Gloucester Transgender Teen Asks for New Judge

Sadly, here in Virginia finding judges who are not homophobes can be a challenge.   At the state level, the Canons of Judicial Conduct require judges who cannot be impartial toward LGBT litigants to recuse themselves from the case yet thus almost never happens as I discovered in my own divorce case where the judge over the case admitted in writing that he view sexual orientation as a choice.  Despite such bigotry and ignorance, he failed to remove himself from the case.  Now, we are seeing the same kind of prejudice in the judge overseeing the litigation on behalf of 16-year-old Gavin Grimm (pictured above, who I know and who is amazing) who has sued the Gloucester County schools over anti-transgender restroom use bigotry.  Through statements, U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar has shown his bias and rejection of modern knowledge in favor of ignorant religious inspired ignorance.  In short, he needs to be removed from the case.  Fredericksburg.com has details.  Here are highlights:

A judge who repeatedly referred to a transgender student’s “mental disorder” should be removed from presiding over the teenager’s lawsuit challenging a policy that bars him from using the boys’ restrooms at his high school, his attorneys said in court papers Wednesday.

Attorneys for 16-year-old Gavin Grimm also said U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar of Norfolk has made statements indicating he may be suspicious of modern medical science regarding gender identity and that he objected to lawyers publicizing their client’s transgender status.

Grimm’s lawyers asked for a new judge in a 58-page brief asking the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse two key rulings in the case. Doumar refused to grant a preliminary injunction that would have allowed Grimm to use the boys’ bathrooms when the new school year started in September, and he threw out a claim that the policy violates federal sex discrimination law. He has not yet ruled on Grimm’s claim that the policy violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The Gloucester High School junior, who was born female but identifies as male, filed the lawsuit after the school board adopted a policy requiring him to use either the girls’ restrooms or one of several single-stall unisex restrooms available to all students. He claims the policy is stigmatizing and discriminatory.

Grimm’s attorneys wrote in their brief that the transcript of a motions hearing conducted by Doumar “indicates that the court has preexisting views about medical science in general—and medical science regarding gender and sexuality in particular—that the court may have substantial difficulty putting aside.”

They cited Doumar’s support for the idea that allowing Grimm to use the boys’ restroom could lead to “mating.” Doumar said medical science shows that “the brain only has two instincts. One is called self-preservation, and the other is procreation.”

The attorneys wrote that the American Psychiatric Association says gender dysphoria should not described as a disorder “because that terminology improperly stigmatizes transgender people,” yet Doumar persisted in using the term. That “gratuitous labeling ... does not reflect the sensitivity or care the public should expect from courts addressing these issues,” the lawyers said.

The embrace of ignorance and religious belief have no place in the civil lor on the bench.

Koch Brothers' Effort to Oust Tennessee Supreme Court Justices Fails

Personally, I have a problem with elected judges and Supreme Court justices.    When I first was practicing law in Alabama there was one local judge who while a good campaigner proved to be not only a terrible judge but perhaps insane to boot.  Things finally got so bad that the Alabama Supreme Court had to step in and have the judge removed.  Sadly, similar things can happen with appointed judges - one Norfolk District Court judge likewise proved insane (at least in my opinion) and was not reappointed.  My real problem with elected judges comes down to the problem of money - huge amounts of money that can be used to defeat competent judges  and set the stage for their replacement by those who will prostitute themselves to religious  or to political contributors.  In Tennessee, luckily voters saw this danger and rejected the efforts of the Koch brothers to remove three justices the evil brothers perceived to be insufficiently craven to their political agenda of creating a new Gilded Age.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

Participants in Tennessee’s judicial elections on Thursday rejected a malodorous effort to oust three capable sitting state Supreme Court justices: Chief Justice Gary Wade and Justices Cornelia Clark and Sharon Lee.

Conservative Republican groups, including the Republican State Leadership Committee and Americans for Prosperity — part of Charles and David Koch’s big-dollar political operation — underwrote a campaign against the judges. For weeks before Thursday’s election, they bombarded Tennessee with ads depicting them as “soft on crime,” hostile to business interests and supporters of “the Obama agenda” and “Obamacare.” But this was all nonsense: In fact the judges never ruled on a case involving the health care law.

Tennessee voters apparently saw through the lies, a victory not only for the three judges but for elected judges everywhere. The outcome of the election is a sign that judges can sign on to controversial decisions without losing their jobs — despite attack ads.

The downside of the judges’ success is that, to achieve it, they raised more than $1 million, much of it from lawyers who may appear before them. The judges’ next challenge is to be diligent about avoiding the appearance and reality of improper conflicts-of-interest by recusing themselves from cases involving significant financial backers.

“People can smell court tampering and tend to get their backs up,” says Bert Brandenburg of Justice at State, a group that advocates for the preservation of fair and impartial courts. But he warned that if judges take away from it the need to go out and raise lots more money, courts and ultimately justice will lose.