Dead Hand Vogue
Publication Title
University of Richmond Law Review
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2020
Abstract
For decades, courts read employment anti-discrimination laws’ prohibition of sex discrimination to exclude gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers’ sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination claims — purportedly because the claims were not linked to employees’ status as a man or a woman. And while significant doctrinal developments have afforded some gender-nonconforming persons critical workplace safeguards under sex anti-discrimination laws, many older decisions that deemed sexual orientation and transgender discrimination claims to be outside the ambit of sex discrimination still control. These decades’ old precedents all suffer from the same analytical error: a failure to adhere to the principle that anti-discrimination law does not protect groups; it protects individuals. Because courts in the 1970s and 1980s focused on groups rather than individuals, judges were able to rely on legislative dead hand as performative analysis to keep LGBTQ people out of the law’s workplace protections and reinforce gender variants’ second-class status. This Article traces the anti-individualist origins of sex discrimination doctrine that has improperly kept LGBTQ workers outside of anti-discrimination protections and argues that the protective promise of anti-discrimination law is realized most fully when courts take individuals seriously.
Recommended Citation
Anthony Michael Kreis, Dead Hand Vogue, 54 U. Rich. L. Rev. 705 (2020).
Institutional Repository Citation
Anthony M. Kreis,
Dead Hand Vogue,
Faculty Publications By Year
2986
(2020)
https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/faculty_pub/2986
Volume
54
Issue
3
First Page
705
Last Page
732
Comments
External Links
Westlaw
Lexis Advance
HeinOnline
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