Law and Gender Commons^™

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Equal Protection Clause: 1970-80, Wendy Webster Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg of Columbia Law School was the leading Supreme Court litigator for gender equality in the crucial decade, 1970-80. In addition to teaching her classes, producing academic articles, and co-authoring the first casebook on sex discrimination and the law, she worked on some sixty cases (depending on how one counts), including over two dozen cases in the Supreme Court. Rumor has it she did not sleep for ten years; her prodigious output gives the rumor some credence. Her impact on the law during that critical decade earned her the title "the Thurgood Marshall of the women's movement" …

Toward A New Age Of Consumer Access Rights: Creating Space In The Public Accommodation For The Lgbt Community, Justin Muehlmeyer

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article advocates for an expanded interpretation of public accommodation laws to include LGBT individuals, arguing that current legal frameworks often fail to address their unique experiences of discrimination. It emphasizes the need to modernize the definition of public accommodations to encompass contemporary spaces where cultural interactions occur, such as schools and photography services, while proposing limited exemptions to accommodate religious beliefs. The analysis underscores the ongoing tension between anti-discrimination laws and First Amendment rights, highlighting the human impact of these legal battles through compelling cases and statistics.

After Dothard: Female Correctional Workers And The Challenge To Employment Law, Brenda V. Smith, Melissa C. Loomis

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This article examines a profession where women have made great strides - corrections. Using an equality framework, corrections and other non-traditional professions were the first target of the feminist movement in the 1970s. By and large, feminists were successful in creating greater porosity for women in law enforcement, emergency services, corrections, and the military. While women have entered these traditionally masculine spaces, they still suffer from an achievement gap. They are still underrepresented in leadership positions and marginalized in these settings; are still the targets of discrimination based on race, gender, and perceived sexual orientation; and are less likely than …

$4.5 Million Defamation Award Against Anti-Gay Official Upheld, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

“The Tyranny Of The Majority Is No Myth”: Its Dangers For Legally Married Same-Sex Couples, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

This article has three sections. Section 1 explains that sexual minorities, consisting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people (LGBTQ), 15 comprise a small number of people within the U.S. and describes the current laws granting and prohibiting legal rights to married or partnered same-sex couples. Thus, the LGBTQ community is dependent on the non-LGBTQ community to decide its rights when those rights are debated at the ballot box, a bad public policy in and of itself. 16 Section II considers the question posed by this symposium: is the tyranny of the majority a danger to minority communities or …

The Power And Promise Of Procedure: Examining The Class Action Landscape After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Title Ix’S Protections For Transgender Student Athletes, Scott Skinner-Thompson, Ilona M. Turner

Publications

This article examines legal authority and policy to determine whether transgender students in K-12 schools must be permitted to participate in athletics according to their gender identity, and without any requirement for medical intervention. The articles concludes that such a policy is consistent with legal authority under Title IX and Title VII and, more importantly, best advances the well-being of already vulnerable transgender youth by helping to incorporate and include such students in activities that are critical to physical, social, mental, emotional development, and health.

Part II of this article briefly details the history of Title IX with respect to …

Sex Matters: Considering Gender In Consumer Contracting, Amy J. Schmitz

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

We hear about the so-called "War on Women" and persisting salary gaps between men and women in the popular media, but contracts scholars and policymakers rarely discuss gender. Instead, dominant voices in the contracts field often reflect classical and economics-driven theories built on assumptions of gender neutral and economically rational actors. Furthermore, many mistakenly assume that market competition and antidiscrimination legislation address any improper biases in contracting. This Article therefore aims to shed light on gender's importance by distilling data from my own e-survey of Colorado consumers along with others' research regarding gender differences in contract outcomes, interests and behaviors. …

Pregnancy Discrimination In Higher Education: Accommodating Student Pregnancy, Emily Mcnee

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that despite Title IX's protections against sex discrimination, pregnant students in higher education continue to face subtle discrimination, particularly through rigid academic policies that fail to accommodate pregnancy-related needs. It advocates for clarifying Title IX regulations to explicitly require schools to provide accommodations, drawing parallels to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) model, to ensure equal educational opportunities for pregnant students.

Criminalization In Shades Of Color: Prosecuting Pregnant Drugaddicted Women, Carla-Michelle Adams

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that criminalizing pregnant women for drug use is both unconstitutional and ineffective. It contends that such prosecutions infringe upon fundamental rights, disproportionately affect minority women, and fail to address the root causes of addiction. The author advocates for a public health approach, emphasizing treatment over punishment to protect both the mother and the fetus.

The Difference A Justice May Make: Remarks At The Symposium For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Suzanne Baer

Articles

First, I will briefly summarize the state of the art of equality law in Germany today. A distinct dimension of this story from a European Union member state is that we are not just theorizing postnational constitutionalism these days, but that we live it already, since law is not anymore isolated as national but needs to be seen in the context of transnational migration and multinational regimes. Second, I turn to a key feature and key challenge in and to equality law today. It is what I have called the triangle of fundamental rights, referring to the three most prominent …

Medical Evidence In Cases Of Intrauterine Drug And Alcohol Exposure , Judith Larsen, Robert M. Horowitz, Ira J. Chasnoff

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Harmless Amusement Or Sexual Harassment: The Reasonableness Of The Reasonable Woman Standard, Penny L. Cigoy

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Will Black Women Lawyers Slay The Two-Headed Dragon: Racism And Gender Bias, Wilma Williams Pinder

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gender And Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, And Other Sex-Based Anomalies In The Gender-Free World Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Myrna S. Raeder

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sexual Harassment Of Employees By Non-Employees: When Does The Employer Become Liable?, Robert J. Aalberts, Lorne H. Seidman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eradicating Sex Discrimination In Education: Extending Disparate-Impact Analysis To Title Ix Litigation, James S. Wrona

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

"There's No Place Like Home" Doma Deportation: The Forced Expatriation Of Bi-National Same-Sex Couples From The United States To Canada, Anh "Annie" Nguyen

San Diego International Law Journal

This comment will focus on bi-national same-sex couples who are forced to expatriate from the united states to canada because of DOMA’s detrimental effects on their relationship. more specifically, part I focuses on DOMA’s constitutionality, effects on bi-national same-sex couples, and current legal challenges. Part II provides a historical analysis of the united states’ attitude towards same-sex unions before describing current legislation regarding same-sex couples. Part III describes canada’s recognition of same-sex marriage and support of immigration equality, comparing and contrasting the canadian approach with the united states’ approach. Part IV explains the current legal and financial issues that bi-national …

Paramours, Promotions, And Sexual Favoritism: Unfair, But Is There Liability?, Mitchell Poole

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Substance And Method In The Year 2000, Akhil Reed Amar

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legal Revolution In American Women’S Rights—And The Problems That Remain, Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

No abstract provided.

Abandoning Women To Their Rights: What Happens When Feminist Jurisprudence Ignores Birthing Rights, Rebecca A. Spence

Student Articles and Papers

The goals of the Article are twofold. First, this Article will demonstrate that while birthing rights issues have been familiar areas of concern for feminist scholarship on women's rights to privacy and equality, neglecting to integrate this work into the law school classroom fails to promote effective legal advocacy for pregnant women. The violation of women's rights during childbirth is a more common problem than reported legal opinions indicate, and few lawyers are prepared to protect clients prospectively or to vindicate women's rights post-childbirth.

Put The Town On Notice: School District Liability And Lgbt Bullying Notification Laws, Yariv Pierce

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Congress could mitigate the problem of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) student bullying by requiring that teachers and school officials report all bullying incidents to their school district administrators. Many school districts are not aware of the prevalence of LGBT bullying and the extent to which each school protects, or fails to protect, its LGBT students compared to other harassed students. LGBT students often encounter difficulty demonstrating that their school district has a policy or custom of deliberate indifference toward their equal treatment when a school does not equally protect an LGBT student from peer-to-peer bullying because of the …

Davis V. Monroe County Board Of Education: Setting A Stringent Standard Of Fault For School Liability In Peer Sexual Harassment Under Title Ix-Demanding Responsible Proactive Protection, Lindsay Havern

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

An End To The Violence: Justifying Gender As A "Particular Social Group", Suzanne Sidun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gender And Pregnancy Bias In The Workplace, Jaehee Jang

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Equal Opportunity To Harass, Unequal Burdens Of Proof: Affirming The Equal Opportunity Defense, Todd J. Clark

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Nguyen V. Ins And The Application Of Intermediate Scrutiny To Gender Classifications: Theory, Practice, And Reality, Norman T. Deutsch

Pepperdine Law Review

The Supreme Court has articulated three theoretically different standards of review for determining whether government action has denied any person equal protection of the laws: rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny. One area of this tri-level jurisprudence that continues to be troublesome in practice is the application of intermediate scrutiny to gender classifications. Nguyen v. INS is significant because it is the first case in which all nine Justices unequivocally applied that standard in such a case. Nonetheless, the application of the standard remains problematic since the Court split five to four on its application to the facts. This …

Engendering The History Of Race And International Relations: The Career Of Edith Sampson, 1927–1978, Gwen Jordan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Edith Sampson was one of the leading black women lawyers in Chicago for over fifty years. She was admitted to the bar in 1927 and achieved a number of firsts in her career: the first black woman judge in Illinois, the first African American delegate to the United Nations, and the first African American appointed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Sampson was also a pro-democracy, international spokesperson for the U.S. government during the Cold War, a position that earned her scorn from more radical African Americans, contributed to a misinterpretation of her activism, and resulted in her relative obscurity …

The Possibility Of Compromise: Antiabortion Moderates After Roe V. Wade, 1973–1980, Mary Ziegler

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Leading studies argue that Roe itself radicalized debate and marginalized antiabortion moderates, either by issuing a sweeping decision before adequate public support had developed or by framing the opinion in terms of moral absolutes. The polarization narrative on which leading studies rely obscures important actors and arguments that defined the antiabortion movement of the 1970s. First, contrary to what the polarization narrative suggests, self-identified moderates played a significant role in the mainstream antiabortion movement, shaping policies on issues like the treatment of unwed mothers or the Equal Rights Amendment. Working in organizations like Feminists for Life (FFL) or American Citizens …