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Just Extracurriculars?, Emily Gold Waldman Dec 2023

Just Extracurriculars?, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Extracurricular activities have been the battleground for a striking number of Supreme Court cases set at public schools, from cases involving speech to religion to drug testing. Indeed, the two most recent Supreme Court cases involving constitutional rights at public schools--Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) and Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (2021)--both arose in the extracurricular context of school sports. Even so, the Supreme Court has never fully clarified the status of extracurricular activities themselves. Once a school offers an extracurricular activity, is participation merely a privilege? Does the fact that extracurricular activities are voluntary for students affect …


Title Ix And "Menstruation Or Related Conditions", Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman, Marcy L. Karin, Naomi R. Cahn, Elizabeth B. Cooper, Margaret E. Johnson Jan 2023

Title Ix And "Menstruation Or Related Conditions", Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman, Marcy L. Karin, Naomi R. Cahn, Elizabeth B. Cooper, Margaret E. Johnson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (“Title IX”) prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. Neither the statute nor its implementing regulations explicitly define “sex” to include discrimination on the basis of menstruation or related conditions such as perimenopause and menopause. This textual absence has caused confusion over whether Title IX must be interpreted to protect students and other community members from all types of sex-based discrimination. It also calls into question the law's ability to break down systemic sex-based barriers related to menstruation in educational spaces. Absent an interpretation that there …


Title Ix & Menstruation, Margaret E. Johnson, Emily Gold Waldman, Bridget J. Crawford Jul 2020

Title Ix & Menstruation, Margaret E. Johnson, Emily Gold Waldman, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

“Oh no. Could I borrow a tampon or pad?” These (or similar) words are familiar to almost everyone who has ever had a period. Even for adults, menstruation can at times be a challenge. For some schoolchildren, it can be an insurmountable obstacle to receiving an education. Students are subject to constant observation by classmates and teachers; they may not have autonomous access to a bathroom during the school day; or they may not be able to afford menstrual products. They may experience menstruation-related peer harassment, restrictive school policies, a lack of access to menstrual products, and inadequate menstruation-related education. …


Walking Out: Schools, Students, And Civil Disobedience, Michelle S. Simon Jan 2019

Walking Out: Schools, Students, And Civil Disobedience, Michelle S. Simon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article begins in Part I by reviewing the history and impact of youth civil disobedience and the special issues school walkouts raise. Part II then discusses the legal doctrines that guide school administrators and courts as they aim to strike a suitable balance between free expression and the day-to day operations of a school. Part III analyzes the different approaches school districts have taken, and offers specific advice to school districts dealing with future walkouts. Part IV cautions that the only constitutionally permitted response by school districts is to subject students to the same consequences they would face for …


Show And Tell?: Students' Personal Lives, Schools, And Parents, Emily Gold Waldman Feb 2015

Show And Tell?: Students' Personal Lives, Schools, And Parents, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Public schools learn about their students' personal lives in many ways. Some are passive: a teacher observes a student kissing someone, or overhears a conversation among friends. But schools also engage in more active information-gathering about students' personal lives, through surveys and informal conversations between students and teachers, administrators, school psychologists, counselors, coaches, and other personnel. This Article explores the competing privacy considerations that result from such encounters. Once schools have learned highly personal information about their students, does it violate those students' privacy rights to disclose that information to their parents? Or does keeping the information secret violate the …


Ratings Fetishism, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 2015

Ratings Fetishism, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The obsession with increasing the reputational rankings of American colleges and universities more detrimentally impacts race-based admissions policies than does Supreme Court doctrine. It is no secret that many schools inflate, misleadingly report, or falsify records in order to pander to rankings systems like U.S. News and World Report (“U.S. News”). These systems weigh a school’s mean standardized test scores (SAT and/or ACT) heavily as one of the factors for assigning a rank. Thus, the incentive among schools playing the ratings game is to admit students with the highest SAT scores. But, if one agrees with the data that underrepresented …


The Paradox Of Race-Conscious Labels, Leslie Y. Garfield Jan 2014

The Paradox Of Race-Conscious Labels, Leslie Y. Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Labeling affirmative action laws with integrity is a hopelessly paradoxical pursuit. This article illustrates the consequences of such a pursuit. Section I traces the origins of the Top Ten Percent Law, which arose as a legislative protest to the Fifth Circuit's rejection of the use of race in admissions decisions. This section provides an in-depth understanding of the Top Ten Percent Law and concludes with a detailed analysis of the Fisher decision. Section II supplies an explanation of the majority's conclusion to treat the Top Ten Percent Law as race-neutral and provides detailed support for Justice Ginsburg's affirmation that the …


University Imprimaturs On Student Speech: The Certification Cases, Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2013

University Imprimaturs On Student Speech: The Certification Cases, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Article begins in Part I by describing these three student speech cases and then examining what makes them a distinct category within the larger student speech landscape. As I discuss, the student speech framework was largely developed by the Supreme Court in the K-12 public school context. Conflicts over student speech in universities, in turn, have generally centered on the extent to which the K-12 framework should carry over to the higher education context, given the greater independence and maturity of university students. Recent cases about universities' ability to control student publications, for example, fall into this mold, with …


The Inevitable Irrelevance Of Affirmative Action, Leslie Y. Garfield Jan 2013

The Inevitable Irrelevance Of Affirmative Action, Leslie Y. Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article proceeds in three parts. In Part I of this article, I provide a narrative of affirmative action jurisprudence in higher education, with a particular focus on the meaning of viewpoint diversity in higher education. This section tracks the definitional shift in preference policies from their original design as remedial and compensatory programs for those suffering the effects of educational discrimination to interest convergence programs, which assure equal benefits irrespective of race. In Part II, I explore the circumstances giving rise to Fisher, including an overview of the lower court decisions. This section presents a discussion of the likely …


No Jokes About Dope: Morse V. Frederick's Educational Rationale, Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2013

No Jokes About Dope: Morse V. Frederick's Educational Rationale, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This piece begins with a “protective” reading of Morse v. Frederick, showing how this rationale provides a good starting point in understanding Morse but is ultimately incomplete. Indeed, Justice Stevens’ dissent is largely an argument that the protective rationale falls short here. I then re-examine Morse from the perspective of the educational rationale and conclude that the underlying, largely unstated premise of the Morse majority is that schools—as part of teaching students about the gravity of drug use—should be able to convey disapproval of messages suggesting that drug use is a joking or trivial matter. This helps to explain why …


Students' Fourth Amendment Rights In Schools: Strip Searches, Drug Tests, And More, Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2011

Students' Fourth Amendment Rights In Schools: Strip Searches, Drug Tests, And More, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

At the end of June 2009, the Supreme Court decided Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, a case involving the strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl at an Arizona middle school. Thus, the Court has now decided four cases regarding public school students' Fourth Amendment rights while at school and the time is ripe to take stock of this jurisprudence as a whole. The following discussion provides such an overview. As an initial matter, it is useful to divide the Court's four Fourth Amendment cases into two categories: (1) cases involving suspicion-based searches of individual students, such as …


Badmouthing Authority: Hostile Speech About School Officials And The Limits Of School Restrictions, Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2011

Badmouthing Authority: Hostile Speech About School Officials And The Limits Of School Restrictions, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Article's first two parts discuss the extent to which schools can legally restrict hostile student speech about school officials, should they choose to do so. Part I examines how courts have traditionally approached hostile student speech about school officials when it occurs at school, and Part II then considers how courts have been analyzing the issue when it moves off campus. In the course of this discussion, the Article identifies three key categories of such speech: (1) speech that arguably threatens toward a school official; (2) speech that is primarily vulgar about a school official; and (3) the most …


Regulating Student Speech: Suppression Versus Punishment, Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2010

Regulating Student Speech: Suppression Versus Punishment, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the Supreme Court’s student speech framework and argues that, in focusing exclusively on the types of student speech that can be restricted, the framework fails to build in any differentiation as to how such speech can be restricted. This is true even though there are two very distinct types of speech restrictions in schools: suppression of the speech itself; and after-the-fact punishment of the student speaker. As the student speech landscape itself gets more complex – given schools’ experimentation with new disciplinary regimes along with the tremendous rise in student cyber-speech – the blurring of that distinction …


Returning To Hazelwood's Core: A New Approach To Restrictions On School-Sponsored Speech, Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2008

Returning To Hazelwood's Core: A New Approach To Restrictions On School-Sponsored Speech, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Article begins by discussing the Hazelwood decision in depth. It then discusses the various contexts in which courts have applied Hazelwood and the circuit split that has developed over how broadly Hazelwood should reach. Next, it describes the circuit split over whether Hazelwood permits viewpoint-based speech restrictions, highlighting the different speech contexts in which the circuits have reached divergent conclusions. The Article then argues that the overextension of Hazelwood links the two splits. This Part also discusses why Hazelwood is uniquely suited to the student speech context and why other doctrines-namely, the Pickering-Connick framework for teachers' classroom speech and …


Don't Count Them Out Just Yet: Toward The Plausible Use Of Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 2008

Don't Count Them Out Just Yet: Toward The Plausible Use Of Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 11 could serve to broaden the permissible use of race beyond the boundaries presently permitted by the Court. In this highly fractionalized decision, five justices ultimately agreed that the race-based student assignment plans before their review could not withstand judicial scrutiny. One of these justices, Justice Kennedy, agreed with the plurality's conclusion, but rejected the plurality's assessment that it is never permissible to use race-preference student assignment plans absent evidence of de jure segregation. His concurrence, when read together with …


A Post-Morse Framework For Students' Potentially Hurtful Speech (Religious And Otherwise), Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2008

A Post-Morse Framework For Students' Potentially Hurtful Speech (Religious And Otherwise), Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I weave together strands from Tinker, Fraser, and Morse, as well as from lower court decisions taking varying approaches to this issue, to propose a new standard for student speech that is potentially hurtful to other students. This approach encompasses, without being limited to, speech that is religiously-motivated in nature. I argue that student speech that is hurtful to other students (whether religiously-motivated or not) should first be divided into two categories: (1) speech that identifies particular students for attack; and (2) speech, such as the message on Harper's T-shirt, that expresses a general opinion without being …


The Glass Half Full: Envisioning The Future Of Race Preference Policies, Leslie Yalof Garfield Oct 2007

The Glass Half Full: Envisioning The Future Of Race Preference Policies, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Justice Breyer's concern that the Court's June 2007 ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. No. 1 "is a decision the Court and nation will come to regret" is not well founded. Far from limiting the constitutionally permissible use of race in education from its present restriction to higher education, the case may allow governmental entities to consider race as a factor to achieve diversity in grades K-12. In Parents Involved, which the Court decided with its companion case, McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools four justices concluded that school boards may never consider race when …


Adding Colors To The Chameleon: Why The Supreme Court Should Adopt A New Compelling Governmental Interest Test For Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield Apr 2007

Adding Colors To The Chameleon: Why The Supreme Court Should Adopt A New Compelling Governmental Interest Test For Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

When the Supreme Court ordered the City of Birmingham to desegregate its schools in 1954, it failed to consider the long range implications of its mandate. School districts across the country responded to the Court’s order by adopting race-preference school assignment plans, created to designate the particular public elementary or secondary school a student should attend. Now that these plans have successfully achieved their goals of desegregating classrooms, the question has become whether the continuation of the very programs that helped achieve those goals remain legal? In other words, as Justice Ginsburg recently said in arguments before the Supreme Court, …


The Cost Of Good Intentions: Why The Supreme Court's Decision Upholding Affirmative Action Admission Programs Is Detrimental To The Cause, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 2006

The Cost Of Good Intentions: Why The Supreme Court's Decision Upholding Affirmative Action Admission Programs Is Detrimental To The Cause, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article provides an overview of the Federal Courts’ interpretation of equal protection challenges to affirmative action admission policies beginning with University of California v. Bakke through the recent Supreme Court decisions of Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. The article then identifies and outlines the appropriate elements of a constitutionally sound affirmative action admission policy. Finally, the article concludes that the permissible policy is almost unattainable for schools other than small institutions.


Back To Bakke: Defining The Strict Scrutiny Test For Affirmative Action Policies Aimed At Achieving Diversity In The Classroom, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 2005

Back To Bakke: Defining The Strict Scrutiny Test For Affirmative Action Policies Aimed At Achieving Diversity In The Classroom, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article will identify the new strict scrutiny test, and will consider the reason for creating a separate definition of strict scrutiny for evaluating affirmative action policies that achieve diversity in the classroom. Part II of the Article will review constitutional challenges to affirmative action policies prior to Grutter and Gratz, and will discuss the split in the circuits that resulted from the Court's failure to endorse Justice Powell's definition of a compelling governmental interest in Bakke. Part III will provide an analysis of the Grutter and Gratz decisions, with a particular focus on each Court's discussion of the strict …


Finding Success In The "Cauldron Of Competition:" The Effectiveness Of Academic Support Programs, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 2004

Finding Success In The "Cauldron Of Competition:" The Effectiveness Of Academic Support Programs, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article provides an in-depth analysis of our comprehensive study of the Pace Academic Support Program. Section II of the article discusses the purpose and design of ASPs generally, and Pace Law School's program specifically. Section III describes the research design, methodology, and procedures used for this study. Section IV evaluates and analyzes the findings, with an in-depth analysis of the impact each service yields to ASP students, as well as the statistical significance of such benefits. Section V evaluates the importance of background criteria and the impact that such variables have on ASP participants and non-participants. Section V also …


The Supreme Court 2000 Term--Leading Cases, Good News Club V. Milford Central School, 121 S. Ct. 2093 (2001), Emily Gold Waldman Jan 2001

The Supreme Court 2000 Term--Leading Cases, Good News Club V. Milford Central School, 121 S. Ct. 2093 (2001), Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

After the Supreme Court held in Widmar v. Vincent that state universities could not constitutionally deny religious groups access to facilities generally available to student groups, a number of school districts authored access policies that were designed to create “limited public forums.” These policies delineated the categories of activities for which school property could be used, and indicated that religious activities were not among them. In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, however, the Supreme Court struck a blow to the notion that school districts could employ the limited public forum approach to exclude religious activities from …


The Academic Support Student In The Year 2010, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 2001

The Academic Support Student In The Year 2010, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Academic support professionals have long recognized the benefits of imparting a greater knowledge of learning skills to law students as a way to enhance their ability to learn the law. Consequently, the science and pedagogy of academic support have become a staple of legal education. However, while the need for academic support remains a constant, the identification of those in need of academic support programs continues to be in flux. Growing social awareness of an expanded definition of diversity, recent decisions such as Hopwood v. Texas and the proliferation of academic support programs have expanded the definition of the academic …


Hopwood V. Texas: Strict In Theory Or Fatal In Fact, Leslie Yalof Garfield Jan 1997

Hopwood V. Texas: Strict In Theory Or Fatal In Fact, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article will examine the Hopwood decisions. Part II will review the factual and legal history behind the case. Part III will discuss the District, Circuit, and Supreme Court decisions. Finally, Part IV will critique these decisions and offer a view into the future for affirmative action admissions policies.


The Promise Of State Constitutionalism: Can It Be Fulfilled In Shef V. O'Neill?, Gayl S. Westerman Jan 1996

The Promise Of State Constitutionalism: Can It Be Fulfilled In Shef V. O'Neill?, Gayl S. Westerman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article reflects on the anomaly of the superior court's decision in Sheff in light of this recent history and recommends that the Connecticut Supreme Court use an alternative, analytical framework based on the Connecticut Constitution to decide the Sheff appeal. This independent approach is equally available to all state courts seeking to resolve fundamental issues under their own constitutions. Only by speaking in a clear, state voice can state courts balance the constitutional vision of the federal courts and fulfill the promise of the state constitutional law movement.


Squaring Affirmative Action Admissions Policies With Federal Judicial Guidelines: A Model For The Twenty-First Century, Leslie Y. Garfield Jan 1996

Squaring Affirmative Action Admissions Policies With Federal Judicial Guidelines: A Model For The Twenty-First Century, Leslie Y. Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article will highlight the legal limitations law schools confront when adopting diversity admission policies in light of the new judicial climate that disfavors considering non-traditional race criteria in the admission decision process. Part I highlights the difficulty law schools face when trying to admit a fully diverse class under the traditional application process. Part II discusses the judicial response to voluntary diversity admission policies and other race-based preference policies and defines the appropriate standard for court review. Part III proposes a model diversity admission policy. Part IV analyzes this model policy under the Court's strict scrutiny test.


Endless Journey: Integration And The Provision Of Equal Educational Opportunity In Denver's Public Schools: A Study Of Keyes V. School District No. 1, James J. Fishman Jan 1989

Endless Journey: Integration And The Provision Of Equal Educational Opportunity In Denver's Public Schools: A Study Of Keyes V. School District No. 1, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Denver was the first non-Southern City to undergo extensive litigation over the desegregation of its schools. In this context, it has become a mirror for the way America deals with its most pressing social problem: the integration of minorities into the educational, political and economic mainstream through equal educational opportunity. This study examines the difficulties of implementing a desegregation plan that would result in a unitary public school system and developing a plan that would provide an equal educational opportunity to the large hispano minority. We concentrate upon the implementation efforts after 1976 when Judge Richard Matsch was assigned to …


Family Choice: An Idea Whose Time Has Come And Gone?, James J. Fishman Jan 1983

Family Choice: An Idea Whose Time Has Come And Gone?, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The heart of the criticism of the existing educational system is the feeling that public schools no longer meet the needs of society, educational bureaucracies account to no one, parents have little say or choice in the educational options for their children, there is little diversity in public schools, and the public school establishment has resisted any attempts at reform or distributing data that could be used to challenge the present system.


Review Of "Educational Policymaking And The Courts: An Empirical Study Of Judicial Activism" By Michael A. Rebell And Arthur R. Block, James J. Fishman Jan 1983

Review Of "Educational Policymaking And The Courts: An Empirical Study Of Judicial Activism" By Michael A. Rebell And Arthur R. Block, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.