Court Opinion

ID: 9487100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:08:04.729999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:05.723902
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority creates a new body of prison law. I fear that it will generate continuing prison supervision by district judges, instead *1232of by prison administrators, in an attempt to assure compliance with a standard lacking any objective meaning.
Title IX does, as the majority says, apply to educational programs in institutions receiving federal money. The statute has no prison exception. The district court correctly held that paying male and female prisoners differently for the same training discriminated by sex in violation of Title IX. So far, we agree.
We diverge on what Title IX means. The briefs lead the majority astray. Neither side asks us to decide this particular case. They both want us to construe the statute generally. Plaintiffs want us to say that “no discrimination” means “equality.” Defendants want “parity.” The district court, after trial, made careful and precise findings of fact. Not a single finding is challenged on appeal. The appellants challenged only the legal principles applied to the facts by the district court. But the appellants do not show how “equality” rather than “parity” would change the outcome of this particular case, given the unchallenged fact findings. Nor do I see how the fact findings could be different in this particular case because of the legal principles adopted by the majority.
The parties invite us to legislate in the air, without relating the rules at issue to the case at bar. The majority accepts the invitation. I think we should limit ourselves to deciding this particular case, and summarily affirm because (1) appellants have not claimed that any of the findings of fact are clearly erroneous, and (2) have not argued that, given those findings, any of the legal principles they urge would require a different result. Because the majority has gone further, and construed the statute independently of the effect of the construction on the case, I write separately to explain my different opinion of what the statute means.
Title IX prohibits discrimination by sex. It does not speak of “equality” or “parity.” Nor does it speak of equivalence, proportionality, or penological necessity. The majority says (1) “no discrimination” means “equality”; (2) “prison educational programs subject to Title IX must be ‘equally’ available to male and female inmates”; (3) equal availability means “reasonable opportunities for similar studies at the women’s prison”; (4) “there may need to be a higher number of courses offered so that women have comparable variety in course selection”; (5) the number of classes for women must “at least be proportionate, not just to the total number of inmates, but to the number of inmates desiring to take educational programs”; and (6) “pe-nological necessity” is “not a defense,” but “just one concern to be considered in how the equality principles of Title IX are to be applied in prisons.” All this has some appeal as a matter of policy. But the statute does not say these things. Nor have plaintiffs demonstrated that Oregon has not done these things. The findings of fact suggest that Oregon has done what the majority says it should do, and the plaintiffs have offered no argument in their briefs that it has not.
If we were free to turn a statute saying “no discrimination” into one saying “equality,” then we would at least be obligated to give “equality” a usable meaning. We have not. A usable meaning would be one which the Administrator of the Oregon Department of Corrections could himself apply, so that state prison educational program administration would not have to be turned over to the United States District Courts in Oregon for the exercise of discretion. Law ought to be capable of voluntary compliance. Usable law, law which controls judges as well as administrators, cannot be so vague and subjective as to require continuing supervision under a permanent injunction. When we formulate a rule which is not usable law in this sense, we take power away from democratically responsive government and shift it to federal judges.
If “equality” is the standard, as the majority says, then the only usable meanings I can think of for “equality” are expenditure per prisoner, or course availability per prisoner. About 5% of Oregon’s prisoners are female, yet 25% of the courses offered are in the women’s prison. The discrepancy in course availability exceeds this ratio, because women have access to programs in mens’ institutions but men do not have access to programs in the women’s prison. The findings of fact provide the numbers for this chart:
*1233number of number of courses inmates inmates per course courses per inmate
OWCC (women) —18 213 12 .084
OSCI (men) —34 1100 .031
OSP (men) —30 2093 70 .014
EOCI (men) — 8 1300 163 .0062
The women’s prison has almost 2jé times as many courses per prisoner as the most generous male prison, OSCI, and over 13 times as many as EOCI, the least generous. The women’s prison has 2% as many courses as EOCI, even though it has only Jé as many prisoners. If, as the majority evidently concludes, a serious question can be raised whether with these numbers the female prisoners are denied “equality” in educational programs, then the term “equality” has no objective or usable meaning. The necessary consequence of “equality” as the construction of the statute, if the word means anything like what it means in ordinary English, is that the Oregon female prisoners have suffered no adverse discrimination. The males have.
Why should we construe the statutory prohibition of sex discrimination to require “equality” of availability to equivalent programs, with the “equality” to be proportionate to prisoners’ “desires,” considering “pe-nological necessity,” as the majority says? The statute does not say that. This rule is too subjective for prison administrators to be able to apply it reliably enough to avoid permanent supervision under equitable decrees, so it has no virtue as a matter of judicial administration. Nor is it a matter of plain common sense and basic fairness. Why, if Congress meant to prohibit sex discrimination, would it require that male prisoners have less access to educational programs? The much larger number of male prisoners suggests greater criminality of males, and the need for more rather than less rehabilitation effort. Why focus on prisoners’ “desires” rather than administrative determinations of what vocational training for prisoners would benefit society when they get out? Though fewer men than women may want courses, society might benefit if more men took courses. Perhaps courses should be given to prisoners who will be out soon, to facilitate their reentry into society, regardless of sex. Reasonable people will differ on what policies are wise and fair. We should leave the policy-making to state prison systems, except insofar as their policy discriminates by sex.
The statutory standard is express: no exclusion, denial of benefits, or discrimination “on the basis of sex.”
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance....
20 U.S.C. § 1681(a) (emphasis added). Applied to this case, the first clause means that a prisoner cannot be excluded from participation in a federally assisted education program “on the basis of sex.” The second clause means that a prisoner cannot be denied the benefits of such a program “on the basis of sex.” The third clause means that a prisoner cannot “be subjected to discrimination” under such a program “on the basis of sex.”
There is no authority directly on point in Title IX as applied to prisons.1 Some courts have suggested that Title IX and Title VII should be construed similarly, at least in some contexts. See, e.g., Lipsett v. University of Puerto Rico, 864 F.2d 881, 896-97 (1st Cir.1988). Construing Title VII, the Supreme Court held that denial of disability benefits for pregnancy was discrimination on the basis of physical condition, not sex, even *1234though the condition occurs only among females. General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 135, 97 S.Ct. 401, 407, 50 L.Ed.2d 343 (1976). It did not construe the statutory prohibition of discrimination to require “equality.” The Supreme Court held in City of Los Angeles v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 711, 98 S.Ct. 1370, 1377, 55 L.Ed.2d 657 (1978), that discrimination occurs when there is “treatment of a person in a manner which but for that person’s sex would be different.” The majority’s “equality” requirement ignores Manhart’s “but for” requirement.
Gilbert and Manhart teach us how to construe a statutory prohibition of discrimination “on the basis of sex.” The discrimination must be on the basis of sex, rather than some other factor. Discrimination “on the basis of sex” means “treatment of a person in a manner which but for that person’s sex would be different.” This construction has the virtue of consistency with Supreme Court authority in a parallel context.
The statutory phrase “on the basis of sex” defines and limits the category of prohibited conduct. Discrimination on other bases would not fall within the statutory prohibition. For example, if an individual never convicted of a crime was denied permission to take a prison course, the discrimination would be on the basis of non-prisoner status, not sex, regardless of the sex of the individual and of whether the course were in a men’s or women’s prison. A person can be excluded from an education program under this section for all sorts of reasons, so long as the exclusion is not “on the basis of sex.” Discrimination on the basis of location within the state, confinement, security concerns, literacy, prior education and work experience, and an infinite number of other possible reasons for distinguishing between people would be discrimination on some basis other than sex.
Obviously incarceration, and the attendant security concerns, will require exclusion of prisoners from many of the educational programs provided by the State of Oregon to its law-abiding citizens. If prisoners at Oregon Women’s Correctional Center in Salem are denied permission to take courses at Western Baptist College or Willamette University in that city, the discrimination is by criminal status and custody, not sex. People who commit serious enough crimes to be sent to prison lose liberty. They do not have the same rights as everyone else to take advantage of educational opportunities, any more than to enjoy a beer on the porch on a summer evening.
If discrimination is on the basis of penological concerns rather than sex, the discrimination is not prohibited by Title IX. The disagreement between the majority and the district court over the significance of “penological necessity” is immaterial, and inconsistent with the Manhart “but for” test. The district court used “penological necessity” as a “defense” to sex discrimination. The majority says “penological necessity” is not a “defense,” but is a “concern to be considered in how the equality principles of Title IX are to be applied in prisons.” Because “penological necessity” is not a quantitative term measurable in a calculation of “equality,” I am not sure whether this disagreement is more than semantic. Either way, the statute offers no basis for the use of “penological necessity.” If discrimination is on the basis of penal considerations rather than sex, then the discrimination is not on a ground prohibited by the statute. If a difference in treatment of the sexes was penologically necessary, as the district court found, then a fortiori the reason for the difference was a penal consideration rather than sex, so it was permissible under the Manhart “but for” test.
The difficulty in applying the law against discrimination in educational programs to prisons arises from the separation of the sexes into separate male and female prisons, and the much lower number of females sent to prison. If Oregon offers educational programs with anything like equal opportunity for men and women to enroll, and limits mobility and residential options of prisoners, then the twenty-to-one sex ratio of prisoners will generate some classes available to men and not to women. This is the lack of “equality” which troubles the majority. But numbers matter. Requiring as many programs in the female prison as in the male prison is like saying that there should be as much opera in Ketchikan as in New York. If both sexes had “equality” in the availability *1235of courses, then the female prisoners would have twenty times as many courses per prisoner available to them as the male prisoners. This vast inequality in courses per prisoner is not required by a statute which prohibits exclusion, denial of benefits, or discrimination “on the basis of sex.” Nor does “equality,” in any meaningful sense, require that prisoners of one sex have twenty times the freedom of choice as prisoners of the other sex. There cannot be equality of courses per prisoner, and equality of availability of courses, to males and females, where far more males than females are incarcerated. Equality of one variable forces inequality of the other. Equality is an arithmetic impossibility.
No evidence suggests that the prison authorities made their decisions about educational programs on the basis of sex. No finding was made which would support a conclusion that Oregon had discriminated on the basis of sex. One primary consideration for the state prison administrator was location. There are separate prisons for men and women, and for different security classifications. Preferences of prisoners explained some differences in programs. The evidence showed that women were more interested than men in cosmetology and secretarial courses. Regardless of whether one thinks that ought to be so, it was. It would be ridiculous to say that letting a prisoner do what he or she wants, if males and females want different things, is sex discrimination. Under that construction, individual liberty is sex discrimination, until people are forced to think the same thoughts.
Other non-gender reasons explained other differences. Oregon State Correctional Institution (male) but not Oregon Women’s Correctional Center had “journeymen” available for some apprenticeship programs, for which no female prisoner applied. Security and supervision concerns precluded women from being assigned to four mechanical trades programs at one of the male prisons, and to sending female prisoners out into the woods with male prisoners in the forest program. In the unchallenged findings of fact, every single distinction between course availability to male and female prisoners is supported by non-pretextual concerns of location, preference, instructor availability, and safety of the public and the prisoners, rather than sex. I would therefore affirm, even though the district court erroneously treated penological necessity as a defense.
Nothing in the majority’s opinion prevents the district court from reaching the same conclusion that it did before. This case started in 1983, and has already been through two trials and two appeals. Because of the amorphousness of the majority’s “equality” standard, we may well have a third appeal, after whatever proceeding the district court finds necessary on remand. Oregon prison administration will continue to be subject to the power of federal courts, untrammeled by a usable legal standard, to assure that female prisoners obtain “equality” of educational opportunities. This, even though the statute prohibits only discrimination on the basis of sex, none was found, and Oregon accords far greater educational opportunities to female than male prisoners. We have gone astray.

. The Kentucky district court decision upon which the majority relies says that the Equal Protection Clause "requires parity, not identity, of treatment for female prisoners," a standard which “may be met in a number of different ways, as long as the opportunities available to women are substantially equivalent 'in substance, if not in form’ to those accorded men.” Canterino v. Wilson, 546 F.Supp. 174, 210 (W.D.Ky. 1982). I am unable to find any adoption of the majority's “equality” standard for Title IX in Canterino or elsewhere.