ABSTRACT
For many people, the marketplace is too often a site of intense humiliation. This Article aims to assist legal practitioners, judges, lawmakers, and scholars in understanding what market humiliation is, how it operates, and what can be done to curtail it. This is a particularly timely, even urgent, task due to a pair of 2022 developments at the Supreme Court that carry an enhanced threat to dignified market participation. In one, Cummings v Premier Rehab Keller, the Court denied damages for emotional harm from a deaf and legally blind woman who was refused suitable accommodation by a private medical provider. The other, 303 Creative v Elenis, is still pending. However, the Court’s willingness to hear it signals the possibility of allowing businesses to refuse to serve LGBTQ clients. While conventional analyses would classify such incidents as discrimination, with victims’ relief mainly depending on the group to which they belong, this Article takes a novel approach. It studies what market assaults targeting people’s identities have in common – regardless of the identity attacked – revealing three features most relevant to devising an adequate and much-needed legal response …
Keren, Hila, Market Humiliation (August 2, 2022), Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, volume 56, no 2, 2023.
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