Similar Journals
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William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law
Number of Followers: 2  Open Access journalISSN (Print) 1081-549X - ISSN (Online) 1942-6763 Published by College of William and Mary  [5 journals]
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- Shaky Science: Shaken Baby Syndrome and Its Disproportionate Impact on
False Convictions of Women of Color
Authors: Shae A. Woodburn
Abstract: Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a controversial diagnosis and an even more controversial basis for conviction. The syndrome is questioned by scientists and doctors who have yet to come to a consensus on its diagnosis. Courts have permitted SBS evidence to be admitted in criminal trials, and many people have been convicted solely on the basis of this controversial diagnosis. This Note seeks to analyze the history of SBS, the conflicts in the medical and scientific community, standards of evidence that permit its admission in court, and how all of these factors converge in a way that disproportionately impacts women of color, especially Black women.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:27 PDT
- Checking Out Indefinitely: Supporting Survivors of Sex Trafficking
Alongside Training and Education for Lodging Employees
Authors: Alyssa M. Grzesiak
Abstract: There are roughly five million victims of sex trafficking in the United States. Over the course of a decade, over 3,500 instances of human trafficking involved a hotel or motel. Traffickers are relying on unaware lodging establishment employees, as well as complicit employees and managers, to successfully carry out their crimes. Despite the vital role the lodging industry plays in human trafficking, only seven states have implemented mandatory training for hotel and motel employees. This Note posits that the implementation of mandatory training and education programs for employees of lodging establishments could increase awareness and responsiveness to human trafficking, thus increasing reporting of and ultimately resulting in a decrease in future instances and victims of human trafficking. This Note further argues that beyond this recently implemented legislation, Virginia needs to allocate resources to support survivors to combat falling into patterns of homelessness, continued prostitution, and substance addiction and dependence.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:23 PDT
- Defending the Less Dead: Using the Decriminalization of Sex Work to Combat
the High Incidence of Serial Homicide of Street-Based Sex Workers
Authors: Lauren E. Fernandez
Abstract: Sex workers have historically represented a disproportionate percentage of all victims of serial murder. Several serial murderers in the past thirty years have evaded detection for years, taking the lives of dozens of victims, by targeting sex workers, playing off the biases of society and law enforcement, and counting on the halfhearted investigation techniques that often followed missing person reports for less valued members of society, or the “less dead.” This Note argues that the decriminalization of all aspects of sex work is the surest way to improve the safety of street-based sex workers and reduce high victimization of this marginalized group in crimes of serial homicide. Based on the success of the decriminalization model in New Zealand, legalizing sex work reduces the power imbalance between law enforcement and sex workers and improves channels for sharing information, allowing the police to better investigate and protect sex workers from the risk of serial homicide, and allowing sex workers to better protect themselves.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:19 PDT
- What's Wrong with the NCAA's New Transgender Athlete Policy'
Authors: Erin Buzuvis
Abstract: In 2022, the NCAA changed its long-standing policy permitting transgender athletes to participate in teams that correspond to their affirmed gender. For twelve years, the NCAA permitted transgender women to participate in women’s sports events under NCAA control, so long as they first underwent a year of androgen suppression. Starting in 2020, however, a political movement to ban transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sport, galvanized by backlash against a single collegiate swimmer, has challenged NCAA’s inclusive approach. Rather than demonstrate leadership and support for rights of transgender women to compete, the NCAA revised its policy to one that effectively passes responsibility to individual sports’ governing bodies, deferring to the eligibility criteria established by sport organizations for transgender women to compete in their respective sports.After providing historical background on the NCAA’s approach to trans inclusion, and a detailed description of the policy it announced in January 2022, this Article critiques the NCAA’s new policy on several grounds. First, the policy lacks clarity about the degree to which the NCAA’s deference extends. At full implementation (beginning August 2023), the policy’s wording raises questions about whether the NCAA would defer to policies that use criteria other than a testosterone limit, and that would operate, not just to postpone an athlete’s participation, but exclude them altogether; and other ambiguities and uncertainties arise by virtue of the NCAA’s decision to defer to policies that were not developed with this deference in mind. Another set of criticisms arise by virtue of the NCAA’s purported justification of its policy as “align[ing] transgender student-athlete participation with the Olympic Movement.” Such alignment is neither necessary nor is it achieved by the NCAA’s policy. Finally, the NCAA’s deference policy could put NCAA member institutions at risk of excluding more athletes than is warranted as a matter of civil rights protected by Title IX and, for students at state universities, the Equal Protection Clause as well. For these reasons, the NCAA should take back control of its own policy. A sport-specific approach is not necessarily wrong. But eligibility criteria should be set with the unique values and context of NCAA and its educational-institution member institutions in mind. NCAA cannot outsource its navigation of the complexities and diversity of sport and gender; it must take responsibility for establishing and administering its own policies.This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:16 PDT
- Title IX in Historical Context: 50 Years of Progress and Political
Gamesmanship
Authors: Helen Drew et al.
Abstract: On the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX, it is important to recognize both its historic nature and how it has evolved in political and social context. This Article will begin by examining the history of women’s athletics pre–Title IX, focusing on what activities women participated in, why, and how societal norms shaped their ability to do so. Next, the Article will examine the status of women’s athletic opportunities as Title IX was first proposed, with an emphasis upon its nexus to the women’s rights movement and the Equal Rights Amendment initiative. The Article will then provide historical background for key moments in the passage and application of Title IX, including specifically the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, the role of the Office of Civil Rights and the approach of the various presidential administrations in enforcing Title IX. The Article will then assess key data metrics, such as the number of women in collegiate coaching and administrative positions prior to 1972, in 1997, and finally, in 2019, to determine the impact of Title IX upon coaching opportunities for women. The Article will conclude by recommending concrete steps that should be taken in the current social and political environment to address continuing inequities in opportunities for women in athletics.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:12 PDT
- Title IX's Trans Panic
Authors: Deborah L. Brake
Abstract: Sport has long been a site of struggle over competing conceptions of social justice, with no cultural flashpoint more contested than gender. A key site of contention has been the meaning and application of Title IX. With June of 2022 marking the law’s fiftieth anniversary, Title IX has been lauded as the law that launched girls’ and women’s sports from the shadows to their present, more celebrated posture. As these anniversary tributes often emphasize, female athletic participation has soared to new heights in all levels of sports. But Title IX also houses tensions and dilemmas for gender justice that were baked into the law from the beginning. A pragmatic mix of feminisms make up the logic and rationales behind Title IX’s legal framework, some with the potential to transform conventionally conservative understandings of gender but others that reinforce the salience of those conventional categories along with their limitations. Title IX’s three-part test for equal athletic opportunity, for example, has made sports participation for girls a normal part of growing up, breaking down gender stereotypes and opening new paths to empowerment for girls and women. By prioritizing participation growth with separate teams for girls and women, instead of merely formally opening up all-male teams to female athletes, Title IX has dramatically increased both the numbers of girls and women who compete in sports and the stature of women’s athletics. But this model has always been rife with dilemmas and costs—as is any legal framework that attempts to address social inequality among groups that are differently situated. Even as the law created unprecedented opportunities for girls and women to compete in athletics, it participated in constructing the very categories and hierarchies that contribute to the second-class status of girls’ and women’s sports. This is because the model of sex-separate sports—and the assertion of a Title IX right to equal treatment to demand equality across separation—implicitly reifies and reinforces the significance of sex as a gatekeeper to opportunity.This Article begins by discussing the spate of state legislative efforts to exclude transgender girls from girls’ sports and the feminist-sounding discourses behind them that have split the women’s sports community. The Article’s main contention is that, when viewed against the backdrop of a broader anti-transgender movement, these measures must be understood as a moral panic. The rhetoric behind the panic explicitly draws on the themes of girls’ empowerment and Title IX. The Article goes on to explain the key features of a moral panic and explores why such a panic has taken hold in sports.The Article then steps back and analyzes Title IX’s rationales for sex separation in sports. This part argues that the trans exclusion movement has seized on one singular rationale for sex-separate athletics—biological sex difference—while ignoring the alternative, less problematic rationales Title IX has embraced. The argument for excluding trans girls distorts and overstates the biological case for sex separation, eliding the nuance and uncertainty surrounding the linkage between male biology and athletic performance. At the same time, the trans exclusion movement opportunistically overstates the extent to which Title IX locks in sex-separation as its governing framework. Title IX’s unstable and contested meaning for transgender inclusion in sex-separate school programs and facilities is also explored. In the wake of the Department of Education’s seesawing positions during the past three presidential administrations and the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking 2020 decision recognizing gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination as a species of sex discrimination, Title IX’s requirements for accommodating transgender athletes in sport are in flux and unsettled.The final section of the Article identifies and elaborates three ways in which the trans exclusion movement undermines Title IX’s promise of gender equality in sport. First, it promotes a biological essentialism that is at odds with the logic of Title IX as a sex equality law. Policing the binary sex line in sport is a losing proposition for women’s athletic equality and is inherently rife with racial and gender bias. Second, these trans exclusion legislative efforts are based on a model of sport that places winning above the educational and participatory benefits of sport, again, in tension with the logic of Title IX. Finally, trans exclusion in sport ignores the lessons of intersectionality by centering a privileged group of cisgender women while further marginalizing women with already-marginalized identities. Race maps onto this dividing line because what culturally codes as unfeminine, in bodies and behaviors in girls’ and women’s sport, is implicitly racialized. The Article concludes with some thoughts on how transgender inclusion can be reconciled with Title IX’s baseline of sex separation in sports. However the particulars of transgender girls’ and women’s athletic participation are sorted out, supporters of girls’ and women’s sports should unite in resisting the anti-trans movement’s efforts to co-opt Title IX in service of a conservative and exclusionary gender agenda.This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:09 PDT
- Assessing the Racial Implications of NCAA Academic Measures
Authors: Timothy Davis
Abstract: In 1983, the NCAA’s adoption of heightened initial eligibility standards for incoming intercollegiate athletes was met with applause and criticism. Proponents lauded the measure as a legitimate means of restoring academic integrity within intercollegiate athletics. Opponents questioned whether seemingly racially neutral eligibility standards had a disproportionately negative impact on African American athletes. It is against this backdrop that the Article examines the racial implications of the NCAA’s past and present academic standards.These standards consist of initial eligibility rules, progress-toward-degree requirements, the graduation success rate, and academic progress rate, the latter two of which comprise the NCAA’s Academic Performance Program. Through these measures, the NCAA states that it seeks to increase the likelihood that college athletes will develop academically while participating in intercollegiate athletics and graduate from their colleges and universities. As was true of past academic reforms such as Propositions 48, critics question the success of these measures in achieving their stated goals. Legitimate concerns have also been raised in the past and present regarding the disproportionate impact of the NCAA’s academic rules on Black Division I college athletes and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).In addition to examining the NCAA’s past and current academic rules, the Article discusses the NCAA’s likely adoption of a rule to eliminate the standardized test score component of its initial eligibility criteria for matriculating scholarship intercollegiate athletes. This measure is likely to be perceived as beneficial to Black athletes. Advocates for enhanced racial fairness within college athletics have argued in favor of eliminating standardized test scores as an eligibility factor and believe it will be beneficial to athletes from under-represented communities, particularly Black athletes. While thoughtful arguments can be made in support of the proposal, the Article examines whether the proposal could inadvertently exacerbate the academic marginalization of Black Division I intercollegiate athletes. The Article also examines other practices that erode the value of the educational opportunity afforded Division I intercollegiate athletes.
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:05 PDT
- Table of Contents (v. 29, no. 1)
PubDate: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:37:01 PDT
- Preimplantation Genetic Testing: A Fundamental Right
Authors: Julianna S. Swann
Abstract: Unlike many European countries of similar economic, social, scientific, and political advancement, there is virtually no regulation of preimplantation genetic testing in the United States. This Note will explore preimplantation genetic testing and demonstrate that potential parents in the United States have a right to conduct said testing under the umbrella of the fundamental right to privacy. This Note will demonstrate the need for the regulation for preimplantation genetic testing that will comply with the Undue Burden Test set out in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, while acknowledging and supporting the fundamental right of potential parents to conduct testing. This Note will also address how potential regulations, or lack thereof, of preimplantation genetic testing may affect disabled people and their rights.
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:23:12 PDT
- Standby Guardianship for Incarcerated Custodial Parents
Authors: Lyla R. Bloom
Abstract: When a child’s custodial parent is incarcerated, the child is left to either live with relatives who do not have the legal authority to make decisions for him or to live with strangers by way of the foster care system. This Note identifies standby guardianship laws as a means to better care for children of incarcerated parents by expanding an already existing legal framework. Currently, standby guardianship laws allow custodial parents suffering from debilitating illnesses to grant legal custody over their children to another adult for the length of their incapacity without terminating their own parental rights. This Note argues for expanding the laws’ coverage from parents suffering from serious illnesses to also include custodial parents facing incarceration. Allowing parents, rather than the State, to decide how a child will be cared for while the parent herself is unavailable, is beneficial to the parent, the child, and the State, regardless of whether the parent is ill or incarcerated. This Note explains how switching the inquiry into the child’s placement from social services to the court does not compromise child safety and does so in a way that saves state resource expenditure. Additionally, allowing parents to make the placement decision prioritizes the family unit and allows for a more child-centered approach that meets each child’s unique needs. Neither the State nor the parent has to worry that the child is being inadequately tended to, while the State saves money and parents get to maintain their parental rights. This Note urges all states to adopt standby guardianship laws that include incarcerated custodial parents among those who may designate an alternate guardian for their children.
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:23:08 PDT
- Title IX & Disparate Impact: The Harmful Effects of Abstinence-Centric
Education
Authors: Olivia S. Lanctot
Abstract: Throughout the United States, schools are failing to provide students with comprehensive sex education that equips student with the life skills necessary for healthy relationships. This shortcoming has numerous psychological, emotional, and physical health consequences for the American youth. This Note will focus on how abstinence-centric curricula can influence sexual and teen dating violence. Presently, only one state requires instruction on consent, leaving most students to first encounter consent education or anti-harassment training in higher education institutions or the workplace. In light of the high rates of violence many young people experience before turning eighteen, this instruction often comes too little, too late. Moreover, abstinence-centric education reinforces feelings of shame and fear that are common among victims of violence. This shaming disproportionately impacts female students who face higher rate of assault compared to their male counterparts. This Note will argue that abstinence-centric education therefore violates Title IX under a disparate impact theory; and, as such, the federal government should condition funding for health programs on comprehensive sex education that includes consent instruction.
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:23:04 PDT
- Beyond "Restoration of Honor": Compensating Veterans for the Psychological
Injuries of the Gay and Transgender Bans
Authors: Evan R. Seamone
Abstract: This Article is titled “Beyond Restoration of Honor” specifically to introduce the policy priority of ensuring that all Sexual and Gender Identity Minority (SGIM) veterans who were harmed by...discriminatory policies [like Don't Ask, Don't Tell] can obtain and use Veterans Affairs (VA) disability benefits for injuries resulting from discrimination while in the military. While this Article highlights the value of codifying a series of specific SGIM stressor markers for PTSD in the VA’s regulations concerning personal assault and creating presumptions of service-connection for specific military experiences, existing laws and regulations permit service-connection for these injuries without further regulatory changes.In recognition of the policy concerns facing this large, under-served group of military veterans, this Article adopts a three-step approach. Part I briefly explores the relationship between SGIM status and adverse mental health outcomes among U.S. veterans. This Part pays particular attention to the characteristics of the anti-gay bans that have theoretically caused mental health injuries. Part III then examines the existing VA disability framework for compensating mental health injuries. This Part identifies VA disability compensation as the appropriate vehicle to address the unmet needs of impacted SGIM veterans.Part III describes the research methodology and results of a study that identified and analyzed VA disability appeals in which veterans claimed that SGIM orientation discrimination caused their mental health condition. Through natural language processing (NLP) strategies and machine learning (ML) algorithms, the study identified 118 Board of Veterans’ Appeals cases out of 123,011 decisions addressing service-connection for mental health disorders. This Part presents the results of statistical analysis of the relationships between case outcomes and case characteristics. It specifies the types of mental health conditions most often claimed and awarded in SGIM discrimination cases, the demographic background of the veterans who appealed, and other factors related to the success and failure of these claims. As an aid to practitioners, this Part introduces an Online Supplement containing a digest of summarized cases, indexed by different facts which may resemble the background of a future veteran’s claim.The last Part concludes with recommendations to ensure that those veterans who have been impacted by the military’s discriminatory policies are able to address longstanding needs and overcome persistent stigma surrounding requests for assistance. This Part discusses the benefits of developing a presumption related to SGIM discrimination in the regulations related to traumatic stressors. It also explores Canada’s recent experience developing a comprehensive governmental approach to veterans who experienced the Gay Purge and is a noteworthy example of success in the restoration of honor. It further draws salient lessons from cases litigated under the present adjudication framework. In sum, the Parts below offer a comprehensive roadmap for immediate action—well beyond simply the restoration of honor.This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:23:01 PDT
- Ending School Brutality
Authors: Nicole Tuchinda
Abstract: Children, especially Black children, are killed, traumatized, injured, and terrorized through assaults, solitary confinement, inappropriate handcuffing, and other excessive applications of physical force upon children in public schools. The state employees enacting such maltreatment are not just police. They are mainly teachers, principals, and security guards, and they are given authorization by law for purposes of “educating,” “disciplining,” and “maintaining order” in public schools. Scientific research does not support the use of physical force to improve behavior, however. This Article describes the problem of school brutality, the excessive, unwarranted, and traumatizing use of physical force by state employees upon students. By traumatizing children, school brutality can cause lasting and disabling developmental and educational harm. School brutality is facilitated by multiple legal structures, including a tort law privilege rooted in colonial times; an inconsistent patchwork of state laws permitting seclusion, restraint, and corporal punishment; qualified immunity; lack of regulation of police officers’ actions in schools; federal funding for regular police presence in public schools; and lack of enforcement and review of reporting on school brutality. Substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, originally framed to protect adult criminal suspects, are inadequate for children. Unless state employees become less shielded from civil and criminal actions that seek to hold them accountable for school brutality, new private rights of action are needed. State and federal legislators can save lives and support educational achievement by ending the legalization of school brutality.
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:22:58 PDT
- Hitting the Brakes on Child Trafficking: An Analysis of Anti-Trafficking
Legislation in Viet Nam
Authors: Linh K. Dai
Abstract: Viet Nam is considered a country of origin for child sex trafficking, especially to Thailand, Cambodia, and China, all significant destinations for child sex tourism, a form of prostitution. Despite existing laws and policies in Viet Nam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, child trafficking operations in the region have flourished. Viet Nam has been characterized as a country whose “[g]overnment . . . does not fully meet the [Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s] minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.” Viet Nam has demonstrated its commitment to preventing human trafficking, both within and without its borders. It has done so by amending its laws, ratifying international treaties, and cooperating with regional anti-trafficking initiatives. However, the government of Viet Nam should undertake additional legislative reforms to fully comply with all applicable international human rights standards and anti-trafficking initiatives.This Article seeks to examine Viet Nam’s trafficking problem both within the context of Viet Nam’s child sex trafficking patterns and Viet Nam’s cultural, economic, and political environment. The Introduction reviews the current problem and describes child trafficking in Viet Nam. The first part examines the Vietnamese government’s effort to prevent, protect, and prosecute against child traffickers. It will concentrate on the implementation of national laws as mandated by international law and the likelihood of success of criminal prosecution in Viet Nam. The second part will focus on the impact of international efforts to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintegrate exploited children. The third part examines the impact of U.S. influence on the evolution of sex trafficking of children within Viet Nam. The last part discusses recommendations to combat child trafficking in Viet Nam.This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:22:53 PDT
- Table of Contents (v. 28, no. 3)
PubDate: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:22:50 PDT
- When Legal Incapacity Becomes a Lack of Personhood: Why a Ward's
Ability to Sue in Their Own Name Should be a Fundamental Aspect of
Virginia Guardianship
Authors: Rachel Davis
Abstract: It is a fundamental failing of any legal system when it is unable to protect the most vulnerable within its population. Whether we are comfortable admitting it or not, guardian abuse of incapacitated wards has been well-documented across all fifty states. Virginia is no exception, and this lack of oversight leaves one of our most vulnerable populations without recourse. This Note argues that by simply granting a ward the ability to bring suit in their own name, Virginia may strike a significant blow to the dysfunction that systematically infects the guardianship process. This Note highlights Virginia statute and case law to draw attention to ineffective guardianship regulations that put incapacitated persons at risk. This Note will analyze Virginia statute and how the overall lack of agency for wards leaves a gaping hole for guardianship abuse to fester. This Note will also examine two recent cases, Lopez-Rosario v. Habib and Cook v. Radford Community Center, that continued to restrict a ward’s ability to bring suit in their own name. Finally, this Note will address how the legal system has failed incapacitated wards by trying their hands behind their backs—if a ward cannot bring suit in their own name, then there is little recourse for abuse suffered at the hands of a guardian. To conclude, this Note will discuss potential steps forward, and methods that Virginia courts and legislature can take to ensure that a vulnerable population does not continue to slip through the cracks of the legal system.
PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 06:33:31 PDT
- 280 Characters to § 230 Immunity: Protecting Individual Sexual Assault
Allegations on Twitter from Defamation Liability
Authors: Elizabeth Profaci
Abstract: One in four female undergraduate students has been sexually assaulted. These students are three times more likely to experience sexual violence than any other group. Frustrated with the Title IX process on their campuses and the lack of discipline for their assailants, these students are unlikely to report their assault. Instead, they quietly tell their friends and other students, and in some cases, anonymously share their stories online. But instead of receiving support, these survivors are often faced with lawsuits. Accused assailants are using, or threatening to use, defamation lawsuits in an attempt to silence survivors who speak out, even when they do so anonymously. These defamation suits have high costs, both financial and emotional, that many survivors cannot bear; many survivors will stop speaking out about their experiences as a result. However, § 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the public controversy doctrine limit defamation liability for sexual assault allegations made online that could shield survivors brave enough to come forward.
PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 06:33:29 PDT
- An Unfulfilled Promise: Section 1557's Failure to Effectively
Confront Discrimination in Healthcare
Authors: Majesta-Doré Legnini
Abstract: When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed, it offered a broad promise to provide access to quality care on a nondiscriminatory basis. To achieve nondiscrimination, Congress included Section 1557, which integrated the nondiscrimination protections granted under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments, Section 504, and the Age Discrimination Act. The language of the statute has proved that the section cannot achieve its broad promise. Covering only intentional discrimination and usually interpreted to divide the standard so that intersectional discrimination cannot be redressed, Section 1557 fails to address discrimination in a way that could effectively reduce health disparities and improve overall health outcomes. While it is possible to interpret the statute to provide for an intersectional claim, the limit to only intentional discrimination narrows the scope such that expanding Section 1557’s reach is necessary but not sufficient to improve the health of marginalized communities. As evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic, implicit bias and disparate impact discrimination has a real impact in actual life and death healthcare decisions, for which the consequences must have an available remedy. Section 1557 opens the door to a broader approach but remains passive as a ‘nondiscrimination’ clause. Any further efforts to improve health outcomes and reduce health discrimination must take an active and intersectional ‘antidiscrimination’ approach.
PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 06:33:26 PDT
- Adree Edmo, the Eighth Amendment, and Abolition: Evaluating the Fight for
Gender-Affirming Care in Prisons
Authors: Mike Greene
Abstract: This Comment argues that the Eighth Amendment litigation strategy to secure gender confirmation surgery for incarcerated transgender people is a non-abolitionist “reformist” reform that expands the criminal punishment system that perpetuates state violence against transgender people. This Comment proposes an abolitionist framework as a transformative approach to evaluating criminal punishment system reforms and securing gender-affirming care for transgender people, incarcerated or otherwise. This Comment then proposes two abolitionist steps towards trans justice, health, and liberation.This Comment will first provide background on gender-affirming medical care, current medical standards for assessing gender-affirming care, and the standards that courts use to evaluate Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claims. Next, this Comment will examine three cases to demonstrate the legal and political contours of the circuit split over the Eighth Amendment litigation strategy: [Adree] Edmo’s case against IDOC and Corizon, Inc., Kosilek v. Spencer, and Gibson v. Collier. Finally, this Comment will establish a background for abolitionist thinking, propose an abolitionist framework to evaluate litigation strategies and reforms, evaluate the Eighth Amendment litigation strategy using this framework, and propose decriminalizing sex work and defunding the police as more substantial, abolitionist steps towards trans justice, health, safety, and liberation.
PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 06:33:23 PDT
- Rice and Beans with a Side of Queer: Socio-Legal Developments in the Cuban
LGBTQ+ Community
Authors: Carlos A. Figueroa
Abstract: Over the last century, the LGBTQ+ community has occupied a peculiar space in Cuba that has both resisted and acclimated to the ever-changing sociopolitical dynamics on the Island. This Article examines the Cuban queer community’s socio-legal history in pre- and post-Revolution Cuba along with its tumultuous synthesis into U.S. culture.
PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 06:33:21 PDT
