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7 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 37 (2000-2001)
Unprincipled Exclusions: The Struggle to Achieve Judicial and Legislative Equality for Transgender People

handle is hein.journals/wmjwl7 and id is 45 raw text is: UNPRINCIPLED EXCLUSIONS: THE STRUGGLE TO ACHIEVE JUDICIAL AND LEGISLATIVE EQUALITY FOR TRANSGENDER PEOPLE PAISLEY CURRAH AND SHANNON MINTER* ABSTRACT This Article examines recent efforts to enact civil rights statutes for transgender people in the United States. Part I provides an overview of the largely negative case law on the issue of whether transgender people are protected under existing sex, sexual orientation or disability discrimination laws. This context is provided, in part, to explain why transgender rights advocates have turned to the legislative branches of government to secure basic civil rights protections. Part II describes the initial successes that have been achieved as a result of this new focus on political activism and legislation. Part III examines the actual statutory language that has been used to protect transgender people, as well as some of the key strategic questions that have arisen in the course of drafting such legislation. I. UNPRINCIPLED EXCLUSIONS: THE SHORT UNHAPPY LIFE OF TRANSGENDER JURISPRUDENCE Transgender' people face severe discrimination in virtually every aspect of social life--in employment, housing, public * Paisley Currah, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York; B.A., 1987, Queen's University at Kingston, Canada; M.A., 1992, Ph.D., 1994, Cornell University. Shannon Minter, Senior Staff Attorney, National Center for Lesbian Rights; B.A., 1983, University of Texas at Austin; J.D., 1993, Cornell Law School. We thank Jennifer L. Levi and Liz Seaton for help with the work upon which this Article was based, and Monica Barrett, Robin Gilbrecht and Courtney Joslin for their comments on earlier drafts. Paisley Currah's work researching and writing this Article was supported by a fellowship from the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities at Brooklyn College and a grant from the PSC-CUNY Research Foundation. i. This Article uses the term transgender in its most inclusive sense, as an umbrella term encompassing: pre-operative, post-operative and non-operative transsexual people; cross-dressers; feminine men and masculine women; intersexed persons; and more generally, anyone whose gender identity or expression differs from conventional expectations of masculinity or femininity. In contrast, some legal scholars have used the term more narrowly, as a synonym for transsexual. See, e.g., Chai R. Feldblum, Sexual Orientation, Morality, and the Law: Devlin Revisited, 57 U. PITT. L. REV. 237, 238 n.1 (1996) (defining transgender people as those who desire to change their gender, are in the process of changing their gender, or have completed the process of changing their

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