Transgender and the Transformation of Civil Rights

Although it seems as though the transgender tsunami has been howling forever, in fact it hit the shore of national fixation only four months ago, in March, when the North Carolina legislature passed, and Gov. Pat McCrory signed, House Bill 2, which restricted access to the state’s public sex-segregated restrooms by, well, sex, as defined by one’s birth certificate or evidence of sex reassignment surgery. (For those interested in bringing their vocabulary up to required code, SLATE helpfully points out that “[t]he increasingly preferred term is gender confirmation surgery.”)

A firestorm of controversy soon followed, and has shown no signs of abating. Four days after H.B.2 became law Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and Equality North Carolina filed a lawsuit against Governor McCrory, Attorney General Roy Cooper, and the University of North Carolina on behalf of a UNC-Chapel Hill staff member, a UNC-Greesboro student, and a North Carolina Central University law professor.

Shortly thereafter, the Dept. of Justice sent letters to Gov. McCrory and the University of North Carolina claiming that H.B.2 violated Title VII and Title IX of federal civil rights laws. A few days later, on May 13, the Departments of Justice and Education announced a “significant guidance” in the form of a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to all school districts in the country that dropped an administrative nuclear bomb — declaring, among other things, that “The Departments treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of Title IX and its implementing regulations. This means that a school must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity.”

Making that argument crystal clear, in announcing the federal lawsuit against North Carolina, Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, declared: “Here are the facts.  Transgender men are men — they live, work and study as men.  Transgender women are women — they live, work and study as women.” Thus the federal government has declared it “facts” that transgender men and women do not simply live and work as, and identify with, the opposite sex; they “are” the opposite sex.

No longer limited to bathrooms, the new edict also covers athletic activities, locker rooms, dormitories from K-12 through universities. Next came the dueling lawsuits, with the United States (here) and North Carolina (here) filing complaints against each other. In addition to North Carolina, eleven states have filed a lawsuit claiming that the Obama administration’s position “has no basis in law.” Finally (at the moment), the Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a complaint defending H.B. 2 on behalf of North Carolinians for Privacy, an organization that includes both university and K-12 students.

Legal Issues

The Departments of Justice and Education of course must ensure that the nation’s schools and colleges comply with applicable anti-discrimination laws, but Yale law professor emeritus Peter Schuck calls their interpretation “novel” in a New York Times OpEd. Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk agrees, noting in a recent New Yorker article, the Obama administration’s interpretation of those laws is “new and surprising.”

Those of us who are not Ivy League law professors need not be so circumspect. The transgender ukases from Obama apparatchiks are breathtaking in their reach and scope — both in their attempt to promote a radical transformation of our society’s understanding of sex itself, and hence of our understanding of the nature of sex discrimination, as well as in their ignoring or rewriting inconvenient statutory law that is extreme even by the standards of this administration, which has time and again run roughshod over traditional separation of powers barriers.

As Gail Heriot, University of San Diego law professor and member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, demonstrated in her May 16 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, “It would be an understatement to say that the Transgender Guidance goes beyond what Title IX, which was passed in 1972, actually requires. If someone had said in 1972 that one day Title IX would be interpreted to force schools to allow anatomically intact boys who psychologically ‘identify’ as girls to use the girls’ locker room, he would have been greeted with hoots of laughter. OCR [the Dept. of Education’s Office of Civil Rights] is simply engaged in legislating.”

Heriot’s testimony was so coolly professional and compelling that it caused Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D, Ca) to throw what people of a certain age will recognize as a hissy fit, interrupting Heriot’s testimony and sputtering “I think you’re a bigot, lady, I think you’re an ignorant bigot.”

The problem, from the Obama administration’s point of view, is that Title IX prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” but it also explicitly states that “recipients [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.” Nowhere in Title IX or its implementing regulations are transgender, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity mentioned. In fact, the problem for Obama’s social transformers is even more daunting, for not only are those terms not included in the civil rights statutes but they have been proposed year after year and Congress has specifically refused to include them.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was first introduced in 1994. Significantly, for well over a decade the versions that were introduced in each Congress, controlled at various times by both parties, added only sexual orientation to the list of categories protected from employment discrimination. Gender expression and even gender identity were purposefully excluded. Even so, it never passed.

After an increasing outcry from the transgender lobby those terms were finally added, but with a notable qualification. “Nothing in this Act,” declared Section 8(a)(3) of the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2011, “shall be construed to establish an unlawful employment practice based on actual or perceived gender identity due to the denial of access to shared shower or dressing facilities in which being seen unclothed is unavoidable.” Section 8(a)(4) added that “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to require the construction of new or additional facilities.” The LGBT community,” a progressive publication mourned, “has ceded the ground on social conservatives’ and the religious right’s arguments of ‘men in dresses’ using women’s public restrooms.”

But not for long: By 2013 that qualification had been removed, but to no effect since ENDA has still never become law, leaving even sexual orientation unprotected by federal employment statute. And the blame (or credit) does not belong exclusively to social conservatives and the religious right, since protections for gender identity and expression are also resisted by Democrats. In 2014, The Advocate observed, even New York could not pass legislation protecting gender identity. In 2002 it passed a statewide bill protecting only sexual orientation, and “every year since 2003” legislation to protect gender identity and expression has failed.

So, since Title IX prohibits discrimination based only on sex, and Congress has repeatedly and pointedly refused to add even sexual orientation, much less gender identity and gender expression, to the categories protected from employment discrimination, how does the Department of Education justify its authority to require all schools and colleges to treat gender identity as sex? The short answer: poorly; the longer answer: the “pen and phone” overreach of ignoring law or making it up that we’ve come to expect from the Obama administration.

The new gender identity “guidance” the administration is attempting to impose on K-12 and higher education is based on the conclusion — arrived at, as Professors Suk and Schuck (both linked above) and the 11 state lawsuit have pointed out, without benefit of hearings or comment from the public as required by the Administrative Procedure Act— is that sex means gender and gender means gender identity.

Insofar as this extravagant and even revolutionary policy has any legal justification at all, it relies on an embellishment and extension of the analysis in a 1989 Supreme Court case, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. Ann Hopkins was denied a partnership because some partners found her personality and style aggressive and un-feminine. In order to improve her chances for partnership, she was told, she should “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.” Noting that “Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes,” the Court held “we are beyond the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group.”

It is one thing to say that sex stereotyping can lead to sex discrimination when women are penalized for behavior that is rewarded in men. But it is quite a reach to claim that gender, divorced altogether from biology, is sex, that gender is determined entirely by subjective feelings, and hence that anatomical men who “identify” as women must be allowed to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms and play on women’s athletic teams. No chasm, however, is too wide for progressive regulators to leap in their relentless pursuit of social transformation.

Even Obama may be ambivalent about the bathroom policy his minions are seeking to impose. On a PBS Town Hall a few weeks ago he sounded a bit dodgy, explaining that “Somehow people think I made it an issue. I didn’t make it an issue. “I just want to emphasize to you,” he added, “it is not like I woke up one day and said, ‘Man, what we really need to do is start working on high school bathrooms.’”

He did not have to say it, because he had staffed his administration with individuals whom he knew were determined to transform society’s sexual attitudes and practices. Take former Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum (please!), whom Obama appointed to the EEOC in 2009 and who has described herself as “part of an inner group of public-intellectual movement leaders committed to advancing LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual] equality in this country.” As I noted here shortly after her appointment, Feldblum had acknowledged that she wants “to revolutionize societal norms” regarding sex and gender. In order to gain approval, however, she did distance herself from some of her earlier positions, such as calling for the legal recognition of “committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner” and “queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households.”

With Feldblum on board, the Obama-staffed EEOC quickly set off down the path that would lead to sex being determined by subjective gender identity. In a 2010 case it acknowledged that although “Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination does not include sexual preference or orientation as a basis,” but, citing Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse, it nevertheless held that “Title VII does, however, prohibit sex stereotyping discrimination.” The complainant, a male (perhaps I should say a non-transgender male, since he was a male who “identified” as a male) “essentially argued,” according to the EEOC’s ruling, that a harassing co-worker “was motivated by the sexual stereotype that marrying a woman is an essential part of being a man, and became enraged when complainant did not adhere to this stereotype by announcing his marriage to a man in the society pages of the local newspaper.”

Similarly, in a 2011 case, the EEOC held that an ironworker could collect damages for harassment because his “supervisor harassed him because he thought he was feminine and did not conform to the supervisor’s gender stereotypes of a typical ‘rough ironworker.’”

In a 2012 case, also citing Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse, the EEOC extended its sex stereotyping rulings to transgender, finding “that the Complainant’s complaint of discrimination based on gender identity, change of sex, and/or transgender status is cognizable under Title VII.”

The problem the Obamanauts faced here is that, simply as a matter of fact, one’s “sexual orientation” is not the same as one’s “sex,” and the law the EEOC was obligated to enforced did not prohibit — and Congress has repeatedly refused to amend it to prohibit — discrimination based on sexual orientation. Faced with an inability to rely on either the facts or the law, the EEOC simply declared that discrimination based on sexual stereotypes was really discrimination based on sex, and hence illegal, an assertion Roger Clegg convincingly demolished several years ago in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “I would be curious to know,” Clegg asked, “if the administration officials could describe the situations in which they would not view discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as also discrimination on the basis of sexual stereotypes that is, they think, therefore illegal.”

The concept of sexual stereotypes, in short, simply cannot serve to bring transgender issues under the protection of the prohibition of discrimination based on sex. To see why, consider if Ann Hopkins, the Price Waterhouse plaintiff, had instead been Al Hopkins, a transgender male turned down for promotion because of inappropriately dressing and acting like a man. The Obama administration argument is that this rejection of the hypothetical Mr. Hopkins is a form of sex discrimination, but exactly what or where are the “sex” and the “sexual stereotype”?

How could Hypothetical Hopkins have been discriminated against as a man acting like a man? Presumably the claim would be that he was not treated the same as other similarly situated men because he was still regarded, falsely, as a woman and thus violating the “stereotype” that women cannot be men. But that view is a “stereotype” only insofar as it is true that “gender identity” itself, absent surgical or pharmacological intervention, can displace “sex.” By what authority are the Obamanauts in the Departments of Justice, Education, and Labor authorized to make that determination?

The only alternative would be to claim that the hypothetical Mr. Hopkins was in fact still a woman, and thus, like the actual Ann Hopkins, a victim of discrimination for not acting the way women are supposed to act. But that argument became unavailable once the government issued its fiat that for the purpose of anti-discrimination law one’s “gender identity” is one’s “sex.”

The EEOC’s solution to confronting this conceptual muddle and obstinate law was classic, typical Obama: “construe” the law so that it conformed to their own agenda, and then proceed to claim, quoting their prior transgressions, that their preferred policies are settled law.

Thus we have a letter in the New York Times a few weeks ago by — who else? — EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum responding to Peter Schuck’s criticism of “the administration’s novel reading of the law” in its bathroom guidance. Her argument? Nothing novel here: “for the last four years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has processed hundreds of complaints from transgender employees and applicants based on the commission’s legal ruling in 2012 that sex discrimination law prohibits discrimination against transgender people.” This amounts to adverse possession (if you trespass long enough, it’s not trespass) coming to civil rights law: if a regulatory agency unilaterally asserts some radical new reading of the law long enough, it becomes law.

Equally revealing, and even more extreme, is OCR Director Catherine Lhamon’s explanation of why the new transgender bathroom edict required no prior notice and public comment. It is not new law but merely states her agency’s interpretation of existing law. As The College Fix pointed out, “Lhamon’s explanation seems to be that Title IX’s original formulation in 1975 went through notice-and-comment, so any further OCR interpretation” — no matter how “novel” (Schuck), “new and surprising” (Suk), or just plain far-fetched — “needs no follow up opportunity for colleges and the public to weigh in” … and, courts must defer to the agency’s interpretation.

But if the administration’s view that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and even gender identity had been prohibited since the initial passage of Title IX, or at least ever since Hopkins included sexual stereotypes, then there was never any need for ENDA, and the years struggling to enact it were a waste of time.

Obama’s Justice Dept., EEOC, and Dept. of Education (via its Office of Civil Rights), has in fact been issuing actual or de-facto rulings that are not authorized by the law they are supposed to enforce. So far Congress has done nothing to stop them, but the trouble with revolutionaries is that their reach often exceeds their grasp, causing the pendulum of popular and even legal opinion to swing back directly at them. In her Congressional testimony, quoted above, Gail Heriot demonstrates that there are some limits, known generally as the non-delegation doctrine, whose revival she urges. Her fundamental complaint is that the recent bathroom edict is simply the latest example of a disturbing trend: “OCR routinely issues guidance that that are untethered to any plausible violation of Title VI or Title IX or to any rule lawfully promulgated pursuant to those statutes,” a charge that she supports with chapter and verse examples and with recommendations about what can be done to reign in the out of control agencies.

A Grimm Fairy Tale?

And it’s not just Congress that may be forced by the administration’s bathroom bullying to reconsider the extreme deference provided to regulatory agencies’ interpretations of their own powers. Writing on the National Constitution Center’s Constitutional Daily blog, respected Supreme Court analyst Lyle Deniston argues that a transgender case the Gloucester County, Virginia, school board is appealing to the Supreme Court could provide a strong challenge to the deference (known as Auer deference) courts have traditionally given to regulatory agencies.

A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled 2-1 that a transgender student, Gavin Grimm, who was born a female but identifies as a male, can sue his school board to gain access to the boys’ bathroom. In its statement of intent to file a Supreme Court appeal the school board charges that DOE and DOJ have sought to do “what Congress has not done — replace the term ‘sex’ with ‘gender identity’ in order to support an outcome unilaterally desired by the Executive Branch. This raises substantial questions concerning both federalism and the separation of powers” as well as “the individual’s right to bodily privacy.”

If the Dept. of Education had paused to listen to public comment, it would no doubt have been asked to explain how its new theory of what Title IX requires can co-exist with Title IX’s clear and undisputed text allowing schools and colleges to maintain “separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.” The “Dear Colleague” letter from the Departments of Justice and Education to the nation’s schools and colleges states that “A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity.”

Here is the square peg / round hole problem entailed by treating gender as sex: Can that school prohibit a transgender student from using facilities that correspond to his or her sex at birth? Does OCR, in short, believe that Grimm, whose biological sex was and still is female, can legally be excluded from the girls’ bathrooms?

If so, that means that “gender identity” always trumps biological sex, with the result that in its zeal to create new transgender rights OCR has in effect obliterated sex as a meaningful category, making the recognition of sex-segregated facilities of any kind non-sensical. If not, that would mean that transgender students are afforded special rights: they could choose which bathroom to attend, while non-transgender students would be limited to the one that corresponds to their sex.

There is another, even more troubling aspect to what the Grimm story reveals about intrusive government overreach. It is the government’s position that even very young students are entitled to determine their own “gender identity,” sometimes even without the involvement of their parents. Thus Examples of Policies and Emerging Practices for Supporting Transgender Students the Dept. of Education recently distributed endorsed the policy of the District of Columbia Public Schools “noting that ‘students may choose to have their parents participate in the transition process, but parental participation is not required.’” That document also endorses a similar policy in Massachusetts that notes “Some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not openly so at home for reasons such as safety concerns or lack of acceptance. School personnel should speak with the student first before discussing a student’s gender nonconformity or transgender status with the student’s parent or guardian.”

As noted in the Fourth Circuit opinion, Gavin Grimm is now a sixteen-year old high school junior. Mrs. Grimm first presented the school board with their demands in August 2014, when Gavin was 15. Thus the Obama administration is arguing that even young — sometimes very young — students can determine their own “gender identity,” and hence “sex” for Title IX purposes, even though they have not even reached — some by many years — the age of consent to have sex anywhere in the United States. (The age of consent ranges from 16 to 18 across the country; in Virginia it is 18.)

(Tomorrow: transgenderism’s impact on school sports, dorms and feminism.)