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Law and Gender

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Transgender Rights

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Gloucester County School Board V. G.G. : Brief Of Amicus Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Terry S. Kogan Mar 2017

Gloucester County School Board V. G.G. : Brief Of Amicus Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Terry S. Kogan

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The sex-segregated public restroom, first man- dated by laws in the late nineteenth century, has be- come a pervasive architectural feature of contemporary America that is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Title IX and its implementing regulations recognize, and do not seek to alter, this arrangement. Understanding the origins of this social convention in the United States, however, illustrates that separating such facilities by sex was not simply a natural, neutral response to anatomical differences, but rather an ideological cultural response that reflected and reinforced the prevailing gender norms of the time.


Public Restrooms And The Distorting Of Transgender Identity, Terry S. Kogan Jan 2017

Public Restrooms And The Distorting Of Transgender Identity, Terry S. Kogan

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The sex-separated public restroom, a ubiquitous feature of our built environment, has been at the vortex of litigation filed by state officials across the country challenging the Obama administration’s attempt to assure that transgender people have access to safe restrooms. Tracing the ongoing federal litigation in North Carolina surrounding the passage of House Bill 2, this Article argues that this seemingly mundane architectural space has in fact driven the litigation strategies of all parties to these cases. In insisting that access to public restrooms be based on biological sex, state officials rely on an outmoded nineteenth century cultural vision of …