Former UVA Law Professor Describes Anti-Gay Bias at Law School

A reader sent me a link about this story a little while back and in the chaos of earlier this week I never got to talking about it. Now a new post on UVA Law Blog goes into great detail about the 1985 denial of tenure to a professor at the University of Virginia Law School because he is gay. I graduated from the Law School in 1977 and I hate to say it, but I can well believe Professor Eskridge's allegations. During my time at UVA gays remained pretty much invisible both at the student level and definitely at the professor level. Yes, there were suspicions about some faculty members, but everything remained under the radar. Fortunately, things at UVA have changed markedly and the University has at times led in the push for domestic partnership benefits and the Law School requires would be employers recruiting on campus to agree to a non-discrimination policy vis-a-vis students' sexual orientation. Personally, I believe most law firms lie about applying the policy in reality, but at least the Law School endeavors to stop discrimination. Here are some story highlights:

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Maybe the history of homophobia at the Law School - gone now, of course! - didn't start and end with the students. William (Bill) Eskridge is a law professor at Yale who teaches Constitutional Law, Legislation, and Sexuality, Gender, and the Law, but he used to teach at Virginia back in the 1980s. Mr. Eskridge is gay. And last week, he gave testimony (opens a .doc file) to the House Committee on Education and Labor on the pending Employment and Non-Discrimination Act of 2009, which would "bar sexual orientation and sexual orientation and gender identiy discrimination in the workplace by states as well as by private employers."

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According to Mr. Eskrdige, the ENDA is a proper exercise of Congress's authority 14th Amendment . . .Why is this law needed? Well for one thing, Mr. Eskridge alleges that the Law School denied him tenure because he is gay: For an example explained in my statement, I was denied tenure at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1985 based in part on my sexual orientation. The hysterical behavior and deployment of anti-gay epithets by key state officials indicates that the decision was influenced by anti-gay prejudice. The inability of state officials to explain their decision without engaging in libel underlines the irrationality of the state discrimination and its vulnerability to equal protection attack.

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After the committee’s report was ratified by the faculty, blood was in the water. For the remainder of my tenure at the University of Virginia School of Law, I was harassed on a regular basis by faculty colleagues and parts of the law school’s administration. Several faculty friends and at least one member of the committee explicitly urged me to get out of Charlottesville as quickly as possible, partly because there was so much hatred toward me on the faculty and partly just for my own mental sanity and physical safety (during the tirade by the chair of the committee, I believed that he was going to assault me). So I visited at the Georgetown University Law Center in academic year 1987-88 and accepted a permanent position there in 1988. . . .

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[S]hame on the Law School if his allegations are true. From reviewing Mr. Eskridge's accomplishments, its seems like the Law School lost a great scholar.Thanks to Hunter of Justice and an anonymous tipster for bringing this to our attention.

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LGBT employees in Virginia continue to have no protections whatsoever from employment discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Out attorneys in large law firms in Virginia continue to be few and far between and closeted gay attorneys in large local law firms live in daily fear of being fired. That's right ZERO protections. The passage of ENDA is desperately needed to protect citizens in backwards states like Virginia where we will have to wait possibly decades before the state moves out of the Dark Ages.