Transgender Legal History

An examination of the early Common Law’s recognition of intersexuality, focusing on three cases in which a person’s legal sex designation was a central issue.  This article was published in the Texas Journal of Women and the Law, 14:77 (2004).

An analysis of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' 2000 decision in, which not only marked a sea change in federal court analysis of transsexuals’ rights under laws addressing sex discrimination but also exposed the disturbing lengths to which state prison systems will go to defend sexual abuse of inmates perpetrated by prison guards.

Comparative analysis of the law of status in antebellum slave law cases and modern cases involving transsexuals.  Co-authored with Alyson Meiselman and Phyllis Frye, the article appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Gender & the Law, 2:735 (2001).

Using cases and legal precedent on transgender employment discrimination in the US-American context, this article investigates the epistemological consequences of creating a gendered legal subject. It interrogates the ways that courts enact certain kinds of knowledge claims that deny the experiences of transgender litigants as transgender. It argues how judicial reasoning tends to create conditions of transgender legibility that reproduces preconceived notions of normative, cisgender sex/gender experiences and knowledges, contributing to hermeneutical injustice.

(Engl. Title: Legal Relief or a "Big Mess"? - The discussion of the Transsexual Act as seen in the press and in petitions to the German parliament from 1975 to 1982)
In her article, Kim Trau looks at an important aspect of the German trans* movement's history and the German government's approach towards transsexuality, namely the conflicts seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s leading up to the Transsexual Act. The author analyzes petitions from trans* people to the German parliament as well as press articles on the debated introduction of legislation for a group that was still largely unknown and misunderstood. In doing so, she uncovers pioneers of Germany's trans* movement and trailblazers of legal recognition, as well as a phenomenon whose outlines are still being defined and an Act that still stands at the heart of a struggle over inclusion and exclusion.

An analysis of potential interaction between a California’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage - also known as Prop 8 - and its statute recognizing change of sex, which had been enacted over three decades before the state's supreme court recognition of same-sex marriage which preceded Prop 8.  The article was published in the Touro Journal of Race, Gender and Ethnicity, 5:57 (2010).

The term cisgender (from the Latin cis-, meaning “on the same side as”) can be used to describe individuals who possess, from birth and into adulthood, the male or female reproductive organs (sex) typical of the social category of man or woman (gender) to which that individual was assigned at birth. Hence a cisgender person's gender is on the same side as their birth-assigned sex, in contrast to which a transgender person's gender is on the other side (trans-) of their birth-assigned sex.

An examination of the history of one of the earliest American transsexual birth certificate statutes - that of Louisiana (enacted in 1968) - and its unrecognized public policy implications.  The article was published in Australia's Deakin Law Review, 9(2):399 (2004).

Despite the significant upswing in positive media attention being given to transgender people and transgender concerns, the exuberance currently being expressed – much of it from within the trans community – over recent transgender legal gains is dangerously over-positive.  A historical contextualization of the judicial and administrative advancements in federal transgender-centric anti-discrimination law that took place during the Obama Administration is necessary to understand where transgender law is at and how precarious it is in post-Obama America.  The tool for this evaluation is a history of one of the LGB(T) rights movement's greatest failures: The fact that when the Obama Administration ended, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act was no closer to becoming law than it had been eight years earlier - when, supposedly, everything was in place to undo the intra-community rancor that was sown during the 2007 attempt to pass the first trans-inclusive version of the bill.  The article is an analysis of trans law and trans politics - and it is an indictment of the fatally-flawed concept of 'incremental progress.'

An analysis of potential interaction between a Michigan’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and its 1978 statute recognizing change of sex.  The article was published in the Ohio Northern University Law Review, 35:107 (2009).

This is a paper that I did for a Gender and the Law class at the University of Iowa (team-taught by Patricia Cain and Linda Kerber), examining the multitude of problems with the Iowa Supreme Court's 1983 Sommers decision (subsequently dispensed with in part via Iowa's 2007 trans-inclusive gay rights law.)

A comparison between the Kansas Court of Appeals' treatment of transsexual identity in In re Gardiner and a Texas appellate court's treatment of the same issue in Littleton v. Prange.  This article appeared in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review, 70:257 (2001).

Panel Presentation at the Intersections of Transgender Lives and the Law: Critical Perspectives on Legal and Social Challenges symposium, Temple University Law School, Philadelphia, PA, Nov. 8, 2008.

My presentation included some research that would appear in "Where the Rubber Left the Road: The Use and Misuse of History in the Quest for the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act," Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 18:397 (2009); and some research that would appear in "Is the Renaissance Still Alive in Michigan? Or Just Extrinsic? Transsexuals’ Rights After National Pride at Work," Ohio Northern University Law Review, 35:107 (2009).

Discussion of general trends in transgender law, but with a focus on the Littleton v. Prange case which, at the time of the conference, had been heard by the San Antonio Court of Appeals though the court had not yet issued its now-infamous opinion.

This panel, on which I appeared with Alyson Meiselman, was connected to, though not purely a presentation of, research that appeared in "Sign of a Wave? The Kansas Court of Appeals Rejects Texas Simplicity in Favor of Transsexual Reality," University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review, 70:257 (2001).

An analysis of the 1999 Texas Fourth Court of Appeals' decision in Littleton v. Prange, placing it in context with the emergent quest for same-sex marriage.  The article was published in Tulane University's Journal of Law and Sexuality, 9:1 (1999).