Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative religious litigation group, representing as intervening defendant a cisgender girl who claims it is unfair to require her to compete in track and field against a transgender girl, applied to the Supreme Court to reverse an order by a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing B.P.J., a transgender girl, to continue competing while the court of appeals considers her appeal of an adverse ruling by … <Read More>
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
Trump Alumni Group Engineers Challenge to Bostock Application Outside of Title VII
Shortly after the end of Donald Trump’s Administration, a group of his top officials formed a new organization intended to challenge attempts by the Biden Administration to change Trump’s policies. With Stephen Miller, White House counselor and the evil genius behind many of Trump’s policies, as its president and board chair, America First Legal Foundation boasts as board members former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, and former Director of … <Read More>
U.S. Education Department to Publish Official Interpretation of Title IX Covering Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination
Following up on President Joe Biden’s Executive Orders of January 20 and March 8, 2021, and a March 26 Memorandum by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education announced on June 16 that it is publishing a “Notice of Interpretation” in the Federal Register confirming that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits educational institutions that received federal funding from discriminating against students “on the … <Read More>
Federal Appeals Court Says University Professor May Have 1st Amendment Right to Misgender Transgender Students
Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, was very concerned in 2016 when the University announced that its ban on gender identity discrimination would require professors to respect students’ gender identity by using appropriate pronouns to refer to them. Meriwether, a devout Christian who rejects the idea that people can have a different gender identity than their genetic sex, protested to his department chair, who ridiculed his religious beliefs and … <Read More>
Virginia School Board Asks Supreme Court to Overturn Gavin Grimm’s Transgender Rights Victory
The Gloucester County (Virginia) School Board filed a petition on February 19 with the Supreme Court seeking reviewing of the lower courts’ rulings in the lawsuit originally filed by Gavin Grimm, a transgender man, when he was a student at the School Board’s high school, seeking to be allowed to use restrooms consistent with his gender identity. The School Board is appealing from an August 2020 decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, … <Read More>
Gavin Grimm Victorious: U.S. Appeals Court Reject’s School Board’s Anti-Trans Restroom Policy
Capping litigation that began in 2015, a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled by a vote of 2-1 on August 26 that the Gloucester County (Virginia) School Board violated the statutory and constitutional rights of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, when it denied him the use of boys’ restrooms at Gloucester County High School. Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 27234, 2020 … <Read More>
Federal Court Blocks Trump Regulation Revoking Health Care Protections for Transgender People
U.S. District Judge Frederic Block ruled on August 17 that a new Trump Administration Rule that rescinded the Obama Administration’s Rule prohibiting gender identity discrimination in health care will not go into effect on August 18, its scheduled date, and he granted a preliminary injunction against the new Rule’s enforcement. Judge Block sits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Walker v. Azar, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 148141.… <Read More>
Texas Federal Court Vacates Transgender Protection under Obamacare
Reed O’Connor, a federal trial judge in the Northern District of Texas, ruled on October 15 in Franciscan Alliance v. Azar, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177871, 2019 WL 5157100, that the Obama Administration’s regulation providing that the Affordable Care Act (ACA, a/k/a “Obamacare”) prohibits health care providers and institutions from discriminating against patients because of “gender identity” or “termination of pregnancy” is invalid. The judge “vacated” the rule, effectively ordering the government not to … <Read More>
TWO MORE LGBTQ-RELATED CONTROVERSIES DROP OFF THE SUPREME COURT DOCKET
As the Supreme Court’s 2017-18 Term began in October, it looked like a banner term for LGBTQ-related cases at the nation’s highest court. Petitions were pending asking the Court to address a wide range of issues, including whether LGBTQ people are protected against discrimination under federal sex discrimination laws covering employment (from Georgia) and educational opportunity (from Wisconsin), whether LGBTQ people in Mississippi had standing to seek a federal order to prevent a viciously anti-gay … <Read More>
Federal District Court Denies Preliminary Injunction Requiring School District to Segregate Restroom and Locker Facilities by Biological Sex of Students
Accepting a report and recommendation from U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey T. Gilbert, U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso ruled on December 29, 2017, that a group of parents and cisgender students are not entitled to a preliminary injunction blocking Illinois’s Township High School District 211 from allowing transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Students and Parents for Privacy v. United States Department of Education, 2017 U.S. … <Read More>