tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36340398476045750562024-03-12T20:23:12.108-07:00Cruz LinesA legal blog offering excursions into the Constitution, equality law, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-20265418171979511352023-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:002023-09-01T08:15:06.431-07:00Florida’s Draconian Bathroom Penalties & Faux “Intimacy”Everybody's searching for intimacy Ooh ooh ooh ooh Everybody's hurting for intimacy Ooh ooh ooh oohThe New York Times reported (Florida Approves Tough Discipline for College Staff Who Break Bathroom Law) that on Wednesday, August 23, 2023 the Florida Board of Education adopted new rules requiring the firing of employees at the state’s 28 regional college campuses who twice use (“Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-56537287478598769822023-06-30T08:27:00.002-07:002023-06-30T08:57:24.260-07:00Masking White Supremacy“They reached for tomorrow / But tomorrow’s more of the same”In its decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), the Republican-appointed supermajority of the Supreme Court held that the use of race in the undergraduate admissions programs of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina was unlawful under Title VI of the Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-92205541871064056512020-10-08T13:10:00.000-07:002020-10-08T13:10:38.107-07:00 Don’t Worry About Roe, Conservative Prof Misleadingly Argues“Let yourself go,/ Relax,/ And let yourself go.Relax,/ You’ve got yourself tied up in a knot.” I had originally reacted with incredulity about a recent effort to paint Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court as largely irrelevant to the fate of Roe v. Wade and constitutional protection for reproductive rights. I drafted a blog entry with the title and epigram above. ButProf. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-46131249447159413132020-07-10T15:08:00.001-07:002020-07-10T15:08:52.309-07:00Damn the Consequences, Gorsuch Says
“So let the chips fall where they mayAnd let these matters be settled this wayWe'll let our judgement get carried away”
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled, as described by Chief Justice Roberts in his dissent, that “a huge swathe of Oklahoma is actually a Creek Indian reservation, on which the State may not prosecute serious crimes committed by Indians.” Three and a half weeks earlier, the Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-9599080883810008742020-06-15T08:41:00.000-07:002020-06-15T08:59:56.702-07:00Title VII Means What It Says, Supreme Court Rules, Cheering LGBT Workers
“But you got dreams
He’ll never take away”
In Bostock v. Clayton County, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that firing employees because they are “homosexual or transgender” violates the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the major federal employment discrimination statute. This is a position LGBT people have taken since shortly after the statute Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-30986203542673501682018-06-07T20:35:00.000-07:002018-06-08T09:30:11.976-07:00Respectfully, You Lose: Masterpiece Cakeshop gets cited in state court
“Oh baby refrain from breaking my heart”
In what appears to be the first judicial opinion to cite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, an Arizona appeals court has rejected a claim by a hand-painted and hand-lettered stationery business and its Christian owners for a religious exemption from Phoenix’s law forbiddingProf. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-9997029790364458622018-06-05T14:02:00.000-07:002018-06-05T14:02:07.280-07:00
Is It the End of the Line for Charlie Craig & David Mullins’s suit against Jack Phillips? Masterpiece Cakeshop as Bush v. Gore
“Why leave me standing here?
Let me know the way”
A number of commentators have already noted a similarity between the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Masterpiece Cakeshop and its decision in 2000 in Bush v. Gore. Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-73701132412400824312017-06-30T11:17:00.000-07:002017-06-30T11:17:55.587-07:00Equal Is Equal* (*some exceptions may apply): Marriage Equality in Texas and Pidgeon v. Turner
“Found
alternative sides to the things that were said”
Acting
in Pidgeon v. Turner (HT @JoeDunman for the opinion copy), the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) has gratuitously protracted
the efforts of the city of Houston to treat its lesbian, gay, and bisexual
employees constitutionally and hence equally. The court unanimously reversed a lower appeals court’s order allowing
Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-40860328428761373272017-04-04T18:06:00.000-07:002017-05-15T18:34:58.237-07:00Full Appeals Court Rules Federal Law Forbids Sexual Orientation Discrimination in Employment
You’re applying for a job/So
you’re filling out a form
And for all intents and
purposes/You fit into the norm
Until it says to list your
next of kin/But there's no box to fit you in
In a landmark decision, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has held that the federal statute barring sex
discrimination in employment forbids sexual orientation discrimination. The 8-3 Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-11486790943380663222017-02-10T11:31:00.000-08:002017-02-10T11:31:40.654-08:00Appeals Court Sustains Temporary Restraint on Trump Immigration EO
“You got
your tricks
Good for
you
But there’s
no gambit I don’t see through”
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit unanimously held that the federal trial judge in Seattle who granted
a nationwide temporary restraining order (TRO) suspending Trump’s immigration ban executive order (EO) did not exceed his discretion. The Court of Appeals therefore rejected Donald
Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-7832184878277284362016-11-20T11:17:00.001-08:002016-11-20T11:32:59.911-08:00Sanitizing Scalia
“Memories to be erased
And nasty old stuff you’ve been hiding”
The
Harvard Law Review recently published its issue dedicated in memoriam to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I know the point of such exercises is to say
nice things about the person memorialized.
But I would hope that even an academic such as Martha Minow, Dean of the
Harvard Law School, whose positionProf. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-45071501918323574742016-11-09T09:13:00.000-08:002016-11-09T11:06:00.756-08:00Trump and the Promise of LGBTQ Equality
I’ve always got my head in
the clouds
Hope that I could find
One of them that’s
silver-lined
As I write, it appears that Donald J. Trump will
take office as the forty-fifth President of the United States. Some (many?) people, myself included, deeply
feared this and are anxious or worse about the prospect. So, in an effort to help myself confront this
new reality, I offer this Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-66226724497636689762016-05-13T10:37:00.000-07:002016-05-13T10:37:16.161-07:00Federal Government Issues Guidance for Schools, Educational Programs, re: Transgender Students
“When
it’s time to change, you’ve got to rearrange
Who
you are and what you're gonna be”
The Department of Justice and the
Department of Education today issued a significant guidance document today to help schools comply with their obligations toward transgender students
under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”) – which is a
federal statute modeled after part of theProf. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-78897035242394264152016-01-08T13:17:00.000-08:002016-01-08T13:17:32.905-08:00Abbott vs. Hamilton
“That was a real nice
declaration.
Welcome to the
present, we’re running a real nation.”
Happy New Year, everyone!
I’m writing today from the Annual Meeting of the Association of American
Law Schools. After having just attended
a Constitutional Law Section session on “Resistance and Recognition,” I
returned to my room to see this article by Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner: Texas Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-32722450728169928042015-09-23T22:28:00.000-07:002015-09-23T22:36:37.265-07:00Dred Davis?
“Read it in the
writing on the wall”
I confess to being rather tired of
hearing too much about the extremely small minority of individuals actively resisting the Supreme Court’s marriage equality
decision in Obergefell v. Hodges this
summer. But, to quote Justice Scalia’s
acerbic opinion in the Court’s 1992 case Planned
Parenthood v. Casey, “it is beyond human nature to leave Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-70469997976187303862015-04-27T12:26:00.001-07:002015-04-27T19:24:39.972-07:00Fear and Loving in Washington
“And you and me are free to be you and me”
It is surprisingly quiet here outside the Supreme Court of the United States the day before the Court hears oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges and the other three marriage equality cases it is considering this term. There are a few more protesters, defenders of the old order, than there were yesterday. The lines, one for the Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-41479767803032686162015-01-17T08:18:00.000-08:002015-01-17T08:18:59.973-08:00Unveiling Marriage Equality?
“’Cause maybe they’ve seen us and welcome
us all”
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<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-47340318223447543972014-11-08T14:48:00.000-08:002014-11-08T14:48:46.257-08:00Sixth Circuit Marriage Decision Shuns Constitutional Law, Reprints Election Results
“We
close our eyes, we never lose a game
Imagination
never lets us take the blame”
On
November 6, 2014, Judge Jeffrey Sutton joined by Judge Deborah Cooke issued the
first federal appellate decision upholding state laws denying marriage to
same-sex couples. Judge Sutton’s opinion
for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in DeBoer v. Snyder reversed four federal trial courts that had Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-8796792177925891182014-11-07T09:50:00.000-08:002014-11-07T09:50:11.098-08:0025 Pages of Dicta, or What the Supreme Court Could Say to the Sixth Circuit
And hey, it doesn’t
matter what you say
’Cause you are invisible
to the world
On November 6,
2014, in DeBoer v. Snyder,
a 2-1 majority of Sixth Circuit judges reversed rulings federal trial courts in
Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee had issued in favor of marriage
equality. Unless the parties decide to
seek and are granted en banc review
of that decision by all the judges of theProf. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-23667537241877969412014-09-05T15:00:00.002-07:002014-09-05T15:02:04.875-07:00Judge Posner Calls Bullshit on State Marriage Bans
“You asked for the truth
and I told you
Through their own words
They will be exposed”
A day after a
federal trial judge upheld Louisiana’s law denying marriage and marriage
recognition to same-sex couples (discussed here), a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit affirmed decisions striking down Indiana’s and Wisconsin’s marriage
exclusions, laws Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-27863535450207328642014-09-04T21:58:00.000-07:002014-09-04T21:58:59.591-07:00The Louisiana Marriage Inequality Decision and the Missing Link
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Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-54151412122441124202014-09-03T22:03:00.000-07:002014-09-03T22:03:53.806-07:00The Baker v. Nelson Argument Against Marriage Equality Litigation
“It’s such a shame
It’s such a crime
To be so close
And yet so far
So overdue
Yet underpar
So out of time
It’s too sublime”
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Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-47477895590474435872014-05-21T11:31:00.000-07:002014-05-21T11:31:33.198-07:00Federal Courts Hold Oregon & Pennsylvania Marriage Exclusions Unconstitutional
“Cause a double-rainbow is hard to find”
On two consecutive days, federal trial courts held
unconstitutional state laws that excluded same-sex couples from marriage and
refused to recognize lawful marriages of such couples from other jurisdictions.
On Monday, May 19, in Geiger v. Kitzhaber (opinion here), U.S. District
Judge Michael J. McShane held that Oregon’s statutory and Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-90820373584079658502014-02-28T08:53:00.000-08:002014-02-28T08:53:18.796-08:00Federal Court Holds Texas Marriage Exclusion Unconstitutional
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Prof. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3634039847604575056.post-24864421497225471542014-02-14T18:09:00.000-08:002014-02-14T18:09:12.099-08:00Federal Court Holds Virginia Ban on Same-Sex Couples’ Marrying Unconstitutional
“Now that the weight has lifted/Love has
surely shifted in my way”
The
Valentine’s Day presents just keep coming:
One day after a federal court in Kentucky held unconstitutional the
state’s refusal to recognize marriages same-sex couples validly entered in
other states (discussed on CruzLines here), a
federal trial judge ruled late on February 13
that Virginia’s laws denying recognitionProf. David B. Cruzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17810619657964701172noreply@blogger.com0