The New York Law School Impact Center is presenting a Salon on Transgender Issue on Tuesday, September 29. I am participating together with attorneys M. Dru Levasseur of Lambda Legal and Ezra Young. I prepared a case table on transgender law for distribution at the event and am sharing it here:
Selected Legal Decisions on Transgender Issues
Prepared by Arthur Leonard for NLYS Impact Center Salon, September 29, 2015.
Criminal Law:
City of Chicago v. … <Read More>
Justice Maria Milin of New York County Supreme Court ruled against a landlord who was seeking to evict the former domestic partner of a tenant from a rent stabilized apartment in Manhattan . The ruling, 360-363 Associates v. Hyers, NYLJ 1202737856287 (September 14, 2015), was published by the New York Law Journal on September 23. The decision may be among the earliest retroactive applications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent marriage equality ruling, Obergefell … <Read More>
The Court of Appeals of Oregon has affirmed an award of $405,000 against a North Portland bar and the bar’s owner, Chris Penner, upon a finding by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (OBLI) that they violated the state’s public accommodations law by denying “equal accommodations” to an informal social club that included gay and transgender people. Blachana, LLC v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, 273 Ore. App. 806, 2015 Ore. App. … <Read More>
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar issued an opinion on September 17 in G. G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124905, 2015 WL 5560190 (E.D. Va.), explaining his earlier bench decision in July dismissing the plaintiff’s Title IX count and his September 4 denial of the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction in a dispute over restroom usage at the Gloucester, Virginia, High School. The plaintiff, a transgender boy, is … <Read More>
My 2015-16 concert season began early this year, with season-opening concerts by the Five Boroughs Music Festival on September 11 and the Brooklyn Art Song Society on September 18.
5BMF decided to start their season in Manhattan, at the National Opera Center’s recital hall, with a program by the American Contemporary Ensemble, a youthful group of composers who perform their own music in ensemble. Group members Caleb Burhans, Timo Andres, Caroline Shaw, Clarice Jensen and … <Read More>
Under the United States Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, a state court is supposed to recognize the judgments of courts from other states unless those courts did not have jurisdiction over the parties or the subject matter of the case. Asked to rule on whether an Alabama court must recognize a Georgia adoption decree involving a same-sex couple, however, the Alabama Supreme Court manufactured a jurisdictional issue in order to reverse a ruling by … <Read More>
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has found that conditions for transgender women are so dire in Mexico that they may qualify for protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) based on the realization that they are likely to face torture if deported from the U.S. to Mexico. Three decisions involving transgender women, issued by the panel on September 3, 2015, were written by Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. … <Read More>
Due to the oddities of timing during a transitional period in the legal landscape, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals found in the context of a divorcing lesbian couple that the non-biological parent’s claim for visitation with the child conceived through donor insemination at a time when the women could not marry in their domicile of the District of Columbia must be dismissed on standing grounds. It seems that by a fluke of timing the … <Read More>
On August 20, leading LGBT rights legal organizations in the United States issued a joint statement supporting Amnesty International’s August 11 Resolution that advocates for the human rights of sex workers, including repeal of laws against prostitution. Just days later, on August 25, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) raided the New York City offices of Rentboy.com, the world’s largest on-line escorting website, carted away boxes of business records and computers, and arrested the … <Read More>
Marriage equality means equal treatment of same-sex and different-sex marriages for all purposes of law.
Such is the premise of Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh’s formal opinion issued in response to an inquiry from a member of the state’s House of Delegates, asking whether the adultery laws would be violated by sexual infidelity by a spouse in a same-sex marriage. Family Law – Divorce – Whether Same-Sex Marital Infidelity Can Qualify as Adultery for … <Read More>