases From Nepal & India, Jordan E. Stevenson

2019 Symposium

As a complex, diverse and dynamic region with diverging, constantly changing constitutional and jurisprudential contexts as well as lasting legacies of patriarchy, South Asia’s traditions of public interest litigation are one of the most well-studied institutions by Western audiences due to their contradictory progressive and innovative nature. Particularly in India, where public interest litigation gives ordinary citizens extraordinary access to the highest courts of justice, questions have been raised as to the effectiveness of public interest litigation as a tool to address gender disparities across the region. Although Supreme Court justices have been a key ally in eliminating legal barriers …

Filling The Sex Trade Swamp: Robert Kraft And His Predecessors, Janice G. Raymond

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Marriage Equality Comes To The Fourth Circuit, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review

Marriage equality has come to America. Throughout 2014, several federal appellate courts and numerous district court judges across the United States invalidated state constitutional or statutory proscriptions on same-sex marriage. Therefore, it was not surprising that Eastern District of Virginia Judge Arenda Wright Allen held that Virginia’s bans were unconstitutional in February. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed her opinion that July. North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia District Judges rejected these jurisdictions’ prohibitions during autumn, and the Supreme Court approved marriage equality the next year. Because marriage equality in the Fourth Circuit presents …

Reflections At The Silver Anniversary Of The First Trans-Inclusive Gay Rights Statute: Ruminations On The Law And Its History -- And Why Both Should Be Defended In An Era Of Anti-Trans 'Bathroom Bills', Katrina C. Rose

University of Massachusetts Law Review

In 1993, Minnesota became the first state to enact a sexual orientation civil rights statute that also provides protections for transgender people. At the twenty-fifth anniversary of that achievement, the intricate history underlying the statute remains underappreciated. The pioneering status of the 1993 state statute, as well as that of the 1975 Minneapolis trans-inclusive ordinance upon which it was based, now typically are recognized. The degree to which radical agitation against politically moderate interests did not sabotage trans-exclusive gay rights but, instead, gave birth to trans-inclusive gay rights is still largely misunderstood. The degree to which that earliest trans rights …