Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Untold Stories: Gender-Related Persecution And Asylum In South Africa, Lindsay M. Harris

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article explains the particular difficulties that female asylum seekers and survivors of gender-related persecution face, reaffirming the need for the practical and sensitive application of international and domestic gender guidelines. Extensive research into client files and interviews with key decision makers prove that, despite scholarship suggesting that women may be advantaged in asylum proceedings, a focus on gender is still needed in the South African context. While there are undoubtedly problematic elements of the 1998 Refugees Act warranting its revision, the addition of gender as an additional category under the refugee definition, as proposed by the recent Refugees Amendment …

Student Gladiators And Sexual Assault: A New Analysis Of Liability For Injuries Inflicted By College Athletes, Ann Scales

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will focus on an issue that was probably not on the minds of 19th century educators, nor primarily on the minds of the legions of present-day academic critics of intercollegiate sports. Namely, this Article explores the ways in which big-time athletics- particularly football-normalize and encourage harms to women, including educational and sexual harms. The author’s theses depend upon acknowledging certain open secrets about college football: that it is a celebration of male physical supremacy (measured by male standards); that it is something that society lets males do and have as their sport, for reasons both good and bad; …

Pauli Murray's Campaign Against Harvard Law School's "Jane Crow" Admissions Policy, Mary Elizabeth Basile

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Extending Title Vii Protection To Non-Gender-Conforming Men, Colleen M. Keating

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Refusal To Dispense Emergency Contraception In Washington State: An Act Of Conscience Or Unlawful Sex Discrimination?, Dana E. Blackman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will demonstrate that a pharmacist's refusal to fill a valid prescription for emergency contraception constitutes sex discrimination and violates the WLAD. Part I explains the nature and function of emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) as well as their role in basic health care for women and the importance of their accessibility. Part II addresses federal civil rights protections and the failure of these protections to provide relief for women facing refusals. Focusing on the WLAD, Part II also explains how state public accommodation statutes protect women from discrimination in places of public accommodation. It further sets forth the prima …

Vive La Difference? A Critical Analysis Of The Justification Of Sex-Dependent Workplace Restrictions On Dress And Grooming, Patrick S. Shin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

How is it possible that sex-specific workplace dress and appearance codes do not constitute sex discrimination? I argue in this article that the general doctrines of employment discrimination law do not themselves provide a principled basis for distinguishing sex-dependent workplace dress codes from other kinds of policies that would clearly count as sex discrimination, and that supplementary strategies that courts have used to carve out dress and grooming codes as an area of separate concern are either inconclusive or question-begging. I then consider whether the courts' seemingly sui generis approach to sex-dependent restrictions on dress and grooming can be justified …

Discrimination Cases In The October 2004 Term, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Lessons For The Next Generation Of Public Single-Sex Elementary And Secondary Schools, Kimberly J. Robinson

Law Faculty Publications

Single-sex public elementary and secondary schools are making a comeback. School districts are structuring these schools in a variety of ways, including by providing a single-sex public school for only one sex or by offering single-sex schools for both sexes. These disparate structures of single-sex schools create distinct potential harms, risks, and benefits for students. This Article contends that the constitutional framework applied to single-sex schools should be systematically modified to recognize the different potential harms, risks, and benefits of these single-sex schools in a manner that will create optimal conditions for creating single-sex public schools. The proposed modifications address …

Coverage Of Reproductive Technologies Under Employer-Sponsored Health Care Plans, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

Proceedings of the 2004 Annual Meeting, Association of American Law Schools, Sections on Employee Benefits and Employment Discrimination. Panel includes: Professor Colleen E. Medill; Professor Helen Norton; Eve Gartner, Esq.; and Professor Elizabeth Pendo.

Masculinities At Work, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This article focuses on the study of masculinities, a body of theoretical and empirical work by sociologists, feminist theorists and organization management theorists. This work, much of which employment law scholars have ignored, studies the role of masculinities, which are often invisible, in creating structural barriers to the advancement of many women and some men at work. Masculinities comprise both a structure that reinforces the superiority of men over women and a series of practices, associated with masculine behavior, performed by men or women, that aid men to maintain their superior position over women. In their less visible form, masculinities …

Panel Three: Introduction, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I think some of my colleagues will ask questions about these cases, to ask who is a man or woman, but if the question is legally, what is male or female, and if you think about the questions that you've read, say, in common law out of the Supreme Court – and I'll just talk about discrimination cases, although I think you can talk about other ones, too – think about the sex discrimination cases. The struggle is about, what is discrimination, but the Court in Craig v. Born is talking about different control restrictions for men and women. Or …

The Principle And Practice Of Women's "Full Citizenship": A Case Study Of Sex-Segregated Public Education, Jill Elaine Hasday

Michigan Law Review

For more than a quarter century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that sex-based state action is subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. But the Court has always been much less clear about what that standard allows and what it prohibits. For this reason, it is especially noteworthy that one of the Court's most recent sex discrimination opinions, United States v. Virginia, purports to provide more coherent guidance. Virginia suggests that the constitutionality of sex-based state action turns on whether the practice at issue denies women "full citizenship stature" or "create[s) or perpetuate[s) the legal, social, …

The Customer Is Always Right… Not! Employer Liability For Third Party Sexual Harassment, Lea B. Vaughn

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article will ask a series of questions. What is third party sexual harassment? Under what conditions does it occur? Does it differ in any significant respects from traditional notions of sexual harassment? Should those differences, if any, make a difference in the way that the legal system addresses third party harassment? And indeed, should the problem be addressed solely through the legal system? What might an employer do to alleviate sexual harassment of this type?

The Intelligent Wickedness Of U.S. Immigration Law Conferring Citizenship To Children Born Abroad And Out-Of-Wedlock: A Feminist Perspective, Manisha Lalwani

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

(Un)Welcome Conduct And The Sexually Hostile Environment, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

As courts refine the theory underlying sexual harassment and sex discrimination, the unwelcomeness inquiry may become irrelevant to determining whether gender-based conduct is sexually harassing. In addition, the one possible remaining purpose that the unwelcomeness requirement may serve-providing notice to a putative harasser or its employer-is now served by an affirmative defense applicable to many sexual harassment claims. Consequently, its role should be reexamined. This Article does that. Part I of the Article describes a hypothetical situation that provides a context in which to consider unwelcomeness. Part II provides a brief overview of the evolving sexual harassment jurisprudence. Part III …

On Making Anti-Essentialist And Social Constructionist Arguments In Courts, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

One of my most intense disagreements with another lawyer during nearly a decade of lesbian and gay rights litigation concerned social constructionism. The lawyer (a law professor, if truth be told) wanted to argue in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court that sexual orientation, like race, was a social constructed category. He reasoned that since the Court had condemned race discrimination even while recognizing the "socio-political, rather than biological" nature of race, it would similarly be willing to invalidate a measure discriminating against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, even while recognizing the socially constructed nature of sexual …

Parallel Lives: Women's Rights And Lesbian Rights Litigation, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I love the title of this panel because it gave me a chance to think about the historical themes and emerging issues in law related to women's rights, which of course is a mere endless set of possibilities.

I spent much of the last decade doing lesbian and gay civil rights litigation, and the question that I will focus on today grows out of that work and is a comparative one or at least a relational one. The question is this: What is the relationship between women's rights litigation as it has evolved in the last thirty years and lesbian …

Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company, Katherine M. Franke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In July of 1998 something rather mundane happened: Lucas Rosa walked into Park West Bank in Holyoke, Massachusetts and asked for a loan application. Since it was a warm summer day, and because she wanted to look credit-worthy, Rosa wore a blousey top over stockings. Suddenly, the mundane transformed into the exceptional: When asked for some identification, Rosa was told that no application would be forthcoming until and unless she went home, changed her clothes and returned attired in more traditionally masculine/male clothing. Rosa, a biological male who identifies herself as female was, it seems, denied a loan application on …

Amicus Curiae Brief Of Now Legal Defense And Education Fund And Equal Rights Advocates In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant And In Support Of Reversal In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Curcuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Katherine M. Franke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

By dismissing the plaintiffs complaint under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act ("ECOA") on the ground that "the issue in this case is not [Rosa's] sex, but rather how he chose to dress when applying for a loan" (Bench Order at 1), the lower court erroneously established that there are no set of facts in which clothing-based sex stereotyping can form the basis of a legitimate claim of sex discrimination in access to credit. This view of the meaning and scope of the ECOA runs contrary to well-established Supreme Court precedent which prohibits, inter alia, the adverse treatment of a …

Brief For The Plaintiff-Appellant Lucas Rosa In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Circuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Jennifer L. Levi, Mary L. Bonauto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The District Court fundamentally misconceived the law as applicable to the Plaintiffs claim by concluding that there may be no relationship, as a matter of law, between telling a bank customer what to wear and sex discrimination. It also misapplied Rule 12(b)(6) to the extent that it resolved any factual questions beyond the allegations of the Complaint regarding the basis of the Bank's different treatment of the Plaintiff. Finally, because the District Court incorrectly dismissed the single federal claim in Plaintiffs Complaint, it improperly dismissed Plaintiffs pendant state claims for want of federal court jurisdiction.

Epilogue, Jennifer L. Levi

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The First Circuit reversed the district court's order dismissing Lucas Rosa's claim against Park West Bank. The appeals court's reversal seems to be part of an emerging nationwide rejection of cases from the 1970s and 1980s in which courts summarily dismissed sex discrimination claims brought by transgender plaintiffs, no matter how squarely the facts appeared to present a clear-cut case of discrimination based on sex. Creating what appeared to be a "transgender" exception to sex discrimination law, those earlier courts ignored what the First Circuit recognized here-that a bank officer who tells an applicant to go home, change, and return …

Foreword: Politics, Pragmatism And The Courts, Anthony E. Varona

Articles

No abstract provided.

Holding-Up More Than Half The Sky: Marketization And The Status Of Women In China, Anna M. Han

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to examine generally how Chinese women fared under communism and more specifically, delve into how marketization has adversely impacted the status of women in China. It is this author's contention that despite the overall improvements in the standard of living, Chinese women are increasingly being marginalized economically. The long-term effects of subjugating the advancement of women for the immediate benefits of China's experimentation with a market economy hold vast implications for the future of the country. As China progresses economically, politically and socially, it cannot afford to leave half of its population behind as …

Schwenk And The Ambiguity In Federal "Sex" Discrimination Jurisprudence: Defining Sex Discrimination Dynamically Under Title Vii, Masako Kanazawa

Seattle University Law Review

This Note examines a new development in federal Title VII sex discrimination jurisprudence specifically in the context of transsexual and homosexual plaintiffs, describing the courts' gradual shift away from formalism towards a more realistic approach in this area. Part II begins by examining the anatomical sex rule established by the three major pre-Schwenk decisions categorically rejecting transsexuals' Title VII claims. This section then considers the two subsequent Supreme Court decisions, Price Waterhouse and Oncale, and the Ninth Circuit's Schwenk opinion. Part II concludes that the Schwenk court correctly read Price Waterhouse and Oncale as mandating a departure from …

Discrimination, Plain And Simple, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This short essay is a brief examination of the Court's relatively recent attempts to simplify Title VII and employment discrimination; it is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the Court's discrimination jurisprudence. Rather, it seeks to identify a few concerns with and implications of the Court's apparent desire to simplify Title VII jurisprudence. Part I briefly examines how the Court has simplified employment discrimination through Hicks and Oncale. Part II examines how the Court's simplifications have been used. Part III suggests concerns that should accompany the Court's simplification.

Amicus Curiae Brief Of Now Legal Defense And Education Fund And Equal Rights Advocates In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant And In Support Of Reversal, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund ("NOW LDEF") is a leading national non-profit civil rights organization that performs abroad range of legal and educational services in support of efforts to eliminate sex-based discrimination" and secure equal rights. NOW LDEF was founded in 1970 by leaders of the National Organization for Women as a separate organization. NOW LDEF has appeared as amicus in numerous cases involving sex stereotyping as a form of sex discrimination, including Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, and Fisher v. Vassar College.

Equal Rights Advocates ("ERA") is one of the oldest public interest law firms specializing in …

Feminism At The Millennium, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Sexism of all kinds – subtle and blatant, criminal and legal, commercial and private – is the topic of the three books under review. The books initially sort themselves out by discipline: Everyday Sexism and Subtle Sexism are anthologies whose editors and contributors are primarily sociologists; Speaking of Sex is written by a law professor and offers a more focused argument about the persistence of gender inequalities. Distinctions in authorship aside, the three books pose a pair of similar and painfully familiar questions: Why is so much still organized to the disadvantage of women, and what can (feminist) academics contribute …

Gender And Intercollegiate Athletics: Data And Myths, Julia Lamber

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article explores what nondiscrimination means in the context of intercollegiate athletics. After reviewing the Department of Education's controversial Title IX Policy Interpretation, it critically examines the analytical framework used in Title IX athletic cases and concludes that commonly made analogies to litigation under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act are inapt. A major part of the Article is an empirical study, looking first at gender equity plans written by institutions of higher education for the National Collegiate Athletic Association and then at data collected from more than 325 institutions pursuant to the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act. …

An "Olympics" Approach: A More Equitable Approach To Athletics Than Title Ix Offers, Marcia Federbush

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A speech from Marcia Federbush, the writer of the first comprehensive Title IX complaint against a major university - the University of Michigan.

Equally Bad Is Not Good: Allowing Title Ix "Compliance" By The Elimination Of Men's Collegiate Sports, Donald E. Shelton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Athletic participation is an important part of the educational process, instilling important lessons about discipline and teamwork. Title IX was intended to address the historic lack of opportunities for women and girls to participate in school athletics. Unfortunately, the current administrative interpretation of Title IX permits the elimination of male athletic opportunities as a means of complying with the statute's equality standard. This result undermines the purpose of Title IX and the role of athletics in the educational process for all students.