Law Commons^™

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 …

Title Ix’S Protections For Transgender Student Athletes, Scott Skinner-Thompson, Ilona M. Turner

Publications

This article examines legal authority and policy to determine whether transgender students in K-12 schools must be permitted to participate in athletics according to their gender identity, and without any requirement for medical intervention. The articles concludes that such a policy is consistent with legal authority under Title IX and Title VII and, more importantly, best advances the well-being of already vulnerable transgender youth by helping to incorporate and include such students in activities that are critical to physical, social, mental, emotional development, and health.

Part II of this article briefly details the history of Title IX with respect to …

Civil Rights Reform And The Body, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression has emerged as a major focus of civil rights reform. Opponents of these reforms have structured their opposition around one dominant image: the bathroom. With striking consistency, opponents have invoked anxiety over the bathroom -- who uses bathrooms, what happens in bathrooms, and what traumas one might experience while occupying a bathroom -- as the reason to permit discrimination in the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. This rhetoric of the bathroom in the debate over gender-identity protections seeks to exploit an underlying anxiety that has played a role in …

Collegiality And Individual Dignity, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay identifies and describes the tension between the norms of collegiality and basic principles of individual dignity that LGBT scholars and lawyers encounter when confronted with the dehumanizing arguments that are regularly advanced by opponents of equal treatment under law for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. It is a transcript of remarks delivered at a March 2012 symposium on the Defense of Marriage Act at Fordham Law School, with minimal edits for publication.

The Dangers Of Reform: Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, And The Limits Of Law, Jennifer L. Levi, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

Professors Jennifer Levi and Giovanna Shay review Dean Spade's new book "Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law." They argue that Professor Spade's theoretical approach, which he describes as "critical trans politics," is most useful when employed to analyze issues relating to criminal punishment and mass incarceration, and that it is less appropriate as a critique of the marriage equality movement. Despite some areas of disagreement with Professor Spade, the Authors conclude that the book makes an important contribution.

Including Transgender Athletes In Sex-Segregated Sport, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

The Author focuses her chapter on the varying degrees of trans inclusive policies found across the sport spectrum. Presently, private and public policy addressing participation by transgender athletes can be described on a spectrum of least to most inclusive. The Author’s chapter describes and evaluates different ways in which athletic associations and sport organizers are trying to accommodate transgender athletes into single-sex athletic teams. It ends with recommendations for advocacy to promote the inclusion of transgender athletes across all sports.

Lgbt Taxpayers: A Collision Of 'Others', Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this essay prepared for a symposium on the intersection of tax law with gender and sexuality, I explore the violent collision of these two concepts - or, more appropriately, these two “others.” I begin my exploration of this collision of “others” by first explaining how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is a marginalized “other” in American society while, in contrast, tax is a privileged “other” in the realm of American law. Then, I turn to a close examination of a recent case, O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, to illustrate the collision of the otherness of LGBT individuals with …

Please Check One—Male Or Female?: Confronting Gender Identity Discrimination In Collegiate Residential Life, Katherine A. Womack

Law Student Publications

While litigation in this field has rarely involved colleges and universities, collegiate environments are often the “forefront for social activism,”5 so it is likely the issue of transgender housing discrimination will soon explode on campus. It is now critical that colleges, universities, and the counsel who represent them either prepare to address these issues when they arise or explore possibilities to preempt the legal issues that will surely arise at their schools. Part II of this comment discusses the legal definition of transgender. Part III examines the history of the treatment of transgender persons in American courts, as well as …

Erasing Boundaries: Masculinities, Sexual Minorities, And Employment Discrimination, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This Article analyzes the application of employment discrimination law to sexual minorities--lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex individuals. It evaluates Title VII and state anti-discrimination laws' treatment of these individuals, and is the first article to use masculinities research, theoretical and empirical, to explain employment discrimination against sexual minorities. While the Article concludes that new legislation would further the interests of sexual minorities, it posits that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to solving the employment discrimination problems of sexual minorities. A major problem lies in the courts' binary view of sex and gender, a view that identifies men and …

Dissecting O'Donnabhain, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In O'Donnabhain v. Commissioner, a sharply divided Tax Court allowed a medical expense deduction for some costs related to sex reassignment surgery. This short commentary examines the opinions in the case and concludes that the taxpayer's victory rings hollow.

Bringing Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Into The Tax Classroom, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

A recent piece in the Journal of Legal Education analyzing student surveys by the Law School Admission Council reports that, despite improvement in the past decade, LGBT students still experience a law school climate in which they encounter substantial discrimination both inside and outside the classroom. Included among the list of "best practices" to improve the law school climate for LGBT students was a recommendation to incorporate discussions of LGBT issues in non-LGBT courses, such as tax. In a timely coincidence, the Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues held a day-long program at the 2009 AALS annual meeting …

Gender Contests, Susan Frelich Appleton

Scholarship@WashULaw

This contribution for the “Law, Ethics, and Gender in Medicine” column in the Journal of Gender Specific Medicine interrogates the understanding of gender itself, at a time when transgender and intersex issues were just beginning to “come out” in both popular culture and case law. Against this background, the column explores the roles that physicians have played in such gender contests and considers how evolving medical attitudes can help achieve reform.

“Closet Case”: Boy Scouts Of America V. Dale And The Reinforcement Of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, And Transgender Invisibility, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale misapplies and ignores controlling First Amendment precedent and incorrectly defines “sexual identity” as a clinical or biological imposition that exists apart from expression or speech. This Article provides a doctrinal alternative to Dale that would protect vital interests in both equality and liberty and that would not condition, as does Dale, sexual “equality” upon the silencing of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.

This Article proceeds in five parts. Part I provides an introduction to the case and issues.Part II discusses the evolution of the …

Paving The Road: A Charles Hamilton Houston Approach To Securing Trans Rights, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that securing the rights of transgender people requires a comprehensive and long-term litigation strategy and suggests Charles Hamilton Houston as the architect of the modern Civil Rights movement and the inspiration for a trans rights litigation strategy. Section II briefly details the life of Charles Hamilton Houston and focuses on the legal strategy he designed and carried out to overturn Plessy. It continues by drawing some conclusions about what Houston's plan teaches about the struggle for trans rights and a trans litigation strategy. Section III examines the reasons certain cases challenge assumptions about sex and gender, such …

"Trapped" In Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught In The Gender Binarism, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article first summarizes gender, transgendered identity, and legal issues facing transgendered people to contextualize the lives of transgendered prisoners. Parts II and III explore respectively the placement and treatment issues that complicate the incarceration of the transgendered. Corrections authorities, through indifference or incompetence, foster a shockingly inhumane daily existence for transgendered prisoners. In Part V, I examine the plight of transgendered prisoners through the metaphor of the miners' canary. Transgendered prisoners signal the grave dangers facing all of us in a wide array of social structures, elucidating the apparently intractable problems of gender. This Article simultaneously explores a human …