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Despite Harris deal, few surgeries granted to trans inmates in California

Campaign says anti-trans bias may play a role in implementation

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) speaking at the HRC/CNN LGBT Town Hall on Oct. 10. (Photo courtesy of CNN)

Sen. Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign said Tuesday anti-trans bias may play a role in the implementation of a policy she helped create under pressure to provide transgender inmates in California with gender reassignment surgery, after a Washington Blade public records request found only seven prisoners ever got the male-to-female procedure out of 130 who asked.

Harris, a supporter of LGBTQ rights, nonetheless continues to be asked about her work as California attorney general in litigation seeking to deny gender assignment surgery to transgender inmates in the state prison system — and the data indicate that Harris cast the settlement in a rosier light than ended up playing out.

Despite the policy she announced in 2015 enabling inmates to obtain gender reassignment surgery, the data from California Correctional Health Care Services — provided to the Washington Blade after a request under California’s Public Records Act — reveals only a small percentage of inmates who have requested the procedure have been able to obtain it, raising questions about its effectiveness.

In a letter dated Nov. 8 to the Blade, the state prison health system reveals 130 inmates requested male-to-female gender reassignment surgery since the policy was announced, but only seven were granted the procedure in the same time period. Meanwhile, 51 inmates requested female-to-male gender reassignment surgery, but only 10 obtained the procedure.

Based on these numbers, only 5 percent of inmates who requested male-to-female gender reassignment surgery obtained the procedure under the policy Harris helped create and has promoted on the campaign trail, and only 20 percent of inmates who requested female-to-male gender reassignment surgery have obtained it.

Kate Waters, a spokesperson for the Harris presidential campaign, said anti-trans bias may be playing a role in implementation in response to a Blade inquiry on the data.

“Kamala Harris believes every American has a right to adequate and comprehensive health care, including transition-related care for those at correctional facilities,” Waters said. “Toward the end of her tenure as attorney general she worked behind the scenes to establish a policy around granting gender-affirming surgeries to individuals who are currently incarcerated — the first of its kind in the country. It’s clear the implementation of this policy should be evaluated and examined for bias.”

Very few trans inmates in California prison have been granted requests for gender reassignment surgery

Over the course of her presidential campaign, Harris has had to defend herself amid questions about litigation in which she sought to block transgender inmates from having gender reassignment surgery. In fact, at her first news conference for her 2020 presidential campaign in D.C. at Howard University, it was the topic of her first question, which was asked by the Washington Blade. 

At the time, Harris implied she disagreed with the position of her client, the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, but defended the agency in court because it was her duty as a public official.

“I was, as you are rightly pointing out, the attorney general of California for two terms and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent and I couldn’t fire my clients, and there are unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs,” Harris said.

Harris also indicated she wasn’t fully aware of the litigation happening within her office.

“It was an office with a lot of people who would do the work on a daily basis, and do I wish that sometimes they would have personally consulted me before they wrote the things that they wrote?” Harris said. “Yes, I do.”

The issue came up in an interview with the Los Angeles Blade and at the Iowa LGBTQ forum hosted by GLAAD in September, where Lyz Lenz, a columnist for the The Gazette, asked the 2020 presidential hopeful about it.

In both of those instances, Harris brought up in favorable terms a policy agreement she helped institute at the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitations as evidence she redirected the litigation into something positive for the transgender community.

“I did it quietly, because I actually disagreed with my client initially, when they had the policy, and so I did it behind the scenes,” Harris told the Los Angeles Blade. “I helped to resolve and change the policy. The issue for me was to make sure the right thing would happen.”

Harris added: “Let me just be very clear: I don’t want to take full credit for that, because I don’t deserve full credit for that. I don’t want what I said to be interpreted as that. There were a lot of people involved in that.”

In an interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality, Harris brought up the issue on her own and in particular underscored the importance of that policy.

“I made sure that they changed the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need,” Harris said. “I know it was historic in California, but I believe, actually, it may have been one of the first if not the first in the country where I pushed for that policy in a Department of Corrections.”

As California attorney general, Harris in 2015 defended the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, which was being sued for refusing to provide gender reassignment surgery to two transgender inmates: Michelle Lael-Norsworthy, who was serving time in prison in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif., for second-degree murder, and Shiloh Quine, who’s serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery.

Transgender advocates maintain transition-related care, including gender reassignment surgery, is medically necessary and should be afforded to inmates in prison, where the costly procedure would be provided at taxpayer expense. Withholding the treatment, transgender advocates argue, is cruel and unusual punishment, therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment under the U.S. Constitution.

At one point, when a trial court ruled against the state in the Norsworthy case and ordered the state to grant her gender reassignment surgery, Harris as attorney general appealed the decision to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where she continued to argue the procedure should be blocked.

Among Harris’ critics for defending the California state prison system in those cases is Chase Strangio, a New York-based transgender advocate and attorney.

“It would have been one thing had she chosen to settle a legal challenge to establish a policy that might help people in custody but that is not what she did,” Strangio told the Blade. “Instead, Harris’s office fully litigated a case to try to block care for transgender people while simultaneously implementing a supposedly improved policy, which we continue to learn is grossly inadequate.”

Strangio added Harris sought legal precedent that would have made conditions “substantially worse” for people in the Ninth Circuit and “could have hurt transgender people beyond California and ultimately sent a message to corrections staff in her state that the care being requested was not supported by the state.”

“It is impossible to know whether Sen. Harris personally agrees with the notion of providing health care to transgender people in custody but what is abundantly clear is that when she had various opportunities to take a stand to ensure that the system was improved for prisoners who are transgender she failed to act with a commitment to transgender justice,” Strangio said.

As media scrutiny of these cases continued when the case was before the Ninth Circuit, including with coverage in the Washington Blade, a settlement was announced on Aug. 8, 2015 that would enable the inmates to obtain the procedure (although for Norsworthy the process consisted of being granted parole, then being able to obtain gender reassignment surgery under the state’s MediCal program).

“Members of the LGBT community, especially those who are transgender, are too often subjected to discrimination and forced to live on the margins of our society,” Harris said at the time. “In a groundbreaking settlement, the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation has agreed to evaluate and provide sex-reassignment surgery if recommended to Shiloh Quine, a transgender inmate. This is an important step forward in the ongoing effort to protect transgender rights in California.”

As part of this settlement, the California prison system agreed to create a new policy that would ease the process for transgender inmates seeking gender reassignment surgery, enabling them to obtain it without having to win court battles.

But the new data demonstrates only a small number of transgender inmates have been able to obtain the procedure, raising questions about the policy’s effectiveness.

Asked by the Blade to review the data, Strangio said it speaks volumes about the difficulty for transgender people in obtaining transition-related care, including gender reassignment surgery, while serving time in the criminal justice system.

“Sadly, these numbers reflect how dangerously inadequate health care is for transgender people, particularly transgender women, in custodial settings,” Strangio said.

The Washington Blade has placed a request with current California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who’s responsible for enforcing the policy, on whether the guidelines are not properly being implemented.

It’s unclear why only a small percentage of these inmates have been granted gender assignment surgery. Under policy established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a person seeking the procedure must have medical clearance, which means they can’t have any health issues that would make the surgery pose too great a risk for the individual.

As laid out in the actual policy memo for California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, which was most recently updated in December 2018, inmates seeking to have gender reassignment surgery have to go through a multi-step process. 

An inmate’s request for surgery is submitted to the Statewide Medical Authorization Review Team, or SMART, which will then refer to the Gender Affirming Surgery Review Committee before that panel sends it back to SMART for final review.

According to the documents, factors the committee should consider when evaluating the request is a verifiable diagnosis of gender dysphoria; whether other treatments besides surgery should be considered; whether the inmate has no other health conditions the surgery would exacerbate; and if the inmate has been consistent with his or her gender identity for 12 months.

The California Department of Corrections didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Blade to comment on whether the system is adequate given the low numbers of requests for gender reassignment surgery from inmates that have been granted.

Transgender advocates, however, said the numbers are evidence the California state prison system, despite the policy Harris helped create, is woefully inadequate in providing necessary transition-related care to transgender inmates.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said the paucity of requests granted indicates transgender inmates aren’t being denied the procedure for medical reasons, but due to anti-trans animus and budgetary limits.

“It’s not about whether or not they are medically able to have the surgery, it is about the prisons and the state not wanting to do it,” Keisling said. 

Strangio placed blame with both the California state prison system as well as Harris, saying regardless of the role she had in crafting the guidelines, the data show “it is not a policy that is adequately being implemented.”

“It is impossible to extricate the ongoing recalcitrance on the part of the agency from the message sent from the state’s highest officials, Harris included, that providing health care to transgender people in custody should be fought aggressively in court,” Strangio said.

Keisling, however, was reluctant to criticize Harris, saying her actual role in creating the California guidelines is impossible to verify and bureaucracies have a way of stymying policies created by public officials.

“Definitely the bad guy is the Department of Corrections,” Keisling added.

Shawn Meerkamper, senior staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center, also responded to the data with generalized concerns that weren’t aimed at Harris.

“Transgender people’s medical needs are real and cannot be dismissed by the state,” Meerkamper said. “California’s prisons affirmed they have the responsibility to provide medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria, including surgery, in 2015 following the Norsworthy and Quine cases. While policies are a good first step, unfortunately the California prisons continue to deny this life-saving health care to the vast majority of people who need it.”

The Transgender Law Center represented Norsworthy and Quine in litigation and hailed the settlement in 2015 when it was reached with the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation.

More recently, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that made access to gender reassignment surgery for prison inmates binding precedent in all states within its jurisdiction, including California. 

In August, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit issued the per curium opinion in favor of Adree Edmo, who was denied gender reassignment surgery while being incarcerated for sexual abuse at the Idaho State Correctional Institution.

“We hold that where, as here, the record shows that the medically necessary treatment for a prisoner’s gender dysphoria is gender confirmation surgery, and responsible prison officials deny such treatment with full awareness of the prisoner’s suffering, those officials violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment,” the decision says.

At the time, Harris said in a statement to the Blade she supports the ruling, maintaining it “rightly reaffirms the right to adequate and comprehensive health care, including transition-related care for those at correctional facilities.”

Despite the Ninth Circuit ruling, Strangio said denial of care to transgender inmates remains a “systemic problem across corrections systems” and requires “truly committed reformers” to make change. 

But Strangio said that isn’t Harris.

“It is not enough to suggest passive support while publicly opposing humane treatment of transgender people, which is ultimately what Harris did as attorney general,” Strangio said. “As the numbers show, people are not getting the health care that they need and Sen. Harris should take responsibility for the roadblock her office was to improving life chances for transgender people across the state.”

UPDATE 11/25/2019: The California state prison system, after the initial publication of this article, responded to the Washington Blade with a statement announcing current policy on gender reassignment surgery for transgender inmates is under review.

Terry Thornton, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, said the prison system has several policies in place on transgender inmates and recognizes the value of gender reassignment surgery as medically necessary care.

“The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires that prisons provide medically necessary treatment for prisoners’ medical needs based on medical considerations,” Thorton said. “For the past several years, gender-affirming surgery has been increasingly viewed by the medical and mental health community as a safe and effective treatment for some people suffering from gender dysphoria.”

Key memos guiding those policies within the California Correctional Health Care Services, Thornton said, are currently under revision: The “Gender Dysphoria” care guide, last modified in May 2015, and the supplement to that care guide, “Guidelines for Review of Requests for Gender Affirming Surgery,” effective in May 2015 and revised in December 2018.

“Guidelines and supplemental documents are continuously revised to align with community standards and as needed to ensure operational efficiency,” Thornton added.

Treatment for gender dysphoria is individualized between a patient and their provider, Thornton said, and each patient is reviewed on a case-by-case basis “taking into account their medical and mental health history and current condition.”

In response to the few number of surgeries granted to transgender inmates, Thornton said a person requesting surgery may not be eligible at first, but subsequently eligible upon resubmittal. Inmates may appeal any health care decision, Thornton said, including denials of gender reassignment surgery.

Thornton identified several reasons why inmates would be denied gender reassignment surgery, including other health conditions that make the procedure too high a risk to their well-being or that must be well controlled; not meeting the WPATH criteria for the surgery; having mental health conditions that would likely worsen with surgery or impede surgical recovery; or simply completing a prison sentences and being released to parole.

“As far as we know, California is the only prison system in the United States with a process to approve gender-affirming surgeries and has policies to improve safety, help prevent sexual abuse, create a more respectful environment, improve outcomes for reentry and improve medical care for its incarcerated transgender community,” Thornton concluded.

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Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later

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Fifty years ago this week, 32 gay men were killed in an arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing.  

The story I related to them began on a typical Sunday night at a second-story bar on the fringe of New Orleans’ French Quarter in 1973, where working-class men would gather around a white baby grand piano and belt out the lyrics to a song that was the anthem of their hidden community, “United We Stand” by the Brotherhood of Man. 

“United we stand,” the men would sing together, “divided we fall” — the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to today’s queer safe havens. 

Around that piano in the 1970s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment. 

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal. 

On the Sunday night of June 24, 1973, their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history — and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America. 

As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by. This suspect, an internally conflicted gay-for-pay sex worker named Rodger Dale Nunez, had been ejected from the UpStairs Lounge screaming the word “burn” minutes before, but New Orleans police rebuffed the testimony of fire survivors on the street and allowed Nunez to disappear.

As the fire raged, police denigrated the deceased to reporters on the street: “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” 

For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev. Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church flew in to “help our bereaved brothers and sisters” — and shatter officialdom’s code of silence. 

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. “It’s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,” Perry said. 

Two days later, on June 26, 1973, as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals. 

“This fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,” Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.” 

Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business. 

“Phil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,” recounted Esteve’s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. “Phil wouldn’t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.” 

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. “How dare you hold your damn news conferences!” one business owner shouted. 

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a 250-person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. “Reverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,” recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.

(Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge story’s capacity to rouse gay political fervor. As the coroner buried four of his former patrons anonymously on the edge of town, Esteve quietly collected at least $25,000 in fire insurance proceeds. Less than a year later, he used the money to open another gay bar called the Post Office, where patrons of the UpStairs Lounge — some with visible burn scars — gathered but were discouraged from singing “United We Stand.” 

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the city’s power structure began gaslighting the mourners who marched with Perry into the news cameras, casting suspicion on their memories and re-characterizing their moment of liberation as a stunt. 

When a local gay journalist asked in April 1977, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?,” Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. “We don’t feel we’re discriminated against,” Esteve said. “New Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere else… Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.” 

(Photo by H.J. Patterson/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking. 

Into the 1980s, the story of the UpStairs Lounge all but vanished from conversation — with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charlene’s, run by the activist Charlene Schneider. 

By 1988, the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. UpStairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler summed it up: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.” 

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneider’s nudging, the UpStairs Lounge story became aligned with the crusade of liberated gays and lesbians seeking equal rights in Louisiana. The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec. 12 — more than 18 years after the fire. 

“I believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,” Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteve’s strategy of silent accommodation. Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around 1989. 

Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. What’s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world — a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the 1973 French Quarter for Japanese audiences.

When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire. 

Council members personally apologized to UpStairs Lounge families and survivors seated in the chamber in a symbolic act that, though it could not bring back those who died, still mattered greatly to those whose pain had been denied, leaving them to grieve alone. At long last, official silence and indifference gave way to heartfelt words of healing. 

The way Americans remember the past is an active, ongoing process. Our collective memory is malleable, but it matters because it speaks volumes about our maturity as a people, how we acknowledge the past’s influence in our lives, and how it shapes the examples we set for our youth. Do we grapple with difficult truths, or do we duck accountability by defaulting to nostalgia and bluster? Or worse, do we simply ignore the past until it fades into a black hole of ignorance and indifference? 

I believe that a factual retelling of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy — and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally — resonates beyond our current divides. It reminds queer and non-queer Americans that ignoring the past holds back the present, and that silence is no cure for what ails a participatory nation. 

Silence isolates. Silence gaslights and shrouds. It preserves the power structures that scapegoat the disempowered. 

Solidarity, on the other hand, unites. Solidarity illuminates a path forward together. Above all, solidarity transforms the downtrodden into a resounding chorus of citizens — in the spirit of voices who once gathered ‘round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, “United We Stand.” 

(Photo by Philip Ames/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”

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New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

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The U.S. Supreme Court is to set consider the case of 303 Creative, which seeks to refuse design services for same-sex weddings. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court, after a decision overturning Roe v. Wade that still leaves many reeling, is starting a new term with justices slated to revisit the issue of LGBTQ rights.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court will return to the issue of whether or not providers of custom-made goods can refuse service to LGBTQ customers on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the business owner is Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who wants to opt out of providing her graphic design services for same-sex weddings despite the civil rights law in her state.

Jennifer Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, said in an interview with the Blade, “it’s not too much to say an immeasurably huge amount is at stake” for LGBTQ people depending on the outcome of the case.

“This contrived idea that making custom goods, or offering a custom service, somehow tacitly conveys an endorsement of the person — if that were to be accepted, that would be a profound change in the law,” Pizer said. “And the stakes are very high because there are no practical, obvious, principled ways to limit that kind of an exception, and if the law isn’t clear in this regard, then the people who are at risk of experiencing discrimination have no security, no effective protection by having a non-discrimination laws, because at any moment, as one makes their way through the commercial marketplace, you don’t know whether a particular business person is going to refuse to serve you.”

The upcoming arguments and decision in the 303 Creative case mark a return to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court, which had no lawsuit to directly address the issue in its previous term, although many argued the Dobbs decision put LGBTQ rights in peril and threatened access to abortion for LGBTQ people.

And yet, the 303 Creative case is similar to other cases the Supreme Court has previously heard on the providers of services seeking the right to deny services based on First Amendment grounds, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In both of those cases, however, the court issued narrow rulings on the facts of litigation, declining to issue sweeping rulings either upholding non-discrimination principles or First Amendment exemptions.

Pizer, who signed one of the friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to 303 Creative, said the case is “similar in the goals” of the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation on the basis they both seek exemptions to the same non-discrimination law that governs their business, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, and seek “to further the social and political argument that they should be free to refuse same-sex couples or LGBTQ people in particular.”

“So there’s the legal goal, and it connects to the social and political goals and in that sense, it’s the same as Masterpiece,” Pizer said. “And so there are multiple problems with it again, as a legal matter, but also as a social matter, because as with the religion argument, it flows from the idea that having something to do with us is endorsing us.”

One difference: the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation stemmed from an act of refusal of service after owner, Jack Phillips, declined to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple for their upcoming wedding. No act of discrimination in the past, however, is present in the 303 Creative case. The owner seeks to put on her website a disclaimer she won’t provide services for same-sex weddings, signaling an intent to discriminate against same-sex couples rather than having done so.

As such, expect issues of standing — whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit — to be hashed out in arguments as well as whether the litigation is ripe for review as justices consider the case. It’s not hard to see U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to lead the court to reach less sweeping decisions (sometimes successfully, and sometimes in the Dobbs case not successfully) to push for a decision along these lines.

Another key difference: The 303 Creative case hinges on the argument of freedom of speech as opposed to the two-fold argument of freedom of speech and freedom of religious exercise in the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation. Although 303 Creative requested in its petition to the Supreme Court review of both issues of speech and religion, justices elected only to take up the issue of free speech in granting a writ of certiorari (or agreement to take up a case). Justices also declined to accept another question in the petition request of review of the 1990 precedent in Smith v. Employment Division, which concluded states can enforce neutral generally applicable laws on citizens with religious objections without violating the First Amendment.

Representing 303 Creative in the lawsuit is Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has sought to undermine civil rights laws for LGBTQ people with litigation seeking exemptions based on the First Amendment, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in a Sept. 12 legal brief signed by her and other attorneys that a decision in favor of 303 Creative boils down to a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.

“Colorado and the United States still contend that CADA only regulates sales transactions,” the brief says. “But their cases do not apply because they involve non-expressive activities: selling BBQ, firing employees, restricting school attendance, limiting club memberships, and providing room access. Colorado’s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actor’s speech.”

Pizer, however, pushed back strongly on the idea a decision in favor of 303 Creative would be as focused as Alliance Defending Freedom purports it would be, arguing it could open the door to widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“One way to put it is art tends to be in the eye of the beholder,” Pizer said. “Is something of a craft, or is it art? I feel like I’m channeling Lily Tomlin. Remember ‘soup and art’? We have had an understanding that whether something is beautiful or not is not the determining factor about whether something is protected as artistic expression. There’s a legal test that recognizes if this is speech, whose speech is it, whose message is it? Would anyone who was hearing the speech or seeing the message understand it to be the message of the customer or of the merchants or craftsmen or business person?”

Despite the implications in the case for LGBTQ rights, 303 Creative may have supporters among LGBTQ people who consider themselves proponents of free speech.

One joint friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, written by Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who’s written in favor of LGBTQ rights, and Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues the case is an opportunity to affirm the First Amendment applies to goods and services that are uniquely expressive.

“Distinguishing expressive from non-expressive products in some contexts might be hard, but the Tenth Circuit agreed that Smith’s product does not present a hard case,” the brief says. “Yet that court (and Colorado) declined to recognize any exemption for products constituting speech. The Tenth Circuit has effectively recognized a state interest in subjecting the creation of speech itself to antidiscrimination laws.”

Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet set, but may be announced soon. Set to defend the state of Colorado and enforcement of its non-discrimination law in the case is Colorado Solicitor General Eric Reuel Olson. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would grant the request to the U.S. solicitor general to present arguments before the justices on behalf of the Biden administration.

With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that has recently scrapped the super-precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion, supporters of LGBTQ rights may think the outcome of the case is all but lost, especially amid widespread fears same-sex marriage would be next on the chopping block. After the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 303 Creative in the lawsuit, the simple action by the Supreme Court to grant review in the lawsuit suggests they are primed to issue a reversal and rule in favor of the company.

Pizer, acknowledging the call to action issued by LGBTQ groups in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, conceded the current Supreme Court issuing the ruling in this case is “a terrifying prospect,” but cautioned the issue isn’t so much the makeup of the court but whether or not justices will continue down the path of abolishing case law.

“I think the question that we’re facing with respect to all of the cases or at least many of the cases that are in front of the court right now, is whether this court is going to continue on this radical sort of wrecking ball to the edifice of settled law and seemingly a goal of setting up whole new structures of what our basic legal principles are going to be. Are we going to have another term of that?” Pizer said. “And if so, that’s terrifying.”

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Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

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Kelley Robinson (Screen capture via HRC YouTube)

Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman and veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is to become the next president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading LGBTQ group announced on Tuesday.

Robinson is set to become the ninth president of the Human Rights Campaign after having served as executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and more than 12 years of experience as a leader in the progressive movement. She’ll be the first Black, queer woman to serve in that role.

“I’m honored and ready to lead HRC — and our more than three million member-advocates — as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,” Robinson said. “This is a pivotal moment in our movement for equality for LGBTQ+ people. We, particularly our trans and BIPOC communities, are quite literally in the fight for our lives and facing unprecedented threats that seek to destroy us.”

Kelley Robinson IS NAMED as The next human rights Campaign president

The next Human Rights Campaign president is named as Democrats are performing well in polls in the mid-term elections after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving an opening for the LGBTQ group to play a key role amid fears LGBTQ rights are next on the chopping block.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade reminds us we are just one Supreme Court decision away from losing fundamental freedoms including the freedom to marry, voting rights, and privacy,” Robinson said. “We are facing a generational opportunity to rise to these challenges and create real, sustainable change. I believe that working together this change is possible right now. This next chapter of the Human Rights Campaign is about getting to freedom and liberation without any exceptions — and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.”

The Human Rights Campaign announces its next president after a nearly year-long search process after the board of directors terminated its former president Alphonso David when he was ensnared in the sexual misconduct scandal that led former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. David has denied wrongdoing and filed a lawsuit against the LGBTQ group alleging racial discrimination.

Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood, Cathy Chu, SMYAL, Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders, Amy Nelson, Whitman-Walker Health, Sheroes of the Movement, Mayor's office of GLBT Affairs, gay news, Washington Blade
Kelley Robinson, seen here with Cathy Chu of SMYAL and Amy Nelson of Whitman-Walker Health, is the next Human Rights Campaign president. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
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