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Full-Text Articles in Law
Born Free: Toward An Expansive Definition Of Sex, Laura Palk, Shelly Grunsted
Born Free: Toward An Expansive Definition Of Sex, Laura Palk, Shelly Grunsted
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The State of New York recently issued its first physician-certified “intersex” birth certificate, correcting a 55-year-old’s original birth certificate. This is a positive step towards eliminating the traditional binary approach to a person’s birth sex, but it creates potential uncertainties in the employment discrimination context. Over the past several years, the definition of what constitutes “discrimination on the basis of sex” has both expanded (with the legalization of same-sex marriage) and narrowed (restricting the use of gender specific bathrooms). Until recently it appeared that a broader definition of the term “sex” would become the judicial—and possibly legislative—norm in a variety …
Removing Camouflaged Barriers To Equality: Overcoming Systemic Sexual Assault And Harassment At The Military Academies, Rebecca Weiant
Removing Camouflaged Barriers To Equality: Overcoming Systemic Sexual Assault And Harassment At The Military Academies, Rebecca Weiant
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The Education Amendments of 1972 introduced requirements to protect female students from discriminatory policies at post-secondary institutions. A portion of those amendments, commonly known as Title IX, require that no students be subjected to discrimination based on their sex by any educational institution or activity receiving federal financial assistance. An exemption under § 1681(a)(4), however, explicitly prohibits application of Title IX to any educational institution whose primary purpose is to train individuals for military service or the merchant marine. Although those students are still subject to stringent conduct standards, the service academies themselves are tethered to sex discrimination policies only …
Modernizing State Vital Statistics Statutes And Policies To Ensure Accurate Gender Markers On Birth Certificates: A Good Government Approach To Recognizing The Lives Of Transgender People, Lisa Mottet
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Across the country, laws governing corrections to gender markers on birth certificates are relatively uniform, in large part because many states adopted the relevant provisions of the 1977 revision of the Model State Vital Statistics Act (MSVSA). The MSVSA, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, guides states on the most efficient laws and procedures related to maintaining accurate birth, death, and other vital records at the state, local, and territorial level. At the time when the government promulgated the MSVSA provision related to gender corrections, it served as a forward-thinking model because it acknowledged that vital …
Removing Categorical Constraints On Equal Employment Opportunities And Anti-Discrimination Protections, Anastasia Niedrich
Removing Categorical Constraints On Equal Employment Opportunities And Anti-Discrimination Protections, Anastasia Niedrich
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
It has been the "historical tendency of anti-discrimination law to use categories to define protected classes of people." This Article challenges the categorical approach and seeks to change that limited framework. This Article focuses on the flaws with Title VII's categorical approach and discusses why there is a desperate need for change to combat the different types and targets of workplace discrimination today, focusing on the transgender community as one example. After discussing the current framework and operation of Title VII, this Article analyzes the insurmountable flaws inherent in the categorical approach to anti-discrimination law, and specifically considers Title VII's …
"Has The Millennium Yet Dawned?": A History Of Attitudes Toward Pregnant Workers In America, Courtni E. Molnar
"Has The Millennium Yet Dawned?": A History Of Attitudes Toward Pregnant Workers In America, Courtni E. Molnar
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article will focus on what might be considered the "prehistory" of the PDA in an attempt to shed new light on the equality/difference debate. Beginning as early as the nineteenth century, pregnant workers have been forced into either the equality approach or the difference approach depending mostly on race and class. This Article will show that, at times, both approaches restrained the autonomy of women and even caused harm to individual women and society by contributing to the development of the stereotypes and social attitudes that continue to permit pregnancy discrimination today.
Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan
Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
According to the text of the Act, DOMA's purposes are "to define and protect the institution of marriage," where marriage is defined to exclude same-sex partners. To be constitutionally valid under the Establishment Clause, this notion that heterosexual marriages require "protection" from gay and lesbian persons must spring from a secular and not religious source. This Article posits that DOMA has crossed this forbidden line between the secular and the religious. DOMA, motivated and supported by fundamentalist Christian ideology, and lacking any genuine secular goals or justifications, betrays the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Key To Unlocking The Clubhouse Door: The Application Of Antidiscrimination Laws To Quasi-Private Clubs, Sally Frank
The Key To Unlocking The Clubhouse Door: The Application Of Antidiscrimination Laws To Quasi-Private Clubs, Sally Frank
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This article focuses on discrimination in quasi-private clubs and the impact of laws and the United States Constitution on that discrimination. For the purposes of this article, a quasi-private club is any organization that claims to be private but which might in fact be viewed as public. The term "quasi-private" is used because litigation concerning discrimination in such organizations often rests on whether the entity is private, and therefore cannot be regulated.
An Imperfect Remedy For Imperfect Violence: The Construction Of Civil Rights In The Violence Against Women Act, David Frazee
An Imperfect Remedy For Imperfect Violence: The Construction Of Civil Rights In The Violence Against Women Act, David Frazee
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) could be the most significant addition to federal civil rights laws in the last century. While potentially revolutionary, the VAWA's civil rights remedy forges two problematic legal concepts-traditional civil rights jurisprudence and "perfect" violence-into a super-remedy that risks combining the worst aspects of each. Those who utilize and interpret the Act can avoid this outcome by situating individual violent acts in the broader social and historical context of gender-motivated violence.