Opening Packet – Negative – hss 2017 offcase materials start here

Not part of the 1NC

Politics Link – Defense – Frontline card

( ) No link – plan is not politically unpopular, even with Republicans.

Gersen ‘17

Jeannie Suk Gersen is a contributing writer for newyorker.com, and a professor at Harvard Law School. “A New Phase of Chaos on Transgender Rights” – New Yorker – March 13^th - http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-new-phase-of-chaos-on-transgender-rights

A majority of Americans do not support excluding transgender people from bathrooms consistent with their gender identities, and Republican leaders are less likely now than they were a year ago to view division on the bathroom issue as helpful to their party. North Carolina has borne significant costs for its bathroom law, including the N.B.A. and N.C.A.A. pulling events out of the state and PayPal cancelling expansion plans. The former Republican Governor Pat McCrory is widely thought to have lost his reëlection bid to a Democrat in part because of his association with the bathroom law. Texas and Arkansas are currently considering bathroom bills similar to North Carolina’s, but they are unlikely to pass, facing strong opposition from both civil-rights activists and pragmatic protectors of the states’ economic interests. Corporations such as Google, Amazon, American Airlines, Microsoft, Intel, and Hilton have opposed the proposed Texas bathroom bill, as have the N.F.L. and the N.B.A.

CLOSE – BUT NO GOOD – Jessica Clarke ev

Legal trends irrelevant until the Supreme Court acts – only the Aff ensures that.

Clarke ‘17

Jessica A. Clarke - Associate Professor of Law and Vance Opperman Research Scholar, University of Minnesota Law School. From the Article: “FRONTIERS OF SEX DISCRIMINATION LAW” – Michigan Law Review – Continues to footnote - Available at: http://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/voll 15/iss6/4

The terrain of this debate is shifting rapidly. In 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) interpreted Title VlFs ban on sex discrimination to prohibit sexual orientation discrimination, for reasons including its assessment that sexual orientation discrimination and harassment "[are] often, if not always, motivated by a desire to enforce heterosexu-ally defined gender norms."4 Although the EEOC's opinion does not bind federal courts, it has prompted several to reconsider whether sexual orientation discrimination is a species of sex discrimination.5 In July 2016, the Seventh Circuit observed that district courts were "beginning to question the doctrinaire distinction between gender nonconformity discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination and coming up short on rational answers."6 While it too came up short on rational reasons for the distinction, the Seventh Circuit was unwilling to disturb its pre—Lawrence v. Texas7 precedents holding that sex and sexual orientation discrimination must be distinguished.FN8 That circuit is now reconsidering the issue en banc9 Other circuits may soon revisit the question as well.10

fn8. Hively, 830 F.3d at 718 ("Perhaps the writing is on the wall. ... But writing on the wall is not enough. Until the writing comes in the form of a Supreme Court opinion or new legislation, we must adhere to the writing of our prior precedent.").

Backline – Econ Advantage

INt link to worker productivity

Aziz ‘13

John – internally quoting a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. John Aziz is a staffwriter and journalist for The Week. From the article: “Less racism and sexism means more economic growth” – The Week – December 16^th - http://theweek.com/articles/454335/less-racism-sexism-means-more-economic-growth

Increased gender and racial diversity in the labor market since the 1960s has been a key factor in America's booming growth in productivity, suggests a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In 1960, 94 percent of doctors and lawyers were white men. By 2008, this was just 62 percent. Similar changes have occurred across professions throughout the U.S. economy during the last 50 years.

A half century ago, being a white man was clearly considered an advantage (if not a requirement) for employment in certain professions. Things have obviously changed since, though subconscious attitudes in this vein surely still persist.

It should go without saying, but many people who are not white men — black women, white women, Latino men, etc — have a lot of natural aptitude for various professions. But in too many cases over the last 50 years, many of these talented individuals could not find such a job because they did not have the advantage of being a white man. And because white males were getting such a big share of the professional jobs, some white males with little natural aptitude surely ended up as doctors or lawyers simply because they were white males.

This can lead to lost productivity. If you have lots of white male doctors and lawyers who are comparatively poor at the job, and lots of other people who have the innate talent to be better at the job, but who are doing other things — working in low-skilled labor, being unemployed, working as homemakers — then you're going to lose productivity.

Slowly but surely, over the last 50 years, barriers to professional jobs for groups other than white males have been reduced. This has had a number of causes — for example, widely available and cheap contraception has allowed women the ability to defer having children and pursue a career. Anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 have made it more difficult to discriminate on the grounds of race.

This has led to a boost in the economy. The NBER study found that 15 to 20 percent of growth in aggregate output per worker between 1960 and 2008 may be explained by the improved allocation of talent.

Obviously, we still don't live in an entirely meritocratic world. Another NBER study found that job applicants with white-sounding names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, while those with black-sounding names and identical resumes needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.

And of course, 62 percent of doctors and lawyers being white men is still a high number, considering that barely one-third of the U.S. population is made up of white males.

Also, there are lots of other grounds on which discrimination can occur beyond just race and gender — for example, discrimination based on the region a person is from, or a person's economic class. The authors of the study suspected that these two forms of discrimination may have increased in the past 50 years due to the growing class divide.

Still, this study does at least show that racism and sexism have decreased in the labor market, and that this decrease has had economic benefits.

vs. States Cplan

Solvency deficit – Even in schools with protections, a Federal Signal is key to broadly reversing anti-trans- norms.

Gajanan ‘17

Internally quoting Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign. Mahita Gajanan is a Breaking News Fellow at Guardian US and a Reporter at Time Magazine - “What the Trump Administration's Bathroom Memo Means for Transgender Kids” – Time Magazine - Feb 24, 2017 - http://time.com/4681072/transgender-students-bathroom-donald-trump/

The Trump administration's letter this week revoking protections for transgender students does not directly change schools' existing policies — but transgender students and LGBT rights advocates say the action sends a message that the highest political office in the U.S. does not support transgender rights.

The administration's letter rescinds guidance that came under former President Obama instructing schools to allow transgender students access to bathrooms and other facilities that aligned with their gender identity. But any enforcement of those guidelines was already on hold even before this week, after 13 states accused the Obama administration of overstepping its bounds and a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked it late last year.

Now, states are largely left where they started — guided by state law, if there is one that addresses the rights of transgender students, and otherwise able to make up their own minds about how to treat transgender students in public schools. And that, according to advocates like Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, is a problem.

"We worry that it encourages states and local governments to behave badly toward transgender people," Warbelow said.

Fourteen states have passed their own non-discrimination laws to protect transgender students, Warbelow said, and political leaders in many of those states publicly opposed the Trump administration's decision this week, including in Washington, Connecticut, California, New Mexico, New York and Minnesota.

There remains a risk of litigation, but advocates worry that the move by Trump's Justice Department will embolden states, cities or school districts to require that transgender students use the bathrooms that align with the sex assigned to them at birth, even if enforcement of such policies is difficult. The prospect of singling out transgender students is harmful to children, advocates say, noting that they already face misunderstanding and bullying. In Virginia, the Gloucester County School Board— which was sued by 17-year-old student Gavin Grimm after he was blocked from using the boys' restroom two years ago — said it was "pleased" by the government withdrawing the guidance. The school board is set to defend its policy before the Supreme Court next month.

Legal advocates say they believe that regardless of the Trump administration's guidance, transgender kids are still protected under Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, and they plan to fight for those protections in states that aren't already offering them.