Characterizing a lesbian plaintiff’s sex discrimination claim under Title VII and the Kentucky Civil Rights Act as a sexual orientation discrimination claim, Chief U.S. District Judge Joseph H. McKinley, Jr., granted an employer’s motion for partial dismissal, finding that 6th Circuit precedent from a decade ago expressly rejected using a sex stereotype theory to find sexual orientation discrimination actionable under Title VII or the Kentucky statute. Lindsey v. Management & Training Corporation, 2018 … <Read More>
Obscure Brooklyn Appellate Ruling Protects Transgender People from Discrimination Without Saying So
Talk about “hiding the ball!” On June 6, a unanimous four-judge panel of the New York Appellate Division, 2nd Department, based in Brooklyn, confirmed an Order by the State Division of Human Rights (SDHR), which had adopted a decision by an agency administrative law judge (ALJ) ruling that a Port Jervis employer violated the human rights law when it discharged a transgender employee.
But nobody reading the court’s short memorandum opinion, or the short … <Read More>
Arizona Appeals Court Cites Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision to Rule Out 1st Amendment Exemptions for Stationary Company
The precedential meaning of a Supreme Court decision depends on how lower courts interpret it. The media reported the Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling as a “win” for baker Jack Phillips, since the court reversed the discrimination rulings against him by the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. But the opinion has a deeper significance than a superficial “win” or “loss” can capture, as the Arizona Court of Appeals demonstrated just … <Read More>
Federal Magistrate Rejects Retroactive Marital Privilege Claim for Connecticut Couple in Antitrust Case
In Antech Diagnostics, Inc. v. Veterinary Oncology and Hematology Center, LLC, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82947, 2018 WL 2254543 (D. Conn., May 17, 2018), U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam had to deal with a claim by defendants that certain correspondence between two men (one of them a named defendant) that was sought in discovery by the plaintiffs was protected by marital privilege. Judge Merriam’s opinion does not set out the underlying facts … <Read More>
Transgender Mexican Asylee Seeks Supreme Court Review of 7th Circuit’s Refusal to Consider His Constitutional Challenge to Indiana’s Citizenship Requirement for Legal Name Changes
The Supreme Court has received a petition for certiorari seeking review of the 7th Circuit’s March 28 decision in Doe v. Holcomb, 883 F.3d 971, petition for certiorari, No. 17-1637 (filed June 4, 2018), a dispute over the constitutionality of Indiana’s limitation of the right to obtain a legal change of name to U.S. citizens.
The “John Doe” plaintiff is a transgender refugee from Mexico, who was brought to the U.S. as a child by … <Read More>
Supreme Court Sets Aside Colorado Commission Ruling in Wedding Cake Case, Condemning Government Hostility to Religion
The United States Supreme Court ruled on June 4 that overt hostility to religion had tainted the decision process in the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it ruled that baker Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop had unlawfully discriminated against Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins in 2012 by refusing to make them a wedding cake. Writing for the Court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy reaffirmed the right of the states to ban discrimination because of sexual … <Read More>
Supreme Court Receives Two New Certiorari Petitions on Title VII Sexual Orientation Discrimination Claims
At the end of May the Supreme Court had received two new petitions asking it to address the question whether the ban on employment discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be interpreted to apply to claims of discrimination because of sexual orientation.
Altitude Express, the former employer of the late Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who claimed he was dismissed because of his sexual orientation in … <Read More>
Third Circuit Rejects Challenge to Pennsylvania School District’s Policy Allowing Transgender Students to Use Facilities Consistent with Their Gender Identities
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit took the unusual step on May 24 of announcing about an hour after hearing oral argument that it would unanimously affirm U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith’s ruling from last summer denying a motion for a preliminary injunction by a group of parents and students seeking to stop the Boyertown (Pennsylvania) Area School District from continuing to implement a policy allowing … <Read More>
Federal Court Rejects Gloucester School District’s Motion to Dismiss Gavin Grimm’s Case
Opening up a new chapter in the continuing battle of Gavin Grimm to vindicate his rights as a transgender man, U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen issued an Order on May 22 denying the Gloucester County (Virginia) School Board’s motion to dismiss the latest version of the case Grimm filed back in July 2015, prior to his sophomore year at Gloucester High School.
During the summer of 2014, Grimm’s transition had progressed to the … <Read More>
Federal Court Orders Social Security Administration to Pay Attorney’s Fees to Gay Widower Who Prevailed on Benefits Claim
On July 4, 1990, John Roberts and Bernard Wilkerson, a same-sex couple living in Pennsylvania, “expressed to one another their intent to establish a common law marriage.” Although at the time Pennsylvania did not recognize same-sex marriages, either under its common law or its statutory law, the men considered themselves married and lived together as a couple until Wilkerson died in 2015. Moving quickly after a federal court struck down Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage … <Read More>