Just one day after President Donald Trump banned transgender Americans from serving in the military, a Chinese court decided in favor of a transgender man who had been wrongfully terminated from his job for “looking like a lesbian” and wearing traditionally male clothing.

This is one of China’s most signifiant steps ever when it comes to protecting the legal rights of the LGBTQ community. The court awarded the plaintiff, “Mr. C,” the equivalent of $297. The decision states that workers cannot be discriminated against “based on their ethnicity, race, gender or religious beliefs,” according to the Washington Post.

“The defendant terminated the contract with the plaintiff without a legitimate reason” and “infringed on the plaintiff’s equal employment rights,” the ruling said.

The 29-year-old plaintiff, referred to as “Mr. C” to protect his identity and his family, worked at Ciming Checkup, a health services firm, and was fired last year for his appearance as a man despite legally being considered a female. Mr. C claims he was mocked by some co-workers, and was told that he could damage the company’s reputation before he was fired.

LGBTQ activists praised the court’s decision. For one, the case was China’s first on transgender identity, and it resulted in a victory for the transgender individual. The outcome paves the way for China to institute future anti-discrimination laws in the workplace since workers currently are at the mercy of their employers.

“Personally, I think that in terms of employment discrimination, this judicial precedent goes beyond [current] legislation,” Wang Yongmei, the winning lawyer, said.

The victory marks a seminal moment for those pursuing LGBTQ acceptance in a country that restricts free speech, LGBTQ rights, and human rights more broadly.

The Chinese court’s decision stands in stark contrast to the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent comments that workplace discrimination is perfectly legal. The DOJ released an amicus brief concerning a case between a company and a gay employee claiming that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act only covers sex discrimination, not discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Despite the court’s decision, the situation for the LGBTQ community in China is far from perfect. The gay and transgender communities in the country still feel silenced in public spaces. In the past year, Chinese police canceled an LGBTQ conference in the city of Xian, and a month after that internet regulators began to ban LGBTQ content online, according to the Washington Post.

Mr. C is proud that his lawsuit sets a precedent for future employees who may be wrongfully terminated, but also recognizes China–and the rest of the world–still has a long way to go.

“Although the case has ended, we still have a long way to go,” he said.

Josh Schmidt

Josh Schmidt is an editorial intern and is a native of the Washington D.C Metropolitan area. He is working towards a degree in multi-platform journalism with a minor in history at nearby University of Maryland. Contact Josh at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A federal appeals court in Chicago on Tuesday ruled that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the workplace is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The 8-3 decision is unprecedented, as all other federal appeals court rulings have sided with employers. The Supreme Court has never heard a case on the issue.

Chief Judge Diane Wood, writing for the majority opinion, said “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination,” and that “it would require considerable calisthenics to remove the ‘sex’ from ‘sexual orientation.'” Wood, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, added that her ruling was based on the “common-sense reality that it is actually impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without discriminating on the basis of sex.”

The case, Kimberly Hively vs. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, centers around a professor in South Bend, Indiana. Openly lesbian, Kimberley Hively had been working as a part-time professor at Ivy Tech’s South Bend campus from 2000 to 2014. Six times between 2009 to 2014, Hively applied to full-time positions at the college. She was denied an interview all six times and, in July 2014, the college did not renew her part-time contract.

Hively sued the college, but a federal district court ruled in favor of Ivy Tech. Tuesday’s decision vacates the lower court’s decision. Federal law, under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Discrimination based on sexual orientation, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday, is also protected by federal law.

Writing for the dissenting opinion, Judge Diane Sykes said the ruling was “momentous,” and amounted to “the circumvention of the legislative process by which the people govern themselves.” Sykes, who President Donald Trump reportedly considered nominating to the Supreme Court, continued: “We are not authorized to infuse the text with a new or unconventional meaning or to update it to respond to changed social, economic, or political conditions.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Before choosing a college or university, many LGBTQ students, staff, and faculty consider how many resources–or the lack thereof–a school has for them. This scrutiny is a necessary part of researching schools because there are many legal barriers to LGBTQ students’ safety on college and university campuses. So what are some of these legal hurdles that LGBTQ students face and try to change on campus?

Challenges Facing LGBTQ Students

LGBTQ students–particularly LGBTQ students of color–face tremendous (and often violent) barriers on college campuses. Lacking a federal legal incentive to protect LGBTQ students on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, college administrations often allow unsafe conditions for LGBTQ students who are constantly subjected to both everyday microaggressions and harassment on campus. LGBTQ students face threats and harassment from other students on campus at a disproportionate rate, including many gay students reporting the use of gay slurs against them while walking alone on campus. A full third of LGB students and staff on college campuses have considered leaving their institution due to campus environments that perpetuate homophobia. Because of these kinds of hostilities, more than half of all LGBT students and staff hide their identity to avoid discrimination and harassment. Even this measure does not even help, however: online forms of harassment, including public outing, contribute to gay students committing suicide, often embodied by the famous case of Tyler Clementi at Rutgers several years ago.

Obstacles for Transgender Students 

Transgender students face a series of unique challenges. Due to the immense legal obstacles (which vary state by state) to obtaining the legal name changes that allow transgender students’ identities to match the names on their ID cards, class rosters, certificates, and school email addresses, many colleges leave transgender students open to being outed on their first day of class as professors read out rosters with students’ incorrect name listed. Without implementing streamlined policies that allow students to enter their preferred name instead of their legal name on all public campus documents, colleges subject transgender students to the kind of unsafe conditions that lead to all sorts of discrimination and harassment.

For transgender and gender nonconforming students in particular, the administrative and legal obstacles to staying safe on campus–even in states that already prohibit discrimination based on gender expression and identity and sexual orientation–are immense, and include daily struggles from consistent misgendering to threats of violence when students simply need to use the restroom. As one transgender student, Zo Anthony Shay, a fourth-year student at UCLA, says, “Every time I took a piss [on campus], I need to look around so I don’t have my face smashed into a wall…We’re fighting for our lives.”

Some states like Kentucky and Texas, are considering criminalizing transgender people who use the restroom that matches their gender identity. This will pose a tremendous problem to campuses in those states, and increases the impetus for LGBT campus activists to ensure that their schools have gender-neutral restrooms to ensure that transgender and gender non-conforming students will not risk severe health issues and violence  for simply using the restroom. This has the potential to be a particular problem for transwomen at women’s colleges in states that do not protect people on the basis of gender identity and expression.

According to Genny Beemyn, the director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,

Trans students and allies have been working now for a number of years at many schools to create gender-inclusive bathrooms and gender-inclusive housing options, because those are pretty basic – to have a place to sleep and a place to pee…They’re looking now to address other important issues, and so gender in name documentation, hormones and surgeries are coming up more and more frequently for schools that have really begun to address transgender issues.

The hormones and surgery coverage that Beemyn refers to brings into question the kinds of health care plans that colleges provide to students and college employees. While only 63 colleges and universities across the country cover transgender-related health care for students, including therapy, hormones, and gender affirmation surgery, even fewer (39 schools) offer these necessary health resources to college employees. These resources are not only vital to the health of many transgender people, but things such as therapy and hormone treatment are generally mandated by state law in order for a transgender person to obtain legal documentation that reflects their proper name. By not granting insurance coverage to students and employees for these medical costs, most colleges and universities across the United States actively bar transgender students and employees from receiving necessary health care.

Lack of Legal Protections

According to a 2010 survey conducted by the Q Research Institute for Higher Education (an initiative of the advocacy group Campus Pride), LGBTQ students–especially all transgender and gender nonconforming students and particularly students of color–face discrimination and harassment on college campuses at more than double the rate experienced by straight, cisgender students. The Chronicle of Higher Education summarized the report as such:

About a quarter of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer students and employees said they had experienced harassment, as did more than a third of transgender and “gender nonconforming” respondents, compared with 12 percent of heterosexuals.

Seventy percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer students and employees felt comfortable with the overall campus climate, the report says, a rate that was higher than that among transgender and gender-nonconforming respondents but lower than that of heterosexuals. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer students who were also members of racial minority groups felt less comfortable in their classes than did their white counterparts, and faculty members were more likely than were students and staff members to have considered leaving their institutions, the report says.

Currently, federal non-discrimination statutes do not directly protect LGBTQ individuals on college campuses on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Senate recently voted down an amendment designed specifically to protect elementary and secondary school LGBT students from legal discrimination across the country. However, a recently introduced bill might offer a legal remedy to that lack of protection. According to Buzzfeed News, the bill, which Democratic supporters have dubbed the “Equality Act,” would expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections against discrimination for gender identity and sexual orientation. This would impact higher education by amending Title IV to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination at education institutions receiving federal funding.

Though this Equality Act has the potential to provide legal protections for people using public restrooms that match their gender identity–a huge and dangerous obstacle for students on college campuses–it is unlikely that the bill would be able to provide any immediate relief for students who experience violence and discrimination. For example, even though the NYC Commission on Human Rights has already stated that any user of New York City public restrooms cannot legally be stopped and/or asked to present ID for using the restroom that matches their gender identity, this discrimination is still common practice in New York City. However, in terms of legal precedent, this change could potentially go a long way toward securing broad LGBTQ legal rights on college campuses.

Conclusion

While many, if not most, college campuses do not have provisions to offer legal and day-to-day structural protections for LGBT students, most if not all colleges do have at least informal, active student groups of LGBT students that offer each other support throughout their college careers. The schools that are the most structurally supportive of LGBT students can be found through Campus Pride’s “Campus Pride Index,” and state-by-state regulations that affect school policies are listed at Lambda Legal’s guide here. While some of these schools do an excellent job of welcoming LGBTQ students, more work needs to be done across the board to ensure that everyone is able to have a safe college experience.

Resources

Campus Pride: Q Research Institute for Higher Education

Lambda Project: State Regulations

Buzzfeed: Democrats Plan to Introduce Sweeping LGBT Rights Bill in Congress this Week

Lambda Legal: In Your State

Inside HigherEd: Broadening the Transgender Agenda

Chronicle of Higher Education: Gay Students and College Employees Face Significant Harassment, Report Says

Education Week: Senate Votes Down ESEA Amendment Designed to Protect LGBT Students

The Washington Free Beacon: Feds: Transgender Bathroom Choice a Matter of ‘Health and Safety’

NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education: LGBTQ Issues on Campus: What’s Changing?

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Even though only 19 percent of Americans surveyed by the Public Religion Research Institute said they would oppose a lesbian or gay athlete signing onto a professional sports team, there are still many obstacles that exist to LGBTQ players being out in pro sports.

Women have been coming out publicly in professional sports for years, but men in the big leagues have faced a great deal of obstacles keeping their positions on teams.

As more and more professional athletes are coming out, what are the legal rights and difficulties of LGBTQ athletes in professional sports?

Out Athletes in Pro Sports

Not only have queer women been coming out publicly in professional sports for quite some time, several have been actively outspoken against homophobic laws. Speaking out against Minnesota’s 2012 attempt to ban gay marriage in the state, WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist Seimone Augustus told the Associated Press:

I felt like it was the perfect time for me, being on a platform where I can make a change with my voice and my situation… Maybe inspire someone else to come out and be comfortable with themselves. Or maybe someone else’s parents will see my parents saying that it’s OK to be with your child and love your child unconditionally regardless of your sexual preference.

This outspokenness accompanies the activism of fellow out WNBA star Brittney Griner against the constraints placed on her at Baptist school Baylor University.  Griner has commented candidly on the hypocrisy of homophobia in sports:

The more I think about it, the more I feel like the people who run the school want it both ways: they want to keep the policy, so they can keep selling themselves as a Christian university, but they are more than happy to benefit from the success of their gay athletes. That is, as long as those gay athletes don’t talk about being gay.

We’ve got a culture that is OK with casual homophobia and sexist language… What Jason Collins’ presence does–now people have to be held accountable. Because what people said before was, ‘Well, he said that, but he wasn’t talking to anyone, and no one’s gay here, so no one’s offended by it.’ Now that Collins is in existence, people realize there are more Jasons out there, more Michael Sams out there, that when you say something homophobic, you’re actually affecting someone who you truly believe exists now.

Rights and Responsibilities

Advocates of LGBT rights in professional sports have argued that it is the responsibility of professional sports leagues to proactively protect players–and coaches and staff–from discrimination.

In Sam’s case, however, Dr. John Fitzgerald Gates, National Diversity Expert, Principal, and Chief Strategist of Criticality Management Consulting and Former Associate Dean of Harvard College, wrote the following about NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:

(He) did nothing to assure that Sam would be treated with the respect and fairness accorded other players, or to protect him against being fired because he is gay. According to Goodell, in the NFL: ‘We do things the right way. We will give them that education and training. I hope that will solve the problem.’ But Goodell’s deduction is flawed, for if education and training solved discrimination we surely would have educated and trained our way beyond it by now. As with racial and gender bias, laws must be constructed and enforced to ensure equal protection to LGBT professional athletes. Goodell welcomed Sam onto the field of play without providing him the protection from discrimination that other players have, thereby leaving him uniquely and unfairly vulnerable. Goodell codified the NFL’s right to discriminate when he should have had the courage, like President Obama, to ban it.

It is worth noting that the NFL does, in fact, have provisions in place to protect players from discrimination and harassment based on their sexual orientation. Indeed, when the MLB spoke out against homophobia in the major leagues, it was following the precedent of the NFL, stating that:

Public Religion Research Institute: Ahead of Super Bowl, Nearly Three-in-Ten Americans Support Lifetime Ban for Football Players Who Commit Domestic Violence

OutSports: Trans Athletes

Sports Illustrated: Why NBA Center Jason Collins is Coming Out Now

Huffington Post: The Moment is NOW for Professional Sports to Ban LGBT Discrimination

Huffington Post: Michael Sam: The Practical and Legal Implications of a Gay Professional Athlete

CBS News: NFL Agrees to Do More to Protect Gay Players

Daily Mail: Basketball Star Brittney Griner Opens up About Being a Lesbian at Baylor University and How She was Told to Keep ‘Her Business’ to Herself

Jurist: How Four Major Sports Leagues Influence LGBT Rights

Think Progress: The Benchwarming Journeymen Who Changed American Sports Forever

Think Progress: Dallas Cowboys Cut Michael Sam from Practice Squad

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Just a cursory glance at recent social movement-esque trends on Twitter reveals a disturbing tendency of national conversations.

I am currently arching one eyebrow–judging hard–at the fondness we seem to have for localizing national problems in Midwestern states. Observe: homophobia, we locate in Indiana with #BoycottIndiana, almost as though it is the only place with queerphobic laws. Racism and police violence, we locate in Ferguson, as though this city in Missouri itself embodies racism across the country. Even Colorlines.com, an excellent source for intersectional news about structural racism in the U.S., has a separate tab for “Ferguson” on its site. Many tweets hashtag the names of several Black men who were brutalized by cops (or cop stand-ins, in the case of Trayvon Martin), but the only location identified is #Ferguson. No #StatenIsland or #NewYorkCity (where Eric Garner was strangled to death) or #LosAngeles (where Rodney King was savagely beaten by cops in 1991).

Focusing on individuals rather than identifying larger trends (like city-wide implementation of racist stop-and-frisk policies, or nationwide and international waging of a racist “war on drugs”), this place-based use of hashtags allows us to displace racist violence into conveniently “conservative,” Midwestern states like Missouri and Indiana.

This is similar to the trend in films such as “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Brokeback Mountain,” which portray violent homophobia and transphobia as individual acts of hatred rather than structural realities. They also position these acts as being located primarily in rural locations like Falls City, Nebraska and the mountains of Wyoming.

While I was born and raised a city girl, I know (because I have friends, I’ve dated different folks, and I read things like this and this) that vibrant queer cultures exist in rural spaces, and, though I navigate the streets of New York City with the privileges of being white, I know that racist, queerphobic violence is inflicted vis a vis laws and police batons in city centers every day.

As writer Lauren Anderson notes,

[R]ural gay youth teach [urbanites]:
1. Identities are a process of collective action, not a condition waiting for discovery
2. Multiple visibility strategies in play
3. We need to stop moralizing about who does queerness right.

When we erase these kinds of perspectives by asserting that coastal urbanity is the only site of vibrant queer cultures, all it does is romanticize queerness in cities and propagates violence to fellow queers who are from rural areas and/or from Midwestern and southern cities.

And speaking of violence…

Using Ferguson to represent racism and Indiana to represent homophobia risk erasing the massive violences inflicted on queer people of color (as well as white queers and non-queer people of color) that occur in everyday life in cities. Frighteningly, it may well be precisely this erasure that makes #BoycottIndiana and #Ferguson so popular: if we blame individual conservatism and “backward” rural cultures, then we do not have to do the hard labor of dismantling the structural white supremacy and anti-queerness upon which this country–including its cities–operates.

(Looking for more than what I can explain with my limited perspective? Try renting Scott Herring’s Another Country: Queer’s Anti-Urbanism from the library, or read the introduction online here.)

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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One of the world’s largest gaming conventions, Gen Con, is taking a stand against anti-gay legislation by threatening to take the expo elsewhere if Indiana’s governor signs a controversial religious freedom bill into law. Gen Con CEO and owner Adrian Swartout recently sent an open letter to Indiana Governor Mike Pence asking him to reconsider his support for Senate Bill 101.

The bill, which passed in the House of Representatives Monday with a 63-31 vote and the Senate on Tuesday with a 40-10 vote, will prohibit state and local governments from “substantially burdening someone’s religious beliefs.” In the letter Swartout writes:

Gen Con proudly welcomes a diverse attendee base, made up of different ethnicities, cultures, beliefs, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, and socio-economic backgrounds…

Legislation that could allow for refusal of service or discrimination against our attendees will have a direct negative impact on the state’s economy, and will factor into our decision-making on hosting the convention in the state of Indiana in future years.

Supporters of the bill claim it is a safeguard against unnecessary government intrusion on individuals’ religious beliefs, while critics see the bill as sanctioning discrimination against LBGT people. That concern stems from the bill’s ability to protect business owners who don’t want to service same sex couples. House minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, who voted no to the bill, shared his opinion with the Indianapolis Star:

It basically says to a group of people you’re second rate, you don’t matter, and if you walk into my store, I don’t have to serve you.

Gen Con, which boasts of being the “original, longest-running and best-attended gaming convention” in the world, provides a substantial economic benefit to the city of Indianapolis, bringing more than $50 million dollars worth of revenue to the city each year. Despite being under contract to host the event in Indianapolis through 2020, the organization hopes to sway the governor by leveraging its economic importance and future business.

As of now Gen Con’s disapproval appears to not have weakened Governor Pence’s resolve to sign the bill. His spokeswoman Kara Brooks responded to the letter telling the Indianapolis Star that “the governor has been clear on where he stands on this issue and we don’t have anything to add at this time.”

If Governor Pence follows through with the bill amidst public outrage and big business disapproval, he will be making a statement that both the city’s economy and the rights of his LGBT constituents bear no importance when it comes protecting so-called “religious freedom.”

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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