Federal judges issue conflicting rulings
When I posted yesterday's diary, DoJ to appeal injunction, I was surprised to encounter a reader/commenter who came down on the side of Texas AG Ken Paxton. Not being a lawyer, I didn't really engage in any argument at the time.
But I am happy this morning to encounter a federal magistrate who does challenge such thinking. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert has issued an 82-page report recommending that US District Judge Jorge Alonso of the Northern District of Illinois reject a preliminary injunction in which a group of students and parents sought to prevent a policy from being adopted that would allow a transgender girl from using the girls locker rooms at a high school in Palatine, Illinois.
High school students do not have a constitutional right not to share restrooms or locker rooms with transgender students whose sex assigned at birth is different than theirs.
In addition, sharing a restroom or locker room with a transgender student does not create a severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive hostile environment under Title IX given the privacy protections [the school district] has put in place in those facilities and the alternative facilities available to students who do not want to share a restroom or locker room with a transgender student.
--Judge Gilbert
Gilbert also said he doubted the plaintiffs’ claim that the Education Department failed to abide by the Administrative Procedure Act when interpreting Title IX to include protections for transgender students.
A complaint filed over the summer by Students and Parents for Privacy — an “unincorporated association” of 51 families with ties to Township High School District 211 — is seeking to keep the William Fremd High School student out of the locker room.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey T. Gilbert on Tuesday said Township High School District 211 “offers all students reasonable accommodations to ensure their privacy is protected” and that “any cisgender high school student who does not want to use a restroom or a locker room with a transgender student is not required to do so.”
Judge Alonso is not legally required to follow Judge Gilbert's determination, but I'm led to believe that district court judges generally accept preliminary rulings from magistrates.
US District Judge Reed O'Connor announced this morning that his ruling in Texas that barred the DoE from enforcing its directive on transgender access to bathrooms consistent with their gender applied to every state in the nation.
Comments
Not sure about the magistrate part but
the district courts are the trial courts (the courts that hear the facts and make decisions based on those facts). The district court's decision is only binding authority on future cases in that district. There are 13 circuit courts which are the next level of appeal. They don't relitigate the facts generally, but they review whether or not the law was applied correctly. Their decision is binding on all of the district courts in their circuit only, so a decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit is binding in the district courts of NY, CT, & VT, but not anywhere else.
Now if there is no previous decisions on a particular issue in a particular circuit, decisions from other circuit courts on that issue can be "persuasive".
I'm a little rusty - I work in administrative law (I'm a paralegal for NYS), but I remember that in NY, we have magistrates that make decisions in child support cases, so maybe it's a specialized sort of judge? Not sure about that.
US Federal Magistrate judges
US Federal Magistrate judges generally oversee first appearances of criminal defendants, set bail, and conduct other administrative duties.
Thanks, Robyn.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --