Rights, Restrictions, and Trans Youth: Exploring the Conservative Clash Over Parental Authority
Tamar Alexanian, American University
Parents' rights groups in the United States have traditionally championed parental autonomy, often opposing government intervention in family matters. Their advocacy has spanned issues from education to healthcare to child-rearing and has generally aligned with a conservative preference for limited government involvement. However, recent conservative-led efforts to restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth reveal a stark departure from this historical stance. As of August 2024, the Human Rights Campaign reports that 26 states have enacted laws restricting or banning such care, significantly limiting parental decision-making authority.
This article explores the emerging tension between the historical values of parental autonomy and the current conservative push for government intervention. Framing their actions as ""protecting children,"" these groups often reject the scientific consensus on the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care. This shift represents a profound conflict within the ideology of parents’ rights advocacy, raising critical questions about the balance between protecting children’s well-being and preserving parental autonomy in an increasingly polarized political landscape.
Beyond Title IX: Reconciling Institutional Values, Messaging to Students, and Student Conduct Processes Campuses Use to Respond to Reports of Gender-Based Violence and Harassment
As the legal landscape defining the obligations of institutions of higher education to prevent and respond to campus gender-based violence (GBV) and protect respondents’ due process rights in campus adjudication processes continues to shift, student victims are often erased. Recent research into student victims’ experiences participating in campus GBV student conduct processes highlight a glaring irony. The very processes created to respond to and mitigate the harm caused by GBV frequently exacerbates that harm and negatively impacts student victims’ access to education. Students encouraged to report GBV to their campuses through campus messaging about GBV and students who unintentionally report GBV by disclosing to campus employees complying with mandatory reporting rules express surprise and feelings of betrayal when they are thrust into a complicated legal process that demands significant time and labor from them and subjects them to re-traumatization, invasion of privacy, personal attacks, and retaliation.
This Article centers the experiences of student victims of GBV who participate in campus GBV student conduct processes by incorporating the current social science and advocacy research focusing on those experiences. It provides recommendations to campuses to (1) identify their individual institutional values and messaging related to GBV, (2) identify the areas in which they retain discretion under federal and state law in how they respond to student disclosures and reports of GBV, and (3) use the lens of student victims’ experiences to realign their Title IX student conduct processes and with their institutional values and messaging.
The Post-Dobbs Peril and Promise of Title IX
Emily Suski, South Carolina
Title IX has significant potential to offer protection against sex discrimination where the Equal Protection Clause does not. The Supreme Court has said that Title IX provides broader protections than the Equal Protection Clause. And, unlike the Equal Protection Clause, Title IX’s protections extend to all schools of all levels that receive any federal funding, including private schools. Yet, Title IX has yet to define what constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. This definitional void leaves those potentially broader protections at risk, particularly following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which took a narrow and dim view of what constitutes sex discrimination, and because of inherent tensions regarding Title IX’s scope within Title IX itself. Given those tensions, this article argues that Dobbs’ decision both poses significant peril for sex equality protections under Title IX and at the same time substantial opportunity for avoiding those perils translating the promise of broader sex equality protections under Title IX into reality exist.