Law and Gender Commons^™

The Social Psychology Of Inclusion: How Diversity Framing Shapes Outcomes For Racial-Ethnic Minorities, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Research on the efficacy of organizational diversity efforts has yielded mixed results. It remains unclear when positive or negative outcomes should be expected, and why. This article fills a gap in the sociological literature by examining critical social psychological mechanisms. In Experiment 1, I found that common diversity messaging led to increased bias towards racial minorities. In Experiment 2, I examined how alternative framing may influence these outcomes. Findings revealed that the common “business case” emphasizing profit and performance gains made decision-makers less likely to select a Black job candidate than emphasizing civil rights law. I then examined social psychological …

Identity By Committee, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Even in school districts with relatively permissive approaches to defining and embodying gender, the identities of transgender and gender variant students are often governed by complex regulatory protocols. Ensuring that a student is able to live their gender at school can involve input from a host of purported stakeholders including medical providers, mental health professionals, school administrators, the student’s parents, and even the broader community. In essence, trans and gender variant students’ identities are governed by committee, which reduces students’ control over their lives, inhibits self-determination, constricts the scope of permissible gender identities, subjects them to incredible degrees of state …

Submission To The Province Of Nova Scotia On Its Review Of The Intimate Images And Cyber-Protection Act - Leaf, Suzie Dunn, Rosel Kim

Reports & Public Policy Documents

The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) commends the Nova Scotia government for reviewing its Intimate Images and Cyber-protection Act (the Act) and seeking public input for this review. Nova Scotia has been, and continues to be, a leader in Canada for its role in advancing innovative laws and supports for people targeted by technology-facilitated violence (TFV), digital abuse, and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (NCDII). As these forms of harmful behaviour evolve and become better understood, it is important to revisit this legislation to assess whether it is providing meaningful and accessible responses to such serious social …

Are High Levels Of Educator Bias Associated With The Disproportionate Discipline Of Black Students?, Melissa Ann Ramos

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Data on school discipline inequities have shown disproportionate numbers of Black students suspended and expelled compared to their non-Black counterparts. Despite the implementation of evidence-based solutions such as positive behavior supports and intervention, educator professional development, and restorative practices aimed at closing the racial discipline gap, little to no change has occurred. Critical Race Theory is used as a lens for viewing racial hierarchies as a socially constructed tool to oppress people of color. This oppression can be seen in various aspects of society and in education, especially in school discipline. It is fueled by biases, both implicit and explicit. …

Before Equal Protection: The Fall Of Cross-Dressing Bans And The Transgender Legal Movement, Kate Redburn

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars are still unsure why American cities passed cross-dressing bans over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s, cities in every region of the United States had cross-dressing regulations, from major metropolitan centers to small cities and towns. They were used to criminalize gender non-conformity in many forms – for feminists, countercultural hippies, cross-dressers (or “transvestites”), and people we would now consider transgender. Starting in the late 1960s, however, criminal defendants began to topple cross-dressing bans.

Scholars are still unsure why American cities passed cross-dressing bans over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s, …

The Visibility Trap, Kate Redburn

Faculty Scholarship

Vice Patrol offers a novel history of the visibility trap. It integrates interventions in legal history, history of sexuality, and queer theory with remarkable ease. Lvovsky brings new insight to a question that has puzzled scholars across several fields: Why and how does cultural representation lead to increased state repression? Blending impressive archival research with sophisticated theoretical analysis, Lvovsky follows cultural knowledge into the legal system to offer a fresh diagnosis of the problem and how it develops. In her discovery of “epistemic gaps,” she uncovers a key mechanism of the visibility trap. Disagreements between the police and the courts, …

Mary Lou Graves, Nolen Breedlove, And The Nineteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

This close examination of two cases is part of a larger ongoing project to provide a distinct account of the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1921, the Alabama Supreme Court held the Nineteenth Amendment required that any poll tax be imposed equally on men and women. Sixteen years later, the Supreme Court disagreed. Juxtaposing these two cases, and telling their story in rich context, captures my larger claim that—contrary to the general understanding in the scholarly literature—the Nineteenth Amendment was deliberately crafted as a highly circumscribed measure that would eliminate only the exclusively male franchise while serving steadfastly to preserve and promote …

First Comes Love. Then Comes Marriage. Then Comes A Baby In A Baby Carriage: An Application Of Protective Surrogacy Laws To The Tarheel State, Justin Lo

Seattle University Law Review

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and determining parentage have a common feature: each is governed by state law or the lack of such laws. This lack of statutory regulations presents significant legal challenges to gay men who wish to start a family. Because same-sex male couples seeking to become fathers through ART and surrogacy are the most likely demographic to be impacted when determining parentage, laws that influence the direction of surrogacy will undeniably facilitate whether both males will be deemed a father. To provide same-sex male couples with a pathway to parenthood, North Carolina should (1) develop robust, protective surrogacy …

The Commodification Of Public Land Records, Reid Kress Weisbord, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

The United States deed recording system alters the “first in time, first in right” doctrine to enable good faith purchasers to record their deeds to protect themselves against prior unrecorded conveyances and to provide constructive notice of their interests to potential subsequent purchasers. Constructive notice, however, works only when land records are available for public inspection, a practice that had long proved uncontroversial. For centuries, deed archives were almost exclusively patronized by land-transacting parties because the difficulty and cost of title examination deterred nearly everyone else.

The modern information economy, however, propelled this staid corner of property law into a …

Remarks From The 2022 Symposium: The Equal Rights Amendment: A New Guarantee Of Sex Equality In The U.S. Constitution, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In so many respects, the culmination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career took place in 1996, three years after she joined the Supreme Court and twenty-four years before her death. In U.S. v. Virginia, Justice Ginsburg convinced a majority of the Supreme Court to embrace the strongest formulation of a constitutional norm condemning sex inequality in the Court’s history. The new rule articulated in the U.S. v. Virginia case declared that “[s]ex classifications ... may not be used, as they once were, ... to create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”

In The Name Of Diversity: Why Mandatory Diversity Statements Violate The First Amendment And Reduce Intellectual Diversity In Academia, Daniel M. Ortner

Catholic University Law Review

In the 1950s and 1960s in many parts of the country, a professor could be fired or never hired if he refused to denounce communism or declare loyalty to the United States Constitution. The University of California system took the lead in enforcing these loyalty oaths. These loyalty oaths were challenged all the way up to the United States Supreme Court and were soundly rejected, establishing the centrality of academic freedom and open inquiry on the university campus. So why are loyalty oaths making their resurgence in the form of mandatory diversity statements? Universities have begun requiring faculty members to …

Revitalizing The Ban On Conversion Therapy: An Affirmation Of The Constitutionality Of Conversion Therapy Bans, Logan Kline

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Classrooms Into Courtrooms, Naomi M. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

The federal Department of Education’s (DOE) 2020 Title IX Rule fundamentally transformed the relationship between postsecondary schools (schools) and students. While courts have long warned against turning classrooms into courtrooms, the 2020 Rule nonetheless imposed a mandatory quasi-criminal courtroom procedure for Title IX sexual harassment investigatory proceedings in schools. This transformation is a reflection of the larger trend of importing criminal law norms and due process protections into Title IX school proceedings. It is especially regressive at a time where calls for long-overdue criminal justice reform are reaching a boiling point across the nation. Its effects are especially troubling because …

Bostock Was Bogus: Textualism, Pluralism, And Title Vii, Mitchell N. Berman, Guha Krishnamurthi

Notre Dame Law Review

In Bostock v. Clayton County, one of the blockbuster cases from its 2019 Term, the Supreme Court held that federal antidiscrimination law prohibits employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Unsurprisingly, the result won wide acclaim in the mainstream legal and popular media. Results aside, however, the reaction to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which purported to ground the outcome in a textualist approach to statutory interpretation, was more mixed. The great majority of commentators, both liberal and conservative, praised Justice Gorsuch for what they deemed a careful and sophisticated—even “magnificent” and “exemplary”—application of textualist principles, …

The 5th Annual Stonewall Lecture: Featuring Keynote Speaker Taylor Brown, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Menstruation Discrimination And The Problem Of Shadow Precedents, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A burgeoning menstrual justice movement calls attention to menstruation-related discrimination in workplaces, schools, prisons, and many other aspects of life. In recent years, a few courts have suggested such discrimination could violate Title VII, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in employment. Their analysis focuses on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), an amendment to Title VII passed to override a Supreme Court case that had held pregnancy discrimination was not sex discrimination.

This essay, written for a symposium at Columbia Law School, applies my earlier research on the statutory interpretation of Congressional overrides to highlight two potential challenges this …

Menstrual Dignity And The Bar Exam, Margaret E. Johnson, Marcy L. Karin, Elizabeth Cooper

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the issue of menstruation and the administration of the bar exam. Although such problems are not new, over the summer and fall of 2020, test takers and commentators took to social media to critique state board of law examiners’ (“BOLE”) policies regarding menstruation. These problems persist. Menstruators worry that if they unexpectedly bleed during the exam, they may not have access to appropriately sized and constructed menstrual products or may be prohibited from accessing the bathroom. Personal products that are permitted often must be carried in a clear, plastic bag. Some express privacy concerns that the see-through …

Overcoming Obstacles To Reentry Panel, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Rose Lecture, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Maternity Rights: A Comparative View Of Mexico And The United States, Roberto Rosas

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Women play a large role in the workplace and require additional protection during pregnancy, childbirth, and while raising children. This article compares how Mexico and the United States have approached the issue of maternity rights and benefits. First, Mexico provides eighty-four days of paid leave to mothers, while the United States provides unpaid leave for up to twelve weeks. Second, Mexico allows two thirty-minute breaks a day for breastfeeding, while the United States allows a reasonable amount of time per day to breastfeed. Third, Mexico provides childcare to most federal employees, while the United States provides daycares to a small …

Amplified Speech, Erin L. Miller

Cardozo Law Review

This Article introduces the concept of amplification into First Amendment law. Amplification, or the size of the audience reached by speech, lies at the heart of many contemporary free speech struggles. Yet the concept is surprisingly absent as a category of analysis from constitutional doctrine and virtually undiscussed in legal scholarship. Amplification deserves its own set of legal rules and doctrines, because the right to amplify one’s speech serves the two core types of First Amendment interests—those of audiences and those of speakers—differently than the right to choose the content of one’s speech. The higher the degree of amplification, the …

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: An Appreciation, Jonathan L. Entin

Cardozo Law Review

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a unique figure in American history: as Chief Justice Roberts put it, she was “a jurist of historic stature.”1 She was that, of course, but she was so much more. If she had never served on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would still have been a person of historic stature. She was a leading legal scholar who wrote major works about procedure, jurisdiction, comparative law, and constitutional law. And she was the architect of a litigation campaign that resulted in a series of Supreme Court rulings that fundamentally transformed the law of gender discrimination.

Equal Justice Under Law: Navigating The Delicate Balance Between Religious Liberty And Marriage Equality, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the current state of the law and offers thoughts on its future. Part Il provides a brief overview of the legal landscape involved in the clash between religious liberty and same-sex marriage From Justice Scalia's seminal religious liberty test to the evolution of same- sex marriage, Part Il describes the current law. Part III introduces the reader to public accommodations laws. After providing this brief history, Part Ill discusses three Supreme Court cases that could have resolved the religious liberty versus marriage equality question. Part IV looks ahead and draws analogies to the 1960s religious liberty objections …

Law School News: Announcing The 2nd Annual Rbg Contest For K-12 Students 10-27-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Commercial Sex And Exploitation, Judge Barbara Mack, Dana Raigrodski

Chapters in Books

Commercial sexual exploitation (CSE), including sex trafficking, mainly targets women, children, young adults (up to age 24), and individuals identifying as LGBTQ+, primarily in communities in poverty, Indigenous communities, and communities of color. Economic and social marginalization drives people into the commercial sex industry and exploitation, which in turn perpetuates that economic and social marginalization. The most targeted and marginalized populations have been doubly harmed by exploitation and by poor treatment within the legal system.

While data is limited, CSE is widespread in the sex industry in Washington State and nationally. State and national data show significant disparities based on …

Constructing The Yellow Brick Road: Preventing Discrimination In Financial Services Against The Lgbtq+ Community, Cyrus Mostaghim

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning (“LGBTQ+”) community lacks explicit statutory protections from discrimination in financial services. After the Supreme Court held in Bostock that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity was illegal, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an informal interpretive rule for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and Regulation B that made discrimination in the access to credit based on sexual orientation or gender identity illegal.

However, this article argues that an informal interpretive rule is easily rescinded and does not provide sufficient protection. Thus, alternative action is needed to create …

“That Name Is Dead To Me”: Reforming Name Change Laws To Protect Transgender And Nonbinary Youth, Sarah Steadman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Content warning: this Article discusses suicidality.

For transgender and some nonbinary youth, living under a chosen name is a first step toward becoming their authentic selves. For these youth, a name change is powerful; it allows them to choose a name that matches their gender identity. They consider their birth name to be a distressing “dead” name—one that they cannot relate to and need to bury.

Using one’s chosen name decreases suicidality among transgender youth who face many challenges, including family rejection and other severe mental health stressors. Transgender and nonbinary youth can only require others to use their chosen …

Indiana Federal Court Rejects Public School Teacher’S Religious Discrimination Claim Over Misgendering Discharge, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Court Rejects Web Designer’S Challenge To Colorado Anti-Discrimination Law, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.