Law and Marginalisation Clinic

Clinics

Law and Marginalisation Clinic

The Law & Marginalisation Clinic is an advocacy-community outreach initiative by CJLS that furthers its core aim by bringing together activists, movements, scholars, and community members to tackle issues of systemic harm and challenge power structures. Our clinical interventions are collaborative and multidimensional: not only do we engage students directly, but we also seek to shift the focus away from pure doctrinal questions, shed light on the lived experiences of marginalised persons, and engage with policy, research, and advocacy to advance an interdisciplinary and critical approach towards using the law as a tool for social change.

Through our bottoms-up approach, we facilitate systemic change by foregrounding community-centric and anti-carceral models of justice as well as intersectional anti-oppression discourses that comprehensively address the structural hierarchies that have aided in the historical marginalisation of individuals and groups along the axes of gender, caste, indigeneity, disability, and sexuality. We believe that long-term institutional shifts can only be brought about by consultative and immersive advocacy that creates spaces for each person or group with lived experiences of marginalisation to voice their concerns. Therefore, our engagement goes beyond our interactions with public officials and state functionaries, such as judges and parliamentarians, and seeks to include persons working at every level, including students, activists, scholars, community members, and civil society organizations to ensure that progressive social change is not taking place in silos.

Through classroom teaching and collaborative field projects, the Clinic seeks to proliferate intersectional anti-oppression discourses for comprehensively addressing marginalisation along the axes of gender, caste, indigeneity, disability, and sexuality. Clinical courses often culminate in the publication of a resource guide, handbook, or other material that will set forth the research, increase legal awareness and empowerment, and provide practical and accessible advice for activists and community members. The pedagogy of the Clinic is focused on introducing students to contested domains in the field of gender and sexuality through immersive learning modules that have been developed in consultation with key actors and stakeholders representing the diversity of challenges and approaches in addressing issues of law and marginalisation. In 2021, CJLS launched the Reproductive Justice & Law Clinic – a pilot clinical project to bridge the gap between activism and academia and develop a project in consultation with social movements and offered a one-year-long clinical course on reproductive justice, gender, and the law in partnership with CRR and CommonHealth. CJLS has also offered courses such as Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People and the Law in 2013, Criminal Justice System and the Transgender and Gender Variant People in 2014, and Gender, Law and Difference in 2017 and 2018.

In recognition of the law as a tool of empowerment and the barriers to legal representation by marginalised individuals, we also provide free and comprehensive legal aid to queer, trans, and non-binary members of society who have and continue to face significant barriers to the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms secured under the Constitution of India, the Transgender Persons Act, and several other statutes in force in the country. The Clinic’s legal aid center was established in 2013 and since then we have received several requests for assistance with targeted legal interventions on key issues including legal name and gender change on identity documents, equal opportunities in education and employment, and fair housing to name a few. Our dedicated network of pro-bono lawyers has been a key resource for delivering on these requests.

Vision and Mission:

Through our multi-pronged interventions, we seek to target, primarily, transgender and gender-variant persons as key beneficiaries by building capacities on the ground when it comes to advocating for rights and navigating the various legal and institutional barriers they continue to face, We also see students, activists, and young legal professionals engaging in social justice work as direct beneficiaries of the proposed initiatives through programs that will focus on proliferation of information and critical engagement with the law to advance the rights of transgender and gender-variant persons.

Work undertaken by the Law and Marginalisation Clinic in 2023

Advocacy Work

A consultation was organized with approximately 45 transgender activists from different parts of India to receive feedback on the Handbook on the Rights of Trans Persons in India in March 2023.
A series of consultations were organised with lawyers and stakeholders including Kanmani Ray, Rebecca John, Vrinda Grover, and Disha Wadekar for a strategic and comprehensive understanding on challenging the provisions that criminalize abortion under the Indian Penal Code, 1860 from September 2023 to December 2023.

Legal Aid Work

Litigating WP(C) 1201 of 2023 [challenging the rejection of an application for transgender identity card on the ground that a psychologist’s report is required] and; W.P.(C) 6595 of 2017 [seeks directions to CBSE and Delhi University to change the name and gender of a transgender person in their official marksheets and certificates] before the Delhi High Court. WP(C) 1201 of 2023 was withdrawn on 22^nd September 2023 after the transgender identity card was issued.
Research, drafting, and filing of a writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution of India against the state and private parties to remedy employment discrimination and unlawful termination suffered by a transgender woman. This was filed as WP(C) 1405 of 2023 and the Supreme Court of India issued notice on 2^nd January 2024.

Research, drafting, and evidence collection for writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution of India challenging the constitutionality of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.

Building capacity among students, including paralegal and clinical students, and research assistants at JGLS, in offering empathetic and ethical legal aid.
Drafted a representation on the requirement for horizontal reservations in education and employment to be sent to the Chairperson of the Haryana Backward Classes Commission, Justice Darshan Singh. This draft was made with consultation and involvement of members of the Vimanastha Foundation, a group of transgender men from Haryana, and Grace Banu, a transgender activist from Chennai.
The Clinic set up a legal desk for the provision of legal aid in the HIV/AIDS Alliance Sahas Holistic Camps for Transgender Persons (Health and Social Entitlement Camp) on 22^nd, 29^th September, and 9^th November 2023 respectively. Assistance was provided to three transgender and gender-diverse persons with Transgender ID card issues.|
Legal intervention for a client without any government-issued identity cards who needed to apply for a Trans Identity Certificate under Section 6 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.
Legal intervention for a client who was refused the request for a change of name for Bank records despite having a Trans Identity Certificate under Section 7 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.
Legal and crisis intervention for a client who came to Delhi for surgery at Gangaram Hospital. They wanted assistance with getting their affidavit of consent for gender assignment surgery signed and notarized.

Conferences/Webinars/Guest Lectures

Conducted a session on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, implementation challenges and challenges associated with access to healthcare for transgender and gender-variant persons at a workshop hosted by iHear Sangath in February 2023.
Workshop on Decriminalising Petty Offences in collaboration with Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project on 26th August 2023.
Guest lecture on “The Emerging LGBTQIA+ Legal Architecture” by Manuraj S on 12^th September 2023.
On 20^th October 2023, Muskan Tibrewala and Feroza Mody, along with Sudhasri Yadavalli, a paralegal from JGLS, and Grasim S., who is interning with CJLS, organized an educational session on legal matters for a group of 25 individuals from the transgender community with India HIV/AIDS Alliance. During the session, they explained the provisions of the Transgender Act, 2019, and the Transgender Rules, 2020. Specific emphasis was placed on sections of the Transgender Act, 2019, such as sections 3 and 18, which could be instrumental in addressing instances of daily discrimination and harassment. Furthermore, they engaged in discussions regarding hypothetical scenarios, including issues like harassment by police, neighbors, and employers, and the issuance of TG Cards, along with legal strategies for addressing these concerns.
On 10^th October 2023, Muskan Tibrewala led a public session in Hindi for lawyers from Ahmedabad at the Center for Social Justice. The session focused on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, and involved discussions on the Act’s provisions and rules, as well as how lawyers can utilize legal mechanisms under the law to promote and protect the rights of transgender individuals.
On 17^th November 2023, Prof Dipika Jain gave a talk on wellness pedagogy titled ‘Incorporating Wellness into the Clinical Classroom’ for the International Committee of the American Association of Law Schools, Clinical Section.

Courses/ Summer and Winter Clinic/paralegals

Trans Justice and the Law Clinic in collaboration with Egale Canada and Transmen Collective undertook a course for August 2022 – July 2023, including a winter clinical programme in January 2023 and a summer clinical programme in July 2023, where students worked on legal aid cases. This clinical course included engagement with students to ensure capacity-building as well as increasing awareness on trans rights, and an upcoming handbook on the rights of trans persons in India.
The Reproductive Justice and the Law Clinic, a semester-long clinical course, in collaboration with Hidden Pockets and CommonHealth (Fall Semester 2023).
The Trans Justice and the Law Clinic, a year-long clinical course, in collaboration with ILGA Asia and Transmen Collective (2023-24) are currently offering a course for August 2023 – July 2024, including a winter clinical programme in January 2024. This clinical course includes engagement with students on issues of trans rights, queer kinship, and upcoming primers on the rights of queer couples in India.

Publications

Currently in the final stages of editing and reviewing the Handbook on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.
Currently working on a Handbook on the Decriminalisation of Abortion Jurisprudence which looks at the global jurisprudence on decriminalisation in five countries – Canada, Colombia, Thailand, South Korea and Mexico.
Launched an Advocacy Manual titled “Legal Regulation of Abortion in India: Complexities and Challenges” as part of the clinical course titled “Reproductive Justice and the Law Clinic” in collaboration with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) Asia, CommonHealth, and Rising Flame.

Social media engagement

Continuing the clinic’s social media engagement (currently direct engagement with over 585 accounts) on recent judgments, legislations and schemes surrounding reproductive rights and the rights of transgender and gender-variant persons as well as clinical publications, events, and advocacy efforts.

Law and Marginalisation Clinic