LEGAL DOCKET: Obama’s Stunning Record on Transgender Rights

The Associated Press has a good piece looking at Barack Obama's unprecedented — and surprisingly wholehearted — support of transgender rights. As reporter Lisa Leff points out, Obama is the first president to:

say “transgender” in a speech
name transgender political appointees
prohibit job bias against transgender government workers
invite transgender children to participate in the annual Easter egg roll at the White House

The Obama administration has made it easier for transgender people to:

seek access to public school restrooms and sports programs (under Title IX, the 1972 law that bans gender discrimination in education)
obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (by applying the non-discrimination provision of the ACA to investigate federally funded health plans and care providers discriminate on the basis of gender and gender identity).
receive treatment at Veteran’s Administration facilities
obtain sex-reassignment surgery under federal government–contracted health plans and Medicare
update their passports

Meanwhile, in his first term, Obama signed the first federal civil rights protections for transgender people in U.S. history (in the form of the Matthew Shepard Act, a bill banning hate crimes).

“[Obama] has been the best president for transgender rights, and nobody else is in second place,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Even more remarkable is how little fanfare (and push back) these advances have drawn. In some cases — for example, Obama’s recently announced plans to sign an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity — policies haven’t been singled out as trans-friendly because they benefit the entire LGBT community. But as Leff notes, the muted roll-outs also reflect a concerted strategy.

[T]ransgender rights groups and the administration have agreed on a low-key approach, both to skirt resistance and to send the message that changes are not a big deal, said Barbra Siperstein, who in 2009 became the first transgender person elected to the Democratic National Committee.
“It’s quiet by design, because the louder you are in Washington, the more the drama,” said Siperstein, who helped organize the first meeting between White House aides and transgender rights advocates without the participation of gay rights leaders.

Meanwhile, religious conservatives have been powerless to stop the changes because they result from executive orders rather than legislation. But the Traditional Values Coalition’s Andrea Lafferty suggests that opponents of transgender rights will make their voices heard in the midterm elections.

“There are other people who are concerned about these things, definitely. I think America is just overwhelmed right now…. Everybody is going to have to take a step back, and that step back is going to be this November.”

(Image via ABC News)

Hanna Rosin has an interesting piece on men’s rights activists vs. family law courts at Slate:
“ “There’s a real perception—even women share it—that courts are unfair to fathers,” says Ira Ellman, a custody expert at Arizona State University.
”
But... — Hanna Rosin has an interesting piece on men’s rights activists vs. family law courts at Slate:
“There’s a real perception—even women share it—that courts are unfair to fathers,” says Ira Ellman, a custody expert at Arizona State University.
But as Rosin points out, “**the great revolution in family court over the past 40 years or so has been the movement away from the presumption that mothers should be the main, or even sole, caretakers for their children.**” These days, women are much less likely to get sole custody, and a recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers shows a rapid increase in mothers paying child support and alimony.
“**The real inequality in family courts these days is not based on gender, but on income**,” Rosin writes.
Wealthy men have successfully fought against proposed reforms that would have forced them to pay more child support. With elite, college educated men, “it’s outrageous how little they can end up paying in child support in some cases,” says Ellman, the Arizona State professor.
But poor men are in a different predicament. Welfare reform in the 1990s included an effort to track down fathers who weren’t paying child support. As the economy sank, those fathers fell behind on their payments and often wound up in jail or permanent debt, as Elaine Sorensen of the Urban Institute has documented.
*(Graphic via Wikipedia)*

A new report highlights the many ways that LGBT people and those living with HIV/AIDS are treated throughout the criminal justice system. One policy — using condoms as evidence that people, especially transgender people of color, are engaging in sex... — A new report highlights the many ways that LGBT people and those living with HIV/AIDS are treated throughout the criminal justice system. One policy — using condoms as evidence that people, especially transgender people of color, are engaging in sex work — strikes many as particularly wrong-headed, yet remains surprisingly common, most notably in the NYPD.
“One time I was standing on the street [in NYC] talking with some friends [on a Saturday night] and an officer approached me. She asked for my ID. … The dispatcher told her that my record was clear, but instead of letting me go, she said she wanted to see in my purse….
When she looked inside, she saw two condoms. She called the precinct back and asked for a police car to come. I asked her, ‘Why are you locking me up? I can’t carry condoms?’ She replied, 'You are getting locked up for prostitution.’
**When police take our condoms or lock us up for carrying condoms, they are putting our lives at risk.** How am I supposed to protect myself from HIV and STDs when I am scared to leave my house with condoms in my purse?”
—Trina, a youth leader with the NYC group Streetwise & Safe, quoted in “A Roadmap for Change, Federal Policy Solutions for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People with HIV”
New York state lawmakers are considering a bill to end the practice. More on that here. ~~Meanwhile, the NYPD told the Associated Press that it is reviewing the legislation, as well as its condom policy.~~
UPDATED 5/12: associatedpress
“The NYPD will no longer confiscate unused condoms from suspected sex workers to be used as evidence of prostitution, ending a longstanding practice that had been criticized by civil rights groups for undermining efforts to combat AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Under the new policy announced Monday, officers may continue to seize condoms as evidence in sex-trafficking and promotion of prostitution cases, but they will not use them in support of prostitution cases….
"A policy that inhibits people from safe sex is a mistake and dangerous,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
*(Buttons by Streetwise & Safe, photos by K. Lundie)*

A must-read think-progress piece looks at Alliance Defending Freedom, the Arizona-based legal group described as “the 800-pound gorilla of the Christian Right.” According to author Josh Israel, the 20-year-old organization has been using its... — A must-read think-progress piece looks at Alliance Defending Freedom, the Arizona-based legal group described as “the 800-pound gorilla of the Christian Right.” According to author Josh Israel, the 20-year-old organization has been using its significant resources
to advance a conservative evangelical Christian legal agenda, fighting against what it calls the “concocted” “constitutional ‘right’ to abortion,” laws that promote “social approval of homosexual behavior,” and the “myth of the so-called ‘separation of church and state.’”
ADF has played a role in some of the most prominent legal fights of the past two decades, including battles over Arizona’s SB 1062 (the religious freedom bill that would have permitted discrimination against gays and others), *Citizens United*, and the *Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood* contraception cases now before the Supreme Court. (ADF represents Conestoga and, according to Salon, Hobby Lobby’s religious owners are major donors to ADF, at least indirectly.) More recently, ADF has offered free legal help to anyone losing his or her job because of past support for California’s Prop. 8, a la Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich.
In comments to Israel, ADF spokesman Greg Scott touted the group’s victories on issues including birth control, school choice, and academic freedom. Arguing that the “suppression of Christian belief and practice is a primary target of freedom’s opponents,” Scott said ADF’s mission is to
“[uphold] the idea that no one should be either suppressed or coerced by the government when it comes to the expression of views or the free and peaceful exercise of one’s deepest convictions.”
Still, as Israel notes, ADF embraces a worldview that harkens back to the 3rd century — literally.
On the website for its legal fellowship program, **the organization explains that it “seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.”**
“This is catholic, universal orthodoxy and it is desperately crucial for cultural renewal,” the explanation goes on. “Christians must strive to build glorious cultural cathedrals, rather than shanty tin sheds.”
Meanwhile, the organization has become a fundraising behemoth, bringing in much more money a year than any other similar group.
Find Israel’s full story (complete w/ charts) here.

Trans and LGBT groups are celebrating new U.S. Department of Education guidelines, which state for the first time that Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools and colleges that receive federal funds, applies to transgender... — Trans and LGBT groups are celebrating new U.S. Department of Education guidelines, which state for the first time that **Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools and colleges that receive federal funds, applies to transgender people.**
From the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights:
**A school should investigate and resolve allegations of sexual violence regarding LGBT students using the same procedures and standards that it uses in all complaints involving sexual violence.** The fact that incidents of sexual violence may be accompanied by anti-gay comments or be partly based on a student’s actual or perceived sexual orientation does not relieve a school of its obligation under Title IX to investigate and remedy those instances of sexual violence.
The Bilerico Project has the story here. Here’s reaction from the Transgender Law Center, the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Screenshots from the website of the Buffalo Jills, the official cheerleading squad of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, which has been hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging numerous wage violations under NY state law.
According to the suit brought by five... — Screenshots from the website of the Buffalo Jills, the official cheerleading squad of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, which has been hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging numerous wage violations under NY state law.
According to the suit brought by five Jills, not only were the cheerleaders required to provide more than 800 hours of uncompensated labor every year (at games, practices, and special appearances including private parties, The Jills Annual Golf Tournament and something called “The Man Show” at a Niagara Falls casino), but they paid for their own uniforms, makeup and gas money and weren’t even allowed to keep tips. At the same time, the women allegedly had to obey a long list of rules on everything from manicure type (french or clear polish only) to the amount of “jiggle” on their bodies (none) to “how to properly wash ‘intimate’ areas and how often to change tampons” (yes, the suit really says that).
Bills team officials declined comment, citing the pending litigation. Meanwhile, the Jills’ management company announced it was suspending activities indefinitely; otherwise, it told USA Today, it had comment.

LEGAL DOCKET: The Alabama Supreme Court, Fetal Harm, and the Case Against Abortion

A new ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court highlights the increasingly important strategic role played by fetal-harm cases in the battles to undo Roe v. Wade.

The April 18 ruling in Ex Parte Sarah Janie Hicks involves a woman who pleaded guilty under Alabama’s 8-year-old chemical endangerment law to exposing her unborn child to cocaine. By an 8-1 majority, the court upheld the conviction:

the plain meaning of the word “child,” as that word is used in the chemical-endangerment statute, includes an unborn child.

The decision wasn’t a surprise, given that the same court reached the same conclusion in a pair of almost identical cases last year. What makes Hicks notable are concurrences by two conservative justices, Roy Moore and Tom Parker, who used the opportunity to articulate vociferous arguments against Roe that abortion foes hope will be influential in courts and statehouses around the country.

In Moore’s case, those arguments are strikingly religious in tone. The chief justice, who was ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court in 2004 after refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, was re-elected to his former position in 2012.

Moore cites the Nuremberg trials after WWII and argues that abortion violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause:

Meanwhile, Parker — who had a long career as an attorney espousing conservative causes in the state before his election to the court in 2004 — uses his concurrence to explore contradictions in the reasoning behind Roe and other U.S. Supreme Court cases on abortion.

Conservative groups were quick to hail the ruling. These include Liberty Counsel, an Alabama-based legal organization active in the anti-abortion movement:

“In an age where some judges do not know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or do not even care, finally the Alabama Supreme Court springs forth with a ray of light.”

“I would expect [the concurrences] to be referenced by other judges in other states,” Jennifer Mason, communications director of the anti-abortion group Personhood USA, told ProPublica. “The ruling serves as "a shining example of what a pro-life judge would be expected to write,” she said.

That worries Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, whose organization has been battling a wave of prosecutions around the country against pregnant women who use drugs or engage in other actions seen by authorities as imperiling their unborn child. The group is part of a coalition pressuring Tennessee’s GOP governor to veto a new law that would allow pregnant women who use drugs to be charged with criminal assault.

“The repetition of these claims in as many contexts as possible helps build [the case against abortion],” Paltrow said. “If you get enough people saying these things, whether they’re true or not, other people believe them.”

For background on Alabama’s prosecutions of drug-using pregnant women, see this New York Times piece. For a broader look at fetal harm cases across the U.S., see this 2013 report by NAPW.

How a ban on sex discrimination in the workplace went from being a ploy to kill the Civil Rights Act to one of the law’s most significant achievements, from a nprfreshair interview with politico’s Todd Purdum, author of An Idea Whose Time Has Come:... — **How a ban on sex discrimination in the workplace went from being a ploy to kill the Civil Rights Act to one of the law’s most significant achievements**, from a nprfreshair interview with politico’s Todd Purdum, author of *An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964*:
FRESH AIR HOST TERRY GROSS: So one of the big changes to the Civil Rights Act that happened in the House was that women were added as a protected class in the bill. So you couldn’t discriminate against women in employment?
TODD PURDUM: Yes, that was the work of [Virginia Democrat Howard] Smith, [chairman] of the Rules Committee, who thought that by including sex as a protected category, it would be a poison pill, and he could doom the bill because his male chauvinist colleagues would not want to gum up a civil rights bill with protecting the fairer sex. And in fact the women in Congress immediately rose up, of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, and said for Pete’s sake, we need this. We don’t cause you any problem. You know, this would be a very important thing to do.
And so in fact it passed, as we know. It then became one of the most important parts of employment discrimination law in the 20th century, and it all happened because, in a sense, of the maliciousness of Chairman Smith, who wanted to block the bill.
Listen to the full interview here.
*(Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, via Wikipedia)*

After a Respect the Bump campaign that highlighted Tiffany Beroid’s plight, and weeks after three groups filed a class-action complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Walmart has revamped its pregnancy policy, saying it will now... — After a Respect the Bump campaign that highlighted Tiffany Beroid’s plight, and weeks after three groups filed a class-action complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, **Walmart has revamped its pregnancy policy, saying it will now provide “reasonable accommodations” for temporary disabilities caused by pregnancy.**
The groups — A Better Balance, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Mehri & Skalet law firm in Washington D.C. — had accused Walmart, the largest private employer in the world, of having “a nationwide policy and practice of pregnancy discrimination”:
Walmart’s Accommodation in Employment policy had explicitly stated that pregnancy was a condition eligible only for minor job adjustments and that pregnant workers were ineligible for the reassignments and transfers of nonessential job duties given to workers with disabilities.
As a result, pregnant workers were denied the types of reasonable accommodations that workers with disabilities received, even though they had the same medical need and the same ability to work. This difference in treatment violated the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). The [three groups’] investigation also revealed that Walmart had a policy of refusing to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy-related disabilities, which violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
washingtonpost
**Women’s rights groups say they hadn’t encountered any large employer with a pregnancy policy so unfriendly to women as Walmart’s.**
Approximately three-quarters of Walmart’s workforce is female.
In Tiffany Beroid’s case, the policy meant she was forced to take unpaid leave from her job as a customer service manager, the *Post* reported:
With no work, Beroid couldn’t afford tuition payments for her community college nursing program, which meant missing the final exam; she’ll have to take the class over. Her husband, a security guard, pulled 18-hour shifts to keep paying the rent.
A company spokesperson told the *Post* that Beroid and other activists didn’t force the change.
“Our previous policies met or exceeded state and federal law. Now with our new policy, we’re going above what the law requires. We believed it was the right decision for our associates, and we made it.”
Women’s groups, meanwhile, said the new policy is still inadequate.
Salon has a Q&A with Beroid here.
My ProPublica piece about the legal aftermath of another important Walmart class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit can be found here

ProPublica on Sex and Gender Follow

ProPublica's Nina Martin reports on American systems and institutions that fail or mistreat people on the basis of their gender or sexuality.

LEGAL DOCKET: Obama’s Stunning Record on Transgender Rights

LEGAL DOCKET: The Alabama Supreme Court, Fetal Harm, and the Case Against Abortion