The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in New York, has decided that the full court—all eleven active judges—will consider whether sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by the Civil Rights Act. If the full Second Circuit decides that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, it will have to overrule a prior Second Circuit decision that held the opposite.
Normally, panels of three appellate judges decide cases but those three-judge panels are required to follow precedent. They cannot deviate from the decisions that their court reached in earlier cases. When the full appellate court considers a case, however, it can overrule prior precedents and a decision by the full court to hear a case signals that some judges want to consider overruling past precedent.
Federal appeals courts rarely decide to have the full court consider cases. This type of full-court review, sometimes called “en banc review,” is exceedingly rare in the Second Circuit. Thus, the Second Circuit’s decision to hear this case en banc is noteworthy in itself. The Second Circuit, however, is following the lead of the Seventh Circuit which earlier this year ruled en banc that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination.