Are Women's Spaces Transgender Spaces? Single-Sex Domestic Violence Shelters, Transgender Inclusion, and the Equal Protection Clause

Abstract

Transgender survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) face unique struggles in finding safe and inclusive housing as they seek reprieve from violence. Domestic violence shelters are often marked “women-only” with the goal of creating spaces for female empowerment, wherein women learn feminist principles of liberation and find a “sisterhood” of support by forging healthy female relationships. However, as a result, shelters frequently deny transgender women access because staff perceive them to be a threat to survivor comfort and to be disruptive to shelters’ femaleempowerment model. Consequently, though transgender women face similar gender-based oppression and a relatively higher risk of violence as compared to cisgender women, shelters commonly deny transgender women equal protection. This Note conceptualizes how a Fourteenth Amendment equal protection challenge by transgender litigants to women-only shelters might proceed in federal courts. By situating transgender identity within the Supreme Court’s broader equal protection jurisprudence, it outlines three ways that the Court could analyze a transgender equal protection challenge: as an issue of first impression, as a sex-based discrimination claim, or as a sexual orientation claim. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38125Q91G Copyright © 2018 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications. * J.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2018. I sincerely thank Professors Russell Robinson, Nancy Lemon, and Christopher Tomlins for all of their insightful feedback. Thank you also to the excellent editors of the California Law Review for their careful edits. 1690 CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 106:1689 Abstract ................................................................................................. 1689 Introduction ........................................................................................... 1690 I. History and Background .................................................................... 1693................................................................................................ 1689 Introduction ........................................................................................... 1690 I. History and Background .................................................................... 1693 A. Dominance Feminism: Philosophy, Tools, and Impact on Domestic Violence Laws ................................................... 1694 B. Criticism from Within: Intersectional Feminist Response 1697 II. Domestic Violence Shelters & The Case For Transgender Inclusion .................................................................................... 1702 A. The Rise of the “Shelter Movement” ................................. 1703 B. Transgender Exclusion & The Case for Inclusion ............. 1704 III. Transgender Identity & The Equal Protection Clause .................... 1710 A. Review Under the Equal Protection Clause Generally ...... 1712 B. A Separate Transgender Identity: The Dim Possibility of Suspect Class Status ........................................................... 1714 1. The Supreme Court and Suspect Classifications ......... 1714 2. Are Transgender People Discrete & Immutable? The Problem with Suspect Class Status .............................. 1717 3. Rational Basis Review: The Likely Result of a Failed Attempt to Achieve Suspect Class Status .................... 1723 C. “Real Differences”: Overcoming Gender Essentialism in The Equal Protection Clause ..................................................... 1724 1. The Search for “Real Differences”: Biological Determinism & the Supreme Court’s Sex-based Equal Protection Jurisprudence .............................................. 1724 2. Applying the Supreme Court’s Sex Jurisprudence to Transgender Women: Are Distinctions based on “Real Differences” or Stereotypical Womanhood? ............... 1732 D. Operationalizing the “T” in LGBT: Unconstitutional Animus ............................................................................... 1746 1. The Supreme Court and Animus: When is Prejudice Unconstitutional? ......................................................... 1746 2. Transgender Litigants and the Animus Principle ........ 1749 Conclusion ............................................................................................ 1751