Another Barrier Is Down

One that you probably never thought about but it has been struck down.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Declares LGBTQ People Must Be Protected from Discrimination in Jury Selection, Reaffirms that Challenges to Discriminatory Strikes on the Basis of Race or Any Protected Class Must be Addressed Individually
GLAD
August 16, 2021


In its opinion reversing trial court convictions in Commonwealth v. Carter on the basis of the trial judge’s failure to inquire into defense claims of improper racial discrimination during jury selection, the SJC [Supreme Judicial Court ] also explicitly articulated for the first time that sexual orientation is a protected class for purposes of a Batson-Soares objection to peremptory challenges.

Up until this ruling lawyers could kick us off a jury for just being trans or a lesbian, or a gay man. I know many may not consider it a victory because they don’t want to be on a jury.

August 16, 2021 (BOSTON, MA) – In a novel ruling with important implications for addressing discrimination on the basis of both race and LGBTQ status in jury selection, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) today said explicitly that peremptory challenges based on a prospective juror’s sexual orientation are prohibited by both the Massachusetts and federal constitutions. In its opinion, the SJC also strongly reaffirmed that having some members of a protected class seated on a jury does not alter a trial court’s obligation to require neutral justification for strikes of other members of that class which are challenged as discriminatory.

Black and Pink MA, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), and Lambda Legal filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court arguing that by failing to examine the prosecution’s peremptory strikes – exclusion of prospective jurors without reason – of four Black jurors and two jurors perceived to be LGBTQ, the trial court denied the defendant access to an impartial jury of his peers and subjected those individual jurors to impermissible discrimination.

Think of it another way… Suppose you are the defendant in a case either civil or criminal and the prosecutor or the other side’s lawyer kicks a trans person off of the jury. That person might have swayed the jury on your favor or at the very least showed the other jurors that we are human and deserves a fair trial.

But other side might also have picked jurors who were anti-trans and packed the jury bigots, I don’t know about you but I would want an impartial jury.

While the SJC found that the record did not present sufficient evidence of anti-gay bias in jury selection, both the majority and a concurring opinion asserted firmly that peremptory jury strikes based on the presumed sexual orientation of a juror are prohibited under both the Massachusetts and Federal constitutions.

“This ruling is a win for Black and queer people who too often have the deck stacked against them when interacting with the criminal legal system,” said Michael Cox, executive director at Black and Pink Massachusetts. “Racial- and LGBTQ-status discrimination have no place in jury service or selection.”

Thank you GLAD for fighting for us we are glad that you do.

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I hear negative comments about GLAD, Lambda Legal, and organizations for LGBTQ+ rights on how they didn’t help them on their case of discrimination. These organizations are not like the lawyers who advertise on TV, they only take cases that set precedent, that change basic law for all LGBTQ+ people. They want cases that go all the way to all the way to the top court like this did. They don’t want cases about “me” but cases about “us.” They want cases that are “clean,” cases that do not have complications. Like a cop who arrests you saying you caused an accident because you were drunk and you say that you were arrested because the cop made derogatory about you being trans. He may have but you were also driving while drunk.

The other side also has legal organizations like this, one of them is Alliance Defending Freedom, law group that brought the case against of the trans athletes they are taking that case to the Supreme Court.