Judge Williams' role on Maryland's anti-gerrymandering commission bears watching

The Commonwealth of Virginia is under a court order to undo its gerrymandered Congressional Districts that unfairly favor Republicans.  And Maryland’s Republican Governor, Larry Hogan, is appointing a commission to address our state’s gerrymandering in favor of Democrats.  I agree with the Washington Post Editorial Board that we need to use this possibly bi-partisan moment to address gerrymandering, which increasingly distorts the democratic process.

However, I am a little nervous about the person Governor Hogan appointed to be the Democratic Co-Chair of his Commission, retired federal judge Alexander Williams.

It may be unfair to evaluate Judge Williams based on a single case, but I do think it worth noting that in 2005, he issued a 23-page temporary restraining order preventing the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) from implementing some revisions to its secondary school health education curriculum to include some basic, medically-accurate discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.  Judge Williams’ decision was based on factually incorrect characterizations of what was in the curriculum (he falsely stated that the curriculum to be taught to the students included value judgments on the views of particular religious denominations); and a grossly-incorrect statement of law, in which he asserted that public school health curriculum constituted a public forum in which there could be no discrimination based on viewpoint, and that, therefore, any mention of sexual orientation had to include the notion (discredited by every mainstream American medical and mental health professional association) that “reparative” or “conversion” therapies could be warranted and effective in helping people change their sexual orientation. 

To avoid further litigation, MCPS agreed to cancel its curriculum revisions and start over.  In 2007, a new curriculum was offered; it contained some very good material, but, apparently in order to avoid another lawsuit, omitted some key material supported by the mainstream medical and mental health associations and further mandated that teachers could not say anything that was not, verbatim, in the curriculum.  Right wing groups sued anyway, this time in state, rather than federal, fora.  The State Board of Education, without a single dissent, rejected the same sort of arguments adopted by Judge Williams in 2005, and rejected the notion that MCPS was constitutionally barred from discussing what the mainstream health care community had concluded about sexual orientation without providing the arguments of the “other side.”  In early 2008, the Montgomery County Circuit Court affirmed the decision of the State Board.  Due to skittishness on the part of some in the school system, however, it took until 2014 for MCPS to improve the curriculum to include all the needed information (including the affirmative statements that being gay is not an illness and that the mainstream health community rejects “reparative therapy”) and to allow teachers to teach without being absolutely confined to a tight script.  Click here.  Thus, Judge Williams’ 2005 decision delayed for nearly a decade the implementation of a fully adequate secondary school health education curriculum in Montgomery County.

Hopefully, Judge Williams’ 2005 decision was an aberration.  If it was not, then the bi-partisan/non-partisan nature of the anti-gerrymandering effort could be in jeopardy.

(Full disclosure:  In 2003-05, I was Chair of the MCPS Board of Education's Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development, the Committee that advised the Board on the curriculum revisions.  Subsequently, in my role as Advocacy Chair of the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG (2006-present), I worked to secure needed improvements in the health education curriculum.)