Gender and the Law Blog

House Votes to Amend Title IX to Prohibit Trans Girls from Women's Sports in Schools

House Votes to Amend Title IX to Ban Trans Girls from Women Sports in Schools

The House on Tuesday voted 218-206 to ban transgender girls and women from girls’ sports in federally-funded schools by amending Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions. This bill, the first federal anti-trans law brought to a vote in a newly GOP-controlled Congress, is Democrats’ first test on whether they will fight an expected wave of proposed anti-trans laws under President-elect Donald Trump. 

If passed into law, this legislation would change Title IX and revoke federal funding for schools that allow trans girls and women in sports teams that align with their gender identity. Public K-12 schools would be implicated by this new rule, as well as colleges and universities. The bill was brought by Rep. Greg Steube of Florida, who reintroduced legislation he had previously tried to get through the House, alongside an identical bill in the Senate from Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. 

This legislation would change the actual statute of Title IX to explicitly exclude transgender people from a federal civil rights law — a major setback for LGBTQ+ rights that would leave trans and nonbinary students more open to discrimination and with fewer avenues to fight it. Notably, the effect of this law would go further than a recent judicial ruling in Kentucky that rolled back Title IX protections nationwide for LGBTQ+ students. 

Reproductive Justice, Feminist Resistance, and the Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation

Serena Mayeri, Reproductive Injustice, Feminist Resistance, and the Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Forthcoming

This contribution to a symposium in honor of Jack Balkin’s Memory and Authority argues that histories of feminist resistance to reproductive injustice provide especially valuable resources for constitutional interpretation. Building on the work of scholars such as Peggy Cooper Davis, Reva Siegel, and Dorothy Roberts, as well as a longer article on the critical roles of history after Dobbs, the essay identifies several functions that this history can serve: rectifying historical erasures; expanding the sources and content of constitutional memory; and showcasing the absurd and anti-democratic results of a narrow approach to history-and-tradition. The essay concludes by cataloguing sites where this expansion of constitutional memory can occur, including dissenting and concurring opinions; state courts and constitutions; public education; and electoral politics. 

New Study Challenges Misperception that Gender Equality in the Legal Profession Has Been Achieved

Andrea K. Schneider, Abigail R. Bogli & Hannah L. Chin, The New Glass Ceiling, 2024 Wis. L. Rev. 1687 (2024)

Until the last decade, gender inequality in the legal profession was self evident. Law school classrooms and law firm offices were overwhelmingly filled with men. In recent years, women have outnumbered men in law school classes and reached parity with men among first-year associates. These developments have created the misperception that gender equality has been achieved. In this Article, we challenge this complacency. We present new evidence from a detailed case study of law firms in a midsize city, showing that women remain underrepresented in leadership roles and underpaid relative to their colleagues. We then show how the limited opportunities and lower pay women receive at law firms explain why so many have left. We argue that the movement for gender equality in the law should shift its focus from hiring to attrition. We provide crucial, incisive questions that law school students and career service offices can use to better investigate the problem, especially as students contemplate career decisions. By asking these questions, we believe candidates can more accurately sense what the law firm experience might entail. Through this process, we believe that students can act as a force for change.

A New Criminal Offense of "Intimate Intrusions" for Online Abuse

Clare McGlynn, Towards a New Criminal Offence of Intimate Intrusions, Feminist Legal Studies, 2024

This article suggests a new approach to tackling women’s experiences of harm and abuse, particularly online, namely a criminal law of ‘intimate intrusions’. It seeks to reinvigorate Betsy Stanko’s (1985) concept of intimate intrusions, developing it particularly in the context of the ever-increasing prevalence of online abuse against women and girls, as well as establishing how this conceptualisation might manifest in law reform. Intimate intrusions, it is argued, provides a valuable umbrella concept that may better encompass both the range and nature of existing harms, as well as, crucially, the yet-to-be-imagined modes of abuse. Further, in suggesting a new criminal offence of intimate intrusions, this article challenges the common process of piecemeal criminal law reform, with each new manifestation of abuse resulting in a specific offence tackling that specific behaviour. While such an approach provides new redress options, it remains limited. Following an examination of recent reforms in Northern Ireland, where three distinct new criminal offences were adopted covering downblousing, upskirting and cyberflashing, this article suggests that the concept of ‘intimate intrusions’ provides a better foundation for a new criminal offence and outlines its potential nature and scope.

Publication of Gender & Law 2024-2025 Volume

Thomson Reuters has published its 2024-2025 volume of Gender & the Law. The volume was edited by Aníbal Rosario Lebrón, Daniela Kraiem, and Jamie R. Abrams. The Editorial Board that selected the featured scholarship included the volume editors as well as April G. Dawson (North Carolina Central University School of Law), Elizabeth R. Kukura (Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law), Laura Lane-Steele (University of South Carolina School of Law), and Neoshia R. Roemer (Seaton Hall Law School) .

The Foreward to the book is available here. The Foreward frames the books themes as follows: 

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, decided in mid 2022, dominated Gender and the Law scholarship in 2023 and early 2024. Like a tidal wave, the reversal of the 50-year-old precedent transformed the legal landscape. While the decision was not unexpected, the implications were far-reaching and fast moving.

 

The Editorial Board looked in depth at the wide range of scholarship produced in this immediate aftermath and found ourselves with overflowing lists of articles. We had to make hard choices about what to include in this volume because of the many outstanding pieces published and the vast implications of Dobbs. The articles we selected represent not only excellence in the scholarship produced in this area but also we hope they will lead our readers to consider angles or aspects of the many issues raised by the Dobbs decision that might otherwise have been overlooked.

 

In addition to these articles, which make up over half of the volume, the Editorial Board was also struck by how scholars are rethinking and exploring new ground in topics that feminist and queer scholars have been exploring for decades, such as sex discrimination, gender-based violence, the importance of legal pedagogy, and the meaning of equality. This field of law remains vibrant and is attracting new voices and approaches.

 

It is also worth noting that a striking number of articles in the Gender and the Law area were published this year in flagship law reviews and journals. For years, gender-focused journals have played an enormous role in keeping gender and the law scholarship vibrant and moving forward. Adding the voices of gender and the law scholars to flagship journals shows the maturity of the scholarship and the (long-overdue) recognition that the interaction of gender and law is not a peripheral topic, but rather at the heart of both legal scholarship and the lived reality of everyday people. There was a time, not long ago, when junior scholars were pulled aside and cautioned not to write about reproductive rights before tenure, lest their scholarship be under-valued. This volume proves that the legal academy has finally centered gender issues, and it has done so at a particularly critical time. As we send this volume to the press, regressive legal movements threaten the very autonomy of women, the diversity of the academy, and the academic freedom of progressive scholars. We hope that this momentum toward centering Gender and the Law topics continues and withstands any backlash.

 

Women’s equality, trans rights, and LGBTQ+ advocacy are all at the core of legal and political debates, and the articles we have selected reflect their enormous salience in today’s world.

 

The Foreward frames the book's organization as follows: 

This volume opens with the scholarship produced in the wake of Dobbs. The incredible breadth of this work required us to break the scholarship into three categories. The first section examines the historical and constitutional issues immediately raised by the decision. The second one turns to works centering on the effect of Dobbs on the reproductive experiences of people often absent from mainstream conversations about abortion such as Native Americans and people with disabilities. The final section illuminates how Dobbs is not narrowly confined to abortion. It will engender massive changes to the core relationship between people and the state. The Dobbs discussion closes with a look at how new technologies combined with this new precedent should ring alarm bells for people, regardless of whether they will ever become pregnant.

 

* * *

The second part of this volume bridges the discussion on Dobbs with discrimination based on pregnancy and pregnancy loss.

 

* * * 

We continue the theme of how technology poses a threat to rights but shift away from Dobbs and reproductive health care to think through the violent and gendered implications of two other kinds of technologies: cyber abuse and the technologies of war.

 

* * *

We move to our next section with several outstanding articles addressing developments in the movement for LGBTQ+ Equality. We lead with two articles addressing a pressing–and often tense–conflict among some scholars within the feminist and queer academy, with critical implications in courtrooms and legislatures worldwide: to what degree can biological differences justify sex discrimination? We then follow with two articles that explore the practical implications of calculating and calibrating gender identities in the realm of the administrative state and within legal education.

 

The full Table of Contents is here. 

Call for Papers: International Society of Family Law, Hosted in Philadelphia on June 16

International Society of Family Law – North American Regional Conference
Family Law in an Age of Political Contestation

Philadelphia, June 16, 2025

CALL FOR PAPERS

The ISFL North American Regional Conference will take place at the Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia on June 16, 2025. The theme of the conference is “Family Law in an Age of Political Contestation.”

We encourage papers that approach family law from the lens of critical theory, intersectional analysis, abolitionism, and/or law and economic inequality. We especially welcome proposals that focus on the impact of the current political moment on families who are vulnerable or otherwise marginalized due to their members’ identities (LGBTQIA+, immigration status, race, disability, income status, for example).

Please submit abstracts of maximum 1000 words here. When doing so, please also include your current position and institutional affiliation. The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2025. We will notify those whose papers have been selected shortly thereafter.

You are also invited to attend without giving a paper. If you wish to do so, please check the box next to the “Attend, but not present scholarship” option at the submission website. If you are interested in serving as a moderator or commentator on a panel, please register for the conference and check the appropriate box on the submission form by February 1, 2025.  

There may be a modest registration fee (no more than $30). Unfortunately, we cannot offer any financial support for our speakers, but we nevertheless hope that we will be able to welcome you in Philadelphia in June 2025. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

Conveners:
Prof. Sarah Katz (Temple University School of Law)
Prof. Dara Purvis (Temple University School of Law)
Dean Rachel Rebouche (Temple University School of Law)
Prof. Emily Stolzenberg (Villanova University School of Law)

Gilat J. Bachar on "Informed Bystanders' Duty to Warn"

Gilat J. Bachar has published "Informed Bystanders’ Duty to Warn" in volume 109 of the Minnesota Law Review (2024). The abstract is excerpted here: 

Should bystanders with credible knowledge about prospective harm owe a duty of care to future victims? This urgent question comes up in various contexts, from former employers who withhold information about a serial harasser to data brokers who are silent about stalkers that track personal information. Under established common law, the “No Duty to Act” (“no-duty”) rule generally does not require bystanders to warn strangers. Carving out an exception to this rule decades ago, Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California imposed a duty on a mental health professional to warn a prospective victim about the risk posed by a dangerous patient. Yet existing tort scholarship and doctrine undertheorize the grounds for such a duty to warn, and courts struggle to apply the duty in appropriate cases beyond the medical context.

 

Offering a fresh take on Tarasoff, this Article makes the case for a duty to warn owed by those I define as “informed bystanders.” I first identify four criteria that courts tend to implicitly consider in deciding whether to recognize the duty: Expertise; Certainty; Cost; and Position of Power or Special Capacity. I then question the theoretical necessity of expertise as one of these criteria. Next, I advance two arguments to support informed bystanders’ duty to warn. The first argument—couched both in the common law’s self-interested individualism and in feminist legal theory—posits that the no-duty rule’s default should be flipped to generally recognize a duty to warn. According to the second, narrower argument, the no-duty rule need not be changed. Instead, existing exceptions to the rule should apply to the special relationship between informed bystanders and future wrongdoers or victims. Finally, I address potential pushbacks, contemplate models for implementing the duty, and flag key cross-private law implications. The Article thus begins a crucial conversation on tort law’s nasty habit: allowing bystanders to withhold information that could prevent harm to others.

S. Lisa Washington on "Time and Punishment"

S. Lisa Washington has published "Time and Punishment" in volume 134 of the Yale Law Journal (2024). The abstract is excerpted below: 

Every three minutes, state agents remove a child from their home. Once a family is separated, impacted parents are up against a quickly approaching deadline—permanent legal separation looms at the end. In fact, impacted parents navigate three interrelated temporal dimensions: the race to permanent legal separation through the termination of parental rights, the time-consuming process of having to prove that they are fit parents, and the possibility that tomorrow, the state’s concerns will drastically change. The family regulation system—the system that has the power to separate families in this way—has been the subject of sustained critique by both academics and directly impacted families. One major critique is that instead of helping children and their parents, the system further marginalizes them. This Feature introduces an underexplored layer of marginalization in the family regulation system: time.

This Feature argues that the construction of time in the system is not merely a benign force but instead profoundly shapes the family regulation process. Conceptions of time that are neutral fail to account for the ways temporal marginalization fixes parents in time, devalues time as a resource, reproduces social stratification, and privileges the state while disadvantaging families already at the margins. This Feature builds on an emerging literature that critically examines time in legal systems. Drawing on multidisciplinary frameworks that conceptualize the relationship between time and power, this Feature provides an aerial view of the abstract problem of regulating parent-child relationships through a temporal frame, as well as the concrete legal timelines, procedures, and court processes that combine to exacerbate an already-conflictual relationship between the state and marginalized families.

 

Time and Punishment is the first article to bring the rich conversation on time and power to the family regulation context. This Feature makes two central contributions. One, it identifies and discusses three temporal dimensions in the system—constriction, stretching, and indeterminacy—and addresses their combined impacts, as well as the legal frameworks that underlie them. Second, it brings two sets of literature into conversation: family regulation scholarship and multidisciplinary research on time, power, and marginalization. In this way, it offers an epistemic intervention that complicates managerial conceptions of time and offers insights that are fruitful beyond the family regulation context. Ultimately, this Feature concludes that taking account of time as experienced by impacted families is one step toward fully understanding and responding to temporal marginalization.

Meredith Esser on "Who Bears the Burden When Prison Guards Rape?"

Meredith B. Esser has published Who Bears the Burden When Prison Guards Rape? in the Iowa Law Review Online. The abstract is excerpted here: 

Several recent scandals have highlighted the continued problem of institutional sexual abuse within the federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”). Most notoriously, the rampant sexual abuse of women incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution (“FCI”) Dublin, also known as the “rape club,” resulted in the prosecution and conviction of several high-ranking officials within FCI Dublin, including both the former Warden and former Chaplain who worked there for several years. In response to these patterns of misconduct, the Federal Sentencing Commission’s new guidelines, which went into effect on November 1, 2023, now allow for victims of custodial sexual assault to apply for early release or sentence reductions based on that assault. However, the Sentencing Commission’s reform in this regard comes with a caveat: to be eligible to move a sentencing court for early release, the assailant’s misconduct must have been established in a separate civil, criminal, or administrative proceeding.

 

Although the new guideline is commendable, a requirement that misconduct be substantiated in this way effectively places an impossible burden of proof onto incarcerated victims—in a manner inconsistent with other federal early release provisions—and in a context in which the incarcerated movant is in a particularly disadvantaged position to meet and litigate that burden. For example, lack of access to counsel or discovery tools for survivors, and the need to litigate for one’s early release within a prison setting, make the effective litigation of the substantiation requirement impracticable in many circumstances. Further, this Essay argues that this substantiation requirement counterproductively minimizes the experiences of survivors, discounts their accounts of sexual abuse, and elevates the adjudication of the assailant above the immediate needs of victims.

Hedging: University Responses to the Overturn of Roe in Abortion-Ban States

Clare Daniel and Kimala Price have published "Hedging: University Responses to the Overturn of Roe in Abortion-Ban States" in volume 63 of American Studies (2024). The abstract is excerpted here: 

Colleges and universities in states with near-total abortion bans began navigating new terrain regarding public relations, student affairs, and community accountability after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Many institutions found themselves in a quagmire of risk assessment that overshadowed the ongoing social justice and human rights issues presented by the lack of abortion access for their students, faculty, staff, and surrounding communities. We analyze the responses of six similarly positioned private institutions in abortion-ban or abortion-restrictive states. Drawing on reproductive justice scholarship, we utilize feminist critical discourse analysis to examine official statements by top university administrators and contextualize them within the institutions’ competing interests as determined through an investigation of news media and scholarship on higher education. We also look at writings created by student and employee activists aiming to influence institutional responses, and we examine the specific tactics and material resources deployed by these universities in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Ultimately, we argue that, as universities have become increasingly run like businesses over the last several decades, concerned primarily with their bottom line and risk aversion, institutions in states with severe restrictions or bans on abortion engage in a complex balancing act of several competing interests of which reproductive justice is only one if it is considered at all. Accordingly, we conclude that only when the effects of abortion bans on these institutions’ economic viability become clearer over the next few years are we likely to see universities use their considerable political power to pressure state legislatures on reproductive rights.

Jennifer Hendricks on "Next Time Around: Abortion and Sex Equality"

Jennifer Hendricks has published Next Time Around: Abortion and Sex Equality in volume 63 of the American Studies journal. The introduction is excerpted below: 

Can the American legal system embrace and promote reproductive justice? Only with deep changes in the values that drive constitutional analysis. Roe v. Wade was based on a privacy right that contained the seeds of its own destruction as a vehicle for reproductive justice. It protected the right to an abortion if you could get one on your own, but it provided little for poor women in particular and nothing to support a broader vision of reproductive justice. Feminist theory can provide an alternative set of values that resonate with the most important “road not taken” in constitutional law.

From Roe to Dobbs, the Supreme Court always treated abortion as a tragedy, a perhaps necessary evil—never a boon that freed a woman from an unwanted invasion of her body. The court’s refusal to incorporate women’s needs into constitutional law culminated in its insistence, in Dobbs, that the scope of protected liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment should be determined according to the beliefs of “eminent common-law authorities” like Matthew Hale, a seventeenth-century English judge who sentenced witches to be hanged and promoted the legal rule that raping your wife isn’t a crime.

Next time around, we need a positive right to abortion as part of a broader reproductive justice agenda. Legally, this means revisiting the Reconstruction Amendments to build a framework of positive rights for protecting dignity, equality, and relationships against invasion and domination.

ANSIRH Report on Abortion Onscreen in 2024

ANSIRH has published its report on abortion depictions in film and TV for 2024. 

The findings are excerpted here: 

• We documented at least 67 abortion plotlines on U.S. television this year. Half (50%) included plotlines about characters of color seeking abortions, while white characters make up slightly less than half (45%).

• About one-third of this year’s characters received emotional support before, during, or after their abortions.

• Less than half (42%) of this year’s plotlines included a character actually obtaining an abortion or disclosing a past abortion. The majority of depictions were either considerations of abortion or discussions of abortion generally.

• About one-third of this year’s television plotlines depicted political, logistical, or financial obstacles to abortion access, an increase since 2023.

• We saw a record low number of medication abortion depictions. Of the 67 plotlines, only two included depictions of medication abortion.

Its implications are summarized here: 

This year, television viewers tuned in for a wide range of abortion storyline depictions, with a record number of abortion storylines featuring characters of color. Many television shows referenced the ongoing political and cultural fallout from the Dobbs decision, even using humor to poke fun at abortion restrictions. Missing from this year’s plotlines were characters parenting at the time of their abortions, characters struggling to make ends meet, in-depth portrayals of medication abortion, and any mention of self-managed abortion. Several troubling themes emerged, including the high prevalence of coerced abortions and the return of “false pregnancy” and “averted abortion” storylines that mention but ultimately avoid portraying characters obtaining abortions. 

Abortion Care Network Report: "Communities Need Clinics: There is No Access Without Independent Abortion Care Providers"

Abortion Care Network has published a 2024 report titled, "Communities Need Clinics: There is No Access Without Independent Abortion Care Providers." Key excerpts from the report are provided below: 

In addition to providing the majority of abortions in the U.S., independent providers operate the majority of abortion clinics in the states that are most politically hostile to abortion.  

* * *

Access to abortion care throughout pregnancy has depended on independent abortion clinics for decades, and this remains true. Even after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, independent clinics make up 62 percent of all US clinics that provide abortion after the first trimester. Independent clinics represent 67 percent of all clinics that provide care at and after 16 weeks of pregnancy, 71 percent of clinics providing care at and after 19 weeks of pregnancy, and 88 percent of clinics that provide care at or after 22 weeks of pregnancy. After 26 weeks of pregnancy, the only clinics that provide abortion care are independent. Though most abortions occur in the first trimester of pregnancy, there are many reasons that people need abortions in the second and third trimesters, including delays caused by abortion restrictions, a lack of resources, increased clinic wait times, and factors related to health, safety, and viability.

* * *

Independent abortion clinics are more likely to provide both medication and in-clinic abortion care as options. Seventy-six percent of brick-and-mortar independent clinics offer both medication and in-clinic abortion care, as compared to Planned Parenthood, where both medication and in-clinic abortion care are available at only 38 percent of affiliated clinics.

* * *

Abortion Care Network identified 76 independent abortion clinic closures between 2022 and 2024. Forty-two independent clinics closed in 2022, and 23 clinics closed in 2023. As of November 2024, there have been 11 confirmed independent clinic closures in 2024.

* * *

In states where abortion remains legal, medically unnecessary restrictions, financial barriers, and the constant threat of anti-abortion extremism make it challenging for clinics to keep their doors open. Clinics in these states are not immune to the threat of closure: Eight out of the 11 (70 percent) independent clinics forced to close in 2024 were in states considered legally “protective” or “very protective.” 

* * *

The fact that no fewer than 32 independent brick-and-mortar clinics have opened since Roe was overturned shows the dedication and determination of independent providers. These providers have had to navigate varying state regulations (which often differ from medical best practices), build connections in new communities, relocate or hire staff, and cover the significant costs of opening and running a medical practice—costs that include security and legal demands not required of other health care professionals.

The report advocates for action items supporting independent clinics. 

 

 

Study Analyzes Gendered Service Work in Academia

Margaretha Järvinen and Nanna Mik-Meyer, Giving and Receiving: Gendered Service Work in Academia, Current Sociology (2024) [ResearchGate Link]

Deploying the perspective of ‘relational work’, this article investigates the mechanisms behind the gender-unequal distribution of academic service. The concept of relational work is used to analyse how men and women in academia balance collective against individual interests when agreeing or disagreeing on service tasks. Four types of relational work are identified: compliance, evasiveness, barter and investment, with compliance being more common among women, evasiveness and barter being more common among men and investment being tied to temporality in a gendered pattern. The article shows that men are more successful in pursuing individual interests against service demands and how this depends on their relational work as well as organisational role expectations, reducing women’s prospects of ‘saying no’. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 163 associate and full professors in the social sciences and CV data on their service contributions.

President Designates Frances Perkins National Monument for First Woman Cabinet Secretary

President Biden Designates Frances Perkins National Monument

Today President Biden will sign a proclamation establishing the Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle, Maine, to honor the historic contributions of America’s first woman Cabinet Secretary and the longest-serving Secretary of Labor.

Frances Perkins was the leading architect behind the New Deal and led many labor and economic reforms that continue to benefit Americans today. During her 12 years as Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she envisioned and helped create Social Security; helped millions of Americans get back to work during the Great Depression; fought for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively; and established the minimum wage, overtime pay, prohibitions on child labor, and unemployment insurance

National Park Service, Frances Perkins National Monument

Carbone and Huntington on "Fatherhood, Family Law, and the Crisis of Boys and Men"

June Carbone and Clare Huntington have published "Fatherhood, Family Law, and the Crisis of Boys and Men" in volume 124 of the Columbia Law Review. The abstract is excerpted below: 

Boys and men in all racial and ethnic groups and across most socioeconomic groups are struggling on many fronts, including education, employment, physical and mental health, and social integration. In these areas and more, boys and men are much worse off than they were only a few decades ago. The crisis--which is concentrated among men without college degrees--is rooted in large-scale structural changes to the economy that have decimated jobs for this group and policy choices that emphasize incarceration while doing little to address economic inequality.

The decline in male well-being is not just a problem for boys and men. It is a problem for families. Men’s economic prospects have a profound impact on whether couples will commit to each other. Men without steady work--and with behaviors that often accompany unemployment, including a higher frequency of intimate partner violence--have trouble sustaining long-term relationships, and many do not marry. They often have children, but once romantic relationships end, unmarried men tend to drift away from the family. Many fathers want a larger role in their children’s lives, but this is possible only if they can strengthen their relationship with mothers. Many mothers also want fathers to be more involved, but they are concerned about issues fathers bring to the family. And children want a relationship with both parents.

Family law is part of the problem, contributing to the familial isolation of men without college degrees. In recent decades, family law has undergone a significant transformation, but this transformation primarily benefits married couples. The legal system now seeks to create “postdivorce families”--that is, families in which both parents are cooperative, active caregivers, notwithstanding the end of the parents’ romantic relationship. To this end, custody laws encourage shared parenting, and family courts offer alternative dispute resolution processes, counseling, and other assistance that strengthen fathers’ active membership in the family. But men facing economic precarity are unlikely to be married and thus need not go to court when a romantic relationship ends. Accordingly, these men do not benefit from this transformation in custody rules and processes, and they are unlikely to access the supportive services. The child support system makes things worse by imposing unrealistic orders on low-income fathers that alienate men from their families. And the family regulation system, also known as the child welfare system, treats these fathers as incompetent caregivers or, even worse, as threats.

Family law may relegate men in crisis to the periphery of family life, but it can also help bring them back. The goal is not to restore men’s patriarchal authority but rather to extend the model of cooperative parenting to more families. To this end, this Essay proposes far-reaching reforms to custody rules and processes, child support, and family regulation. In each of these problematic areas of family law, the proposed reforms give families greater autonomy in shaping agreements about family relationships, support to make these bargains workable, and opportunities for men to be active fathers.

Pre-Filed 2025 Alabama Bill Proposes Vasectomy or Castration in Cases of Rape or Incest

A pre-filed 2025 Alabama Bill seeks to empower courts to order a vasectomy or castration of a man who is convicted of rape or incest leading to a pregnancy. The proposed new language reads as follows: 

(c)(1) An abortion shall be permitted if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.

(2) If a man is convicted of the act of rape or incest and the act results in pregnancy, the court shall require him to: (i) pay for all medical expenses associated with the resulting pregnancy and abortion; and (ii) undergo either a vasectomy or castration."

This language is likely unconstitutional under Skinner v. Oklahoma. 

The bill also proposes deleting the language defining and describing what a "serious health risk to the unborn child's mother" is, as marked out below. This, if enacted, would instead use undefined language to "preserve the health of the unborn child's mother." Removing a definition is surely a path to minimize access to health-based exceptions for the health of the pregnant person.

SERIOUS HEALTH RISK TO THE UNBORN CHILD'S MOTHER. In reasonable medical judgment, the child's mother has a condition that so complicates her medical condition that it necessitates the termination of her pregnancy to avert her death or to avert serious risk of substantial physical impairment of a major bodily function. This term does not include a condition based on a claim that the woman is suffering from an emotional condition or a mental illness which will cause her to engage in conduct that intends to result in her death or the death of her unborn child. However, the condition may exist if a second physician who is licensed in Alabama as a psychiatrist, with a minimum of three years of clinical experience, examines the woman and documents that the woman has a diagnosed serious mental illness and because of it, there is reasonable medical judgment that she will engage in conduct that could result in her death or the death of her unborn child. If the mental health diagnosis and likelihood of conduct is confirmed as provided in this chapter, and it is determined that a termination of her pregnancy is medically necessary to avoid the conduct, the termination may be performed and shall be only performed by a physician licensed in Alabama in a hospital as defined in the Alabama Administrative Code and to which he or she has admitting privileges.

Review the full bill here: https://alison.legislature.state.al.us/files/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2025RS/HB50-int.pdf.  

History of The Men's Rights Movement and American Politics, 1960-2005

 Theresa M. Iker, Before the Red Pill: The Men's Rights Movement and American Politics, 1960-2005, Stanford Dep't of History, PhD Dissertation (2023).

"Before the Red Pill" [reference to "The Matrix"] traces the American men's rights movement (MRM) from its roots in the early 1960s to its growing influence in mainstream national politics by the early 2000s. Examining both MRM leadership efforts and grassroots organizing across the United States, this dissertation utilizes organizational papers, activist correspondence, oral histories, movement newsletters, advice literature and memoirs, and mainstream press coverage.

The dissertation reveals the complex dynamics of gender, race, and politics in the growth of the MRM. The experience of divorce radicalized men's rights activists, who began organizing in the 1960s to reform family law. Rather than a mere backlash against feminism, men's rights thinkers adapted some of their most important insights and strategies from second-wave feminists throughout the 1970s, before becoming militantly misogynistic by the 1990s. Both conservative women intellectuals and second wives of divorced men's rights activists played critical roles during this era, softening the movement's public image and aiding in the development of a fathers' rights sub-movement devoted to child custody and support reforms. Overwhelmingly white themselves, men's rights thinkers made selective allusions to race to compare their politics to the Black freedom struggle, yet they distanced themselves from potential Black members amid the racialized politics of the 1980s and 1990s.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, men's rights activists devoted themselves to undermining feminist organizing against rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment while claiming that men, rather than women, were the true victims of gendered violence. The simultaneous intensification of antifeminist and anti-state sentiments among activists pushed the movement further rightward into conservative partisan politics. Understanding the men's rights movement helps explain the emotive roles of masculinity, grievance, and entitlement in mobilizing the far Right base and maintaining persistent inequalities in the contemporary United States.

Conference: Abortion in American History

Conference, Abortion in American History: Intimate Decisions, Medical Knowledge, and Legal Decrees in the Two Centuries Before Roe v. Wade

This conference brings together leading scholars to explore the multifaceted history of abortion in 19th- and 20th-century America. Building on the Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology, this conference will explore the underlying history that can deepen public understanding of the controversial politics of abortion law.

New academic research on abortion history has surged in recent years, spurred by the lead-up to the Dobbs decision in 2022. Dobbs arrived at a time when a solid court majority professed reliance on originalism, a form of legal analysis that uses constitutional history and its presumed original meaning as the basis for court decisions. Historians have been busy presenting amicus briefs, both in Dobbs and in a continuing flurry of state court cases since the ruling returned abortion law to the states. Accurately understanding both legal and reproductive history has never been more important.

 

CFP International Society of Family Law: Family Law in an Age of Political Contestation

International Society of Family Law – North American Regional Conference
Family Law in an Age of Political Contestation

Philadelphia, June 16, 2025

CALL FOR PAPERS

The ISFL North American Regional Conference will take place at the Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia on June 16, 2025. The theme of the conference is "Family Law in an Age of Political Contestation."

We encourage papers that approach family law from the lens of critical theory, intersectional analysis, abolitionism, and/or law and economic inequality. We especially welcome proposals that focus on the impact of the current political moment on families who are vulnerable or otherwise marginalized due to their members' identities (LGBTQIA+, immigration status, race, disability, income status, for example).

Please submit abstracts of maximum 1000 words here. When doing so, please also include your current position and institutional affiliation. The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2025. We will notify those whose papers have been selected shortly thereafter.

You are also invited to attend without giving a paper. If you wish to do so, please check the box next to the "Attend, but not present scholarship" option at the submission website. If you are interested in serving as a moderator or commentator on a panel, please register for the conference and check the appropriate box on the submission form by February 1, 2025.  

There may be a modest registration fee (no more than $30). Unfortunately, we cannot offer any financial support for our speakers, but we nevertheless hope that we will be able to welcome you in Philadelphia in June 2025. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

Conveners:

Prof. Sarah Katz (Temple University School of Law)
Prof. Dara Purvis (Temple University School of Law)
Dean Rachel Rebouche (Temple University School of Law)
Prof. Emily Stolzenberg (Villanova University School of Law)