Law and Gender Commons^™

Introduction To Dignity Special Issue: Freedom From Sexploitation, Lisa L. Thompson, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Workin’ 9:00–5:00 For Nine Months: Assessing Pregnancy Discrimination Laws In Georgia, Kaitlyn Pettet

Georgia State University Law Review

As demonstrated in this Note, there is still a considerable way to go before women are no longer forced to choose between pregnancy and keeping their career. Allegations of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace are also on the rise.

In 1997, 4,000 plaintiffs filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). By 2011, that number rose to 5,800. The EEOC won significant damages in pregnancy discrimination cases, demonstrating a greater tendency towards discrimination in the workplace. Additionally, this rise in claims and awards caught the attention of the nation’s media, placing new emphasis on the treatment of pregnant women …

Female Autonomy: An Analysis Of Privacy And Equality Doctrine For Reproductive Rights, Elizabeth Levi

Political Science Honors Projects

What is the constitutional basis for women’s equality? Recently, scholars have suggested that as the right to privacy has floundered against the political undoing of women's access to abortion, equal protection arguments have grown stronger. This thesis investigates the feminist utility and limits of the equality and privacy arguments. Taking liberal feminism and feminist legal theory as analytical lenses, I offer interpretations of gender discrimination, reproductive rights, and marriage equality case law. By this framework, I argue that while an equality argument is less inherently oppressive towards women than the privacy doctrine, equality doctrine has been constructed thus far to …

My Body, Not My Say: How Roe V. Wade Endangers Women's Autonomy, Kisha K. Patel

Politics Honors Papers

When defining women’s rights to reproductive decisions in Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmun fails to ensure protection for women by defining this right in the privacy doctrine. Justice Blackmun’s opinion allows the government to interpret and apply the doctrine to deny women access and availability to reproductive health. This can be shown by the subsequent Supreme Court decisions on privacy that allow the government to overrule the right of the individual woman. This allows for the government to effectively deny women the right to abortion and ultimately prevents women from making independent autonomous decisions. The laws and regulations against …

Sex Reassignment Surgery & The New Standard Of Care: An Analysis Of The Role The Federal Court System, The States, Society, And The Medical Community Serve In Paving The Way For Incarcerated Transgendered Persons' Constitutional Right To A Sex Change, Victor J. Genchi

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Tension Between Equal Protection And Religious Freedom, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "The Constitution did not become our basic law at a single point in time. We ratified its first seven articles in 1788 but have since amended it 27 times. Many of these amendments memorialize fundamental shifts in values. Thus, it should come as no surprise to learn that the Constitution is not an internally consistent document."

…

"Other constitutional provisions -- even provisions that were simultaneously enacted -- protect freedoms that can come into conflict with one another. The First Amendment, for example, promises both freedom from governmental endorsement of religion and freedom from governmental interference with religious practice. …

Potential Life In The Doctrine, Leah Litman

Articles

In their article, Abortion: A Woman’s Private Choice, Erwin Chemerinsky and Michele Goodwin seek to shore up the doctrinal basis for a woman’s constitutional right to end her pregnancy. While Chemerinsky and Goodwin are partly concerned about the status of abortion rights in the United States because of President Donald Trump’s promise prior to taking office to appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade, they also maintain that some of the threat to abortion rights arises from an uncomfortable tension in the doctrine that recognizes states’ interest in potential life. I agree with Chemerinsky and …

Obergefell’S Impact On Functional Families, Raymond C. O'Brien

Catholic University Law Review

More than forty percent of children born in America are born to unmarried parents and only half of all cohabitating adults in America are currently married. While many children are born to single parents, others are part of the two-person unmarried cohabiting functional family paradigm. What is the status of these children?

This article examines the changing paradigm of parental status, specifically vis-à-vis homosexual couples with children, and the rights of the non-biological parent after separation. This article examines the changes in law in regards to unmarried parents leading up to the Uniform Parentage Act. It describes the equitable remedies …

Gloucester County School Board V. G. G.: Brief For Professors Samuel Bagenstos, Michael C. Dorf, Martin S. Lederman And Leah M. Litman As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Samuel Bagenstos, Leah Litman

Appellate Briefs

Amici are legal scholars who teach and write on constitutional law and civil rights law. They submit this brief to call attention to a means of resolving this case not presented by the parties or other amici.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 provides that in a school district receiving federal financial assistance, "[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, . . . be subjected to discrimination." 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a).

As applied to transgender students, however, such segregation on the basis of sex-on the basis of anatomical differences in external reproductive organs-does …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Deborah Gonzalez's Post: Why I Marched... 1-25-2017, Deborah Gonzalez

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Unduly Burdening Women’S Health: How Lower Courts Are Undermining Whole Woman’S Health V. Hellerstedt, Leah M. Litman

Michigan Law Review Online

At the end of the Supreme Court’s 2016 Term, the Court issued its decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. One of the more closely watched cases of that Term, Hellerstedt asked whether the Supreme Court would adhere to its prior decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed that women have a constitutionally protected right to decide to end a pregnancy.

The state of Texas had not formally requested that the Court revisit Casey or the earlier decision Casey had affirmed, Roe v. Wade, in Hellerstedt. But that was what Texas was, in effect, asking …

Polarizing Procedures: Transsexual Inmates, Sex Reassignment Surgery, And The Eighth Amendment, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 747 (2017), Jameson Rammell

UIC Law Review

This article argues that at present, there is not sufficient certainty within the medical and scientific communities to definitively state that SRS is medically necessary for transsexual individuals, or that it effectively relieves the negative symptoms often associated with gender dysphoria. Because the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment does not require prison officials to provide the most cutting-edge treatments available, but only an adequate level of treatment, it is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment to deny a transsexual inmate’s request for SRS. Part I explores the medical and scientific communities’ current understanding of gender dysphoria, …

Anti-Gay Curriculum Laws, Clifford Rosky

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Since the Supreme Court’s invalidation of anti-gay marriage laws, scholars and advocates have begun discussing what issues the LGBT movement should prioritize next. This article joins that dialogue by developing the framework for a national campaign to invalidate anti-gay curriculum laws—statutes that prohibit or restrict the discussion of homosexuality in public schools. These laws are artifacts of a bygone era in which official discrimination against LGBT people was both lawful and rampant. But they are far more prevalent than others have recognized. In the existing literature, scholars and advocates have referred to these provisions as “no promo homo” laws and …

Telling Stories In The Supreme Court: Voices Briefs And The Role Of Democracy In Constitutional Deliberation, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

On January 4, 2016, over 112 women lawyers, law professors, and former judges told the world that they had had an abortion. In a daring amicus brief that captured national media attention, the women “came out” to their clients; to the lawyers with or against whom they practice; to the judges before whom they appear; and to the Justices of the Supreme Court.

The past three years have seen an explosion of such “voices briefs,” 16 in Obergefell and 17 in Whole Woman’s Health. The briefs can be powerful, but their use is controversial. They tell the stories of non-parties—strangers …

Fathers And Feminism: The Case Against Genetic Entitlement, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This Article makes the case against a nascent consensus among feminist and other progressive scholars about men's parental rights. Most progressive proposals to reform parentage law focus on making it easier for men to assert parental rights, especially when they are not married to the mother of the child. These proposals may seek, for example, to require the state to make more extensive efforts to locate biological fathers, to require pregnant women to notify men of their impending paternity, or to require new mothers to give biological fathers access to infants.

These proposals disregard the mother's existing parental rights and …

Man Up Or Go Home: Exploring Perceptions Of Women In Leadership, Abigail Perdue

Marquette Law Review

Throughout history, women in positions of authority have often been perceived as violating well-established gender norms. Perhaps as a result, female leadership has often been viewed as a threat to male power and privilege and thus provoked resistance. Female leaders challenge longstanding sex stereotypes and patriarchal structures, subverting the identities of androcentric institutions and the people who comprise them. In so doing, they redefine notions of what it means to be a leader as well as what it means to be a woman. Cisgender male subordinates in particular may feel that their masculinity is under assault when they are placed …

Privatizing Bars On Abortion: Eviscerating Constitutional Rights Through Tort Remedies, Maya Manian

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

State governments have devised a new means to evade the Constitution. Their new means is to enact tort statutes that, in effect, ban constitutionally protected conduct. In particular, some states have made the provision of an abortion a tort for which there can be no defense and no cap on the amount of liability. These states have made performing an abortion essentially illegal. Yet, because tort statutes are enforced through private litigation, rather than public prosecution, a number of courts have held that they lack jurisdiction to review these laws. Federal courts have concluded that standing doctrine and state sovereign …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Glbtq Legal Advocates & Defenders Et Al. In Support Of Respondent In Gloucester County School Board V. G.G., Sjc 16-273, Jennifer Levi, Shannon P. Minter, Dean Richlin, Amanda Hainsworth, Rachel Hutchinson, Emily J. Nash

Faculty Scholarship

Amici brief submitted by the GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Foley Hoag, LLP. to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., by His Next Friend and Mother, Deirdre Grimm. The brief argues that the Court should reject the school board’s claim that privacy interests justify its discriminatory policy for three reasons. First, there is no basis for the creation of a new privacy right that justifies excluding transgender students from shared restrooms. Second, nothing in Title IX or its regulations supports the School …

Firearms In The Family, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of …

The Wages Of Genetic Entitlement: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly In The Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This Essay analyzes flaws and assumptions in the recently enacted Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. The RSCCA offers a window into the problems with defining parenthood in terms of genes instead of caretaking relationships, which is what led to the problem of rapists being able to claim parental rights in the first place. Rather than address that underlying defect in family law, the statute attempts a solution that might work if all rapists were strangers, all rapists were men, and all rape victims were women, but glosses over complicated problems of violence and coercion in relationships. Despite this failure to …

Deported By Marriage: Americans Forced To Choose Between Love And Country, Beth Caldwell

Brooklyn Law Review

As the fiftieth anniversary of Loving v. Virginia approaches, de jure prohibitions against interracial marriages are history. However, marriages between people of different national origins continue to be undermined by the law. The Constitution does not protect the marital rights of citizens who marry noncitizens in the same way that it protects all other marriages. Courts have consistently held that a spouse’s deportation does not implicate the rights of American citizens, and the Constitution has long been held inapplicable in protecting the substantive due process rights of noncitizens facing deportation. Given the spike in deportations over the past decade, hundreds …

The Roberts Court And The New Textualism, Anton Metlitsky

Cardozo Law Review

The article explores the Roberts Court's approach to statutory interpretation, focusing on its adherence to the "new textualism," a methodology emphasizing the plain meaning of statutory text. While recent cases like King v. Burwell, Bond v. United States, and Yates v. United States appear to prioritize statutory purpose over textual meaning, the Court's reasoning reinforces its commitment to textualism by framing decisions within textualist methodology, even when outcomes seem to depart from strict textual interpretation.

A Free Speech Response To The Gay Rights/Religious Liberty Conflict, Andrew Koppelman

Northwestern University Law Review

The most sensible reconciliation of the tension between religious liberty and public accommodations law, in the recent cases involving merchants with religious objections to same-sex marriage, would permit business owners to present their views to the world, but forbid them either to threaten to discriminate or to treat any individual customer worse than others. Even if such businesses have no statutory right to refuse to facilitate ceremonies they regard as immoral, they are unlikely to be asked to participate in those ceremonies. This solution may, however, be forbidden by the law of hostile environment harassment. That raises a severe free …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: What The Tragedy In Orlando Means For Rwu Law 6/17/2016, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

The Thirteenth Amendment At The Intersection Of Class And Gender: Robertson V. Baldwin’S Exclusion Of Infants, Lunatics, Women, And Seamen, James Gray Pope

Seattle University Law Review

In Robertson v. Baldwin, the Supreme Court held that merchant seamen under contract could be legally compelled to work notwithstanding the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on slavery and involuntary servitude. According to the Court, seamen were “deficient in that full and intelligent responsibility for their acts which is accredited to ordinary adults,” and therefore could—along with children and wards—be deprived of liberty. Over the past few years, however, several courts have applied statutory bans on “involuntary servitude” and “forced labor” (a “species of involuntary servitude”) to protect women and children in domestic settings. These cases suggest that Robertson’s categorical exclusion is …

Prostitution Policy: Legalization, Decriminalization And The Nordic Model, Ane Mathieson, Easton Branam, Anya Noble

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Don’T Risk It; Wait Until She’S Sober, Patrick John White

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Let’S Talk About Sex: A Call For Guardianship Reform In Washington State, Sage Graves

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Living Under The Boot: Militarization And Peaceful Protest, Charlotte Guerra

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Let’S Invest In People, Not Prisons: How Washington State Should Address Its Ex-Offender Unemployment Rate, Sara Taboada

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.