Law Commons^™

Coaches In Court: Legal Challenges To Sex Discrimination In College Athletics, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

Sex discrimination continues to operate in the working environment of college athletics. Female coaches experience bias both because of their sex and the intersections of gender stereotypes with stereotypes about women of color, lesbians, and aging. The law continues to be a leverage to challenge barriers to women’s leadership in college sports. This Article provides an overview of the relevant legal protections in three cases brought by coaches Beth Burns, Tracey Griesbaum, and Shannon Miller. Their cases expose discrimination and the double standard related to the value of female coaches’ success.

Inequality, Discrimination And Sexual Violence In Us Collegiate Sports, Erin E. Buzuvis, Kristine Newhall

Faculty Scholarship

While college athletics attract thousands of participants and millions of fans each year, examination of United States college athletics reveals a pattern of inequality, discrimination and abuse, which operates to foreclose women's access and suppress women's interest in athletic participation and leadership. This Chapter examines three gender related issues of integrity in college athletics: gender discrimination in athletic participation and opportunity; barriers to leadership for women coaches and administrators; and the relationship between athletics and sexual violence at college and universities. The Chapter also identifies a number of remedies that can mitigate these problems involving the Department of Education, Congress, …

Athletic Compensation For Women Too? Title Ix Implications Of Northwestern And O'Bannon, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

The NCAA has been relying on Title IX requirements to defend its polices prohibiting compensation for college athletics; it argues that paying athletes in revenue sports, coupled with the commensurate obligation under Title IX to pay female athletes, would be prohibitively expensive.

As a response to the NCAA’s argument, the Author seeks to advance two positions: first, that Title IX would, as argued by the NCAA, require payment of female athletes using some measure of equality; and second, that it is not Title IX that renders the prospect of athlete compensation cost prohibitive, but rather, the fact that college athletics …

A Reasonable Belief: In Support Of Lgbt Plaintiffs' Title Vii Retaliation Claims, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

When an LGBT employee is punished for complaining about discrimination in the workplace, he or she has two potential causes of action under Title VII: first, a challenge to the underlying discrimination, and second, a challenge to the resulting retaliation. The first claim is vulnerable to dismissal under courts’ narrow interpretation of Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination “because of sex” as applied to LGBT plaintiffs. But such an outcome need not determine the fate of the second claim. Faithful application of retaliation law’s “reasonable belief” standard, which protects a plaintiff from reprisal so long as she reasonably believed that she …

Clothes Don't Make The Man (Or Woman), But Gender Identity Might, Jennifer Levi

Faculty Scholarship

The Ninth Circuit's recent decision in Jespersen v. Harrah's Operating Co., Inc. reflects the blinders on many contemporary courts regarding the impact of sex-differentiated dress requirements on female employees. Although some courts have acknowledged the impermissibility of imposing sexually exploitive dress requirements, they have done so only at the extreme outer limits, ignoring the concrete harms experienced by women (and men) who are forced to conform to externally imposed gender norms. On the other hand, some transgender litigants have recently succeeded in challenging sex-differentiated dress requirements. This success is due in part to their incorporation of disability claims based on …

Federal Equal Protection, Taylor Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

The Author explores the use of due process and equal protection guarantees from the U.S. Constitution as a means to challenge workplace discrimination faced by LGBT government employees. The Author also discusses how private employees must rely on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to assert similar claims. Because sex discrimination is prohibited under both the Constitution and Title VII, federal courts have relied on reasoning in the former context when analyzing the latter, and vice versa. This means that a watershed case regarding one law can contain reasoning for the other. The Author goes on to the discuss …

Theorizing Billable Hours, Theresa M. Beiner

Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at the ethical and diversity implications of high billable hour requirements. While corporate counsel have increasingly demanded a diverse legal workforce and emphasized the need to lower the costs of outside counsel, law firms have not responded to these concerns in a manner that is producing results. Instead, women continue to drop out of law firm practice at higher rates than their male counterparts and the costs of legal services remain high. High billable hour requirements exacerbate both these problems and have implications as well for ethical lawyering. Using data from a variety of disciplines, the article …

It's Complicated: Age, Gender, And Lifetime Discrimination Against Working Women - The United States And The U.K. As Examples, Susan Bisom-Rapp, Malcolm Sargeant

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers the effect on women of a lifetime of discrimination using material from both the U.S. and the U.K. Government reports in both countries make clear that women workers suffer from multiple disadvantages during their working lives, which result in significantly poorer outcomes in old age when compared to men. Indeed, the numbers are stark. In the U.S., for example, the poverty rate of women 65 years old and up is nearly double that of their male counterparts. Older women of color are especially disadvantaged. The situation in the U.K. is comparable.

To capture the phenomenon, the article …

Gender Sex Agency And Discrimination: A Reply To Professor Abrams, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment is the fastest-growing area of employment discrimination. In fact, the annual number of sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC has more than doubled in the last six years. No one, or at least no one who has given this problem her serious attention, can deny that workplace sexual harassment is a grave problem and that it significantly impedes women's entrance into many sectors of the wage labor market.

Notwithstanding these impressive numbers, sexual harassment legal doctrine remains remarkably undertheorized – particularly by the Supreme Court. For these and other reasons, …