Professor Soucek files Supreme Court brief in LGBTQ employment discrimination cases

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear three cases asking whether discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited under federal employment discrimination law, which bars discrimination “because of sex.”

Last week, Professor Brian Soucek filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of 16 anti-discrimination scholars whose work has shown, over the past 30 years, that anti-LGBT discrimination is a form of gender stereotyping, and therefore prohibited.

Soucek and Vanderbilt Professor Jessica Clarke wrote and organized the brief with lawyers from Hogan Lovells. UC Davis Law Visiting Professor Betsy Rosenblatt is one of the signatories, and her scholarship is cited.

The brief, along with two others filed last week, draws on Soucek’s article “Perceived Homosexuals: Looking Gay Enough for Title VII,” which won the Dukeminier Award in 2015.

Professor Soucek’s primary teaching and research interests are antidiscrimination law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and refugee/asylum law. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz in Connecticut, and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.