Civil Rights Article 132 Harv. L. Rev. 894

They, Them, and Theirs


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Nonbinary gender identities have quickly gone from obscurity to prominence in American public life, with growing acceptance of gender-neutral pronouns, such as “they, them, and theirs,” and recognition of a third-gender category by U.S. states including California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. People with nonbinary gender identities do not exclusively identify as men or women. Feminist legal reformers have long argued that discrimination on the basis of gender nonconformity — in other words, discrimination against men perceived as feminine or women perceived as masculine — is a harmful type of sex discrimination that the law should redress. But the idea of nonbinary gender as an identity itself appears only at the margins of U.S. legal scholarship. Many of the cases recognizing transgender rights involve plaintiffs who identify as men or women, rather than plaintiffs who seek to reject, permute, or transcend those categories. The increased visibility of a nonbinary minority creates challenges for other rights movements, while also opening new avenues for feminist and LGBT advocacy. This Article asks what the law would look like if it took nonbinary gender seriously. It assesses the legal interests in binary gender regulation in areas including law enforcement, employment, education, housing, and health care, and concludes these interests are not reasons to reject nonbinary gender rights. It argues that the law can recognize nonbinary gender identities, or eliminate unnecessary legal sex classifications, using familiar civil rights concepts.


* Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School. Thanks to Toby Adams, Bradley Areheart, Genny Beemyn, Stephanie Bornstein, Mary Bryson, Erin Buzuvis, Mary Anne Case, Paul Cas-tillo, Arli Christian, David Cruz, Heath Fogg Davis, Robin Dembroff, Deborah Dinner, Elizabeth Emens, Katie Eyer, Joseph Fiskhin, Andrea Freeman, Andrew Gilden, Michele Goodwin, Aimi Hamraie, Gautam Hans, Jill Hasday, Aziz Huq, Alex Iantaffi, Neha Jain, Dru Levasseur, Bill McGeveran, Shannon Minter, Amy Monahan, Rebecca Morrow, Douglas NeJaime, AJ Neuman Wipfler, Bethany Davis Noll, David Noll, Aaron Potenza, Jessica Roberts, Darren Rosenblum, Laura Rosenbury, Alan Rozenshtein, Naomi Schoenbaum, Jennifer Shinall, Russell Spiker, Maayan Sudai, Hudson Taylor, Ezra Young, the University of Minnesota Public Law Workshop, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, the Vanderbilt LGBT Policy Lab, the University of Chicago Workshop on Regulation of Fami-ly, Sex, and Gender, and the law faculties at the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida for conversations and comments on this project. Thanks to Katie Hanschke of the Vanderbilt Law Library for tracking down sources. For research assistance and valuable substantive feedback, I am grateful to Maria Brekke, Emily Lamm, Sara Lewenstein, Jessica Sharpe, Derek Waller, Claire Williams, and the editors of the Harvard Law Review. All opinions expressed here are my own.