{"id":1121,"date":"2011-12-22T10:25:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","slug":"11th-circuit-decision-is-a-landmark-for-lgbt-workplace-rights-and-shows-that-equal-protection-sex-discrimination-doctrine-is-still-alive-and-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/12\/22\/11th-circuit-decision-is-a-landmark-for-lgbt-workplace-rights-and-shows-that-equal-protection-sex-discrimination-doctrine-is-still-alive-and-well\/","title":{"rendered":"11th Circuit Decision is a Landmark for LGBT Workplace Rights \u2014 And Shows That Equal Protection Sex Discrimination Doctrine is Still Alive and Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne King<\/em><\/p>\n

As Peter Dunne pointed out in his\u00a0post last week<\/a>, December 2011 has seen several significant milestones for LGBT rights, both in the US and internationally.<\/p>\n

Count among those events the December 6 opinion by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in\u00a0Glenn v. Brumby<\/em><\/a>, which held that discriminating against someone on the basis of his or her gender non-conformity is sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Vandiver Glenn was a state government employee fired after informing her supervisor she was transitioning from male to female.\u00a0 (She had been diagnosed with gender identity disorder and had started the process of transitioning several years previously.)\u00a0 The reason given for termination was that Glenn\u2019s gender transition was \u201cinappropriate,\u201d \u201ca moral issue,\u201d and \u201cwould make coworkers uncomfortable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The court relied heavily on\u00a0Price Waterhouse v. Cooper<\/em>, which involved sex discrimination against a female employee because she was perceived as masculine; that is, she didn\u2019t conform to sex stereotypes.\u00a0 Treating a transgender individual differently because he or she doesn\u2019t conform to his or her biological sex is, similarly, discrimination based on sex, the Eleventh Circuit reasoned.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t the first court to decide that gender-non-conformity discrimination is sex discrimination.\u00a0 But only one other federal court of appeal previously held that gender non-conformity discrimination violates equal protection \u2013 the Sixth Circuit in 2004.<\/p>\n

Glenn<\/em>\u00a0is therefore a real victory for LGBT rights in the workplace, and although it\u2019s an Equal Protection Clause case, the court signals that the general principle applies to Title VII as well.<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0Glenn<\/em>\u00a0is notable not only as a landmark for LGBT rights, but also as a relatively rare example of a federal appellate court applying equal protection sex discrimination analysis.\u00a0 These days, the Courts of Appeals don\u2019t have much occasion to consider sex discrimination Equal Protection Clause claims \u2013 the era cementing heightened scrutiny for sex discrimination dates from the 1970s through the 1990s.\u00a0 The Supreme Court has only addressed the issue twice in the past 10 years or so, in\u00a0Nguyen v. INS<\/em>\u00a0(2001) and\u00a0Flores-Villar v. United States<\/em>\u00a0(2011) (in which the Court didn\u2019t even issue an opinion).<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Glenn v. Brumby<\/em>\u00a0affirms that sex discrimination equal protection jurisprudence is still relevant \u2013 and still evolving \u2013 and that the Equal Protection Clause is an important protection for LGBT rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne King As Peter Dunne pointed out in his\u00a0post last week, December 2011 has seen several significant milestones for LGBT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-i5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}