{"id":396,"date":"2016-05-04T15:11:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T19:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bowditch.com\/diversityinclusionma\/?p=396"},"modified":"2023-04-12T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T15:22:13","slug":"federal-courts-find-transgender-rights-rooted-in-existing-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bowditch.com\/diversityinclusionma\/2016\/05\/04\/federal-courts-find-transgender-rights-rooted-in-existing-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Courts Find Transgender Rights Rooted in Existing Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March, a U.S. District Court Judge denied summary judgment<\/a> in the case of Fabian v. Hospital of Central Connecticut<\/span>, finding that employment discrimination on the basis of transgender identity is discrimination \u201cbecause of sex\u201d and constitutes a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Shortly thereafter, in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board<\/span>, the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm<\/a>, a transgender high school student, holding that Title IX protects the rights of transgender students to use sex segregated facilities that are consistent with their gender identity.<\/p>\n

Under Title VII, it is unlawful for an employer to refuse to hire anyone because of their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Under Title IX, \u201c[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.\u201d Each of these cases hinged on the statutory interpretation of \u201csex.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Fabian<\/span>, the judge undertook an elaborate discussion of the case law split and noted that \u201calthough most of the earliest cases held that Title VII does not protect gender identity, the weight of authority has begun to shift the other way\u2026\u201d Some interpretations suggest that \u201csex\u201d means nothing more than \u201cdiscrimination against women because they are women and against men because they are men.\u201d The alternate interpretation, and the one that ultimately prevailed in Fabian<\/span>, includes factors sufficiently \u201crelated to sex or that have something to do with sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

In G.G.<\/span>, the crux of the issue involved 34 C.F. R. \u00a7 106.33, which permits schools to provide \u201cseparate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.\u201d 34 C.F.R. \u00a7 106.33. The Court declined to restrict the word \u201csex\u201d to \u201ca hard-and-fast binary division on the basis of reproductive organs,\u201d and noted that the regulation is silent as to how the regulation should be applied to transgender students and \u201csheds little light on how exactly to determine the \u2018character of being either male or female\u2019 where those indicators diverge.\u201d Because the Court found that the regulation was ambiguous, the Department of Education was entitled to deference on its novel interpretation of its own regulation.<\/p>\n

Neither court adhered to a rigid interpretation of \u201csex\u201d as simply biologically male or female.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Bowditch & Dewey’s Campus Counsel Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March, a U.S. District Court Judge denied summary judgment in the case of Fabian v. Hospital of Central Connecticut, finding that employment discrimination on the basis of transgender identity is discrimination “because of sex” and constitutes a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. 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