Re: Gender Discrimination
"Whether or not single-sex education can be reconciled with a commitment to equality of the sexes, single-sex restrooms have generally been taken as obviously permissible--a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the argument that sexual segregation is a form of sex discrimination.
And yet it is difficult to make sense of restroom sex segregation as responding to inherent biological differences between the sexes. Men and women can use the same sinks, and while men alone can profitably use urinals, men also do fine without them; rare indeed is the private home--even of the confirmed bachelor--that includes a urinal rather than just a conventional toilet.
In fact, restroom sex segregation responds not to biological differences, but rather to two other concerns: privacy and safety. As a matter of social practice in our culture, people tend to be more embarrassed by the use of toilets in proximity to members of the opposite sex than when only members of their own sex are nearby.
Such inhibitions can be broken down--as they have been in the colleges and universities that have adopted co-ed restrooms in their dormitories--but the inhibitions remain real among many, probably most, people. And because a concern about embarrassment is not obviously sexist, this concern should be seen as a legitimate basis for sex-segregated restrooms.
Moreover, a public restroom is a confined space that criminals can exploit to commit sexual assault or other offenses that disproportionately affect women, and are disproportionately committed by men. A rule that keeps men out of the women's room is a fairly low-cost method of protecting women from the small fraction of men who might exploit mixed-sex restrooms for criminal purposes.
With sex-segregated restrooms, women are less vulnerable because, as soon as they see a man in the women's room, they know they should exit rapidly or call for help. A quick visual scan thus helps a woman ascertain whether the restroom is safe, before she is trapped far from the door, or hidden away in a stall. But a quick visual scan would be useless if restrooms were co-ed.
Accordingly, although inherent biological differences between men and women do not justify sex-segregated restrooms, other legitimate reasons do. Thus, the maintenance of sex-segregated restrooms should not, by itself, be deemed impermissible sex discrimination."
Dorf, M. C. (2005). Does a transgendered biological male have the right use a women's restroom in New York city. Findlaw. Retrieved from
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20050411.html
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