Twenty-six states filed litigation in courts nationwide to prevent the enactment of President Biden’s April 2024 revisions to the Title IX statute aimed at increasing protections for LGBTQIA+ athletes, pregnant and parenting...more
Late last week the Connecticut State Department of Education (“CSDE” or “Department”) issued new guidance addressing the rights of transgender students in Connecticut schools. Entitled Guidance on Civil Rights Protections...more
A Florida public school’s transgender bathroom ban was recently upheld by a federal appeals court, leading to a circuit split that may need to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. Specifically, in a 7-4 ruling, the 11th...more
Adams v. School Board of St. John’s County, 3:17-cv-00739, 2022 WL 18003879 (11th Cir. 2022) Adams, a transgender boy, sued the board of his Florida school district (“the School Board”) after his high school prohibited...more
Eleventh Circuit Says School’s Policy of Assigning Bathrooms Based on Biological Sex Does Not Violate U.S. Constitution - The issue on appeal for the Eleventh Circuit to decide was whether separating the use of male and...more
On June 22, 2021, the United States Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) and the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division (“DOJ) issued a joint Fact Sheet addressed to elementary and secondary...more
School’s Policy Prohibiting the Presence of a Transgender Student in the Restroom That Matches Their Gender Identity May Be Unlawful Discrimination....more
We have been speculating for quite some time now about what the U.S. Supreme Court will do with Title IX after its decision last term in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. The landmark Bostock decision held that Title VII of...more
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a decision allowing transgender high school students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identities. The High Court’s rebuff means the lower...more
In a major win for transgender rights, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor a transgender teenager who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at his former school, finding that the school district violated his...more
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 8 in three closely watched cases addressing whether Title VII, which prohibits employment discrimination “because of … sex,” covers discrimination based on LGBT...more
In a recent decision, the Illinois Human Rights Commission (IHRC) ruled that Illinois schools cannot limit transgender students’ unfettered access to the locker rooms that correspond to their gender identities. The decision...more
Across the country each June, communities come together to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month. This month of events honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan while also...more
New Mexico’s state legislature has been busy over the past few weeks acting on bills introduced earlier this year. The state has enacted at least nine new laws affecting employers, covering many topics from health care access...more
A federal court in Jacksonville, Florida recently ruled in favor a transgender teenager who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at his high school. The July 2018 decision marked the first time that a Florida court has ruled on...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently revealed the agency's proposal to narrow the legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination based on sex in...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has issued its much anticipated precedential opinion upholding denial of a preliminary injunction against a Pennsylvania school district's policy allowing transgender high...more
The protracted case of Gavin Grimm is set to be heard once again by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. ...more
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a jail cell in Birmingham in 1963, "[t]here are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws....How does one determine when a law is just or unjust?...Any law that...more
On May 30, 2017, on the heels of the Seventh Circuit’s ground-breaking en banc decision in Hively v. Ivy Tech. College holding that sexual orientation is a protected trait under Title VII, a unanimous three-judge panel of...more
In an opinion issued last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decided in favor of a transgender student who challenged his high school’s decision to limit his access to boys’ communal bathrooms. ...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Seventh Circuit affirmed that a transgender student demonstrated a likelihood of success on claims that his school district’s decision to prohibit him from using the boys’ restroom violated both Title...more
For years, California law has required school districts to allow a student to use restroom facilities consistent with his or her gender identity no matter what gender is listed on the pupil’s records. However, a case decided...more
On May 30, 2017, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a transgender student has the right to use the bathroom that aligns with his gender identity in Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of...more
As these authors have previously reported, several cases analyzing whether sexual orientation is protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been winding their way through the courts. ...more