ASSOCIATE DEAN DODGE PRESENTS AT NORTHERN KENTUCKY LAW REVIEW'S SYMPOSIUM
April 2025 — On Thursday, March 20, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor of Law Jeffrey A. Dodge presented his article “The Unfulfilled Promise of Obergefell for Children of LGBTQ+ Parents: Advancing Nondiscrimination Laws for Familial Association” at Northern Kentucky Law Review’s symposium “Obergefell v. Hodges: 10 Years Later.”
His article and presentation calls for amendments to the Equality Act to include familial association nondiscrimination protections under an expanded definition of sex. He argued that much of the legal reasoning in Obergefell advanced marriage equality as a way to give dignity to children of LGBTQ+ parents and not enough has been done to protect them from discriminatory acts. Especially in recent years, these children are experiencing the same types of discrimination faced by their parents, but do not have state or local protections when they themself are not LGBTQ+. Leveraging past U.S. Supreme Court rulings wherein equal protection jurisprudence seeks to protect children from harm based on the identities and decisions of their parents, he makes the case that this needs to be addressed federally but offers the alternative that existing state and local laws could similarly be amended sooner.
The article will be published by the Northern Kentucky Law Review later this year.
Jeffrey A. Dodge, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Assistant Professor of Law and Joseph H. Goldstein Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law, has spent nearly 20 years in legal education. Dean Dodge has broad experience overseeing law school and University-level offices of student services, international programs, admissions, academic success, career services, and more. He has taught and presented on topics in the fields of family law, education law, international human rights, and LGBTQ+ inequality. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of educational access and minoritized communities. Dean Dodge is past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Student Services, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues, and International Legal Exchange sections. He has served on the national diversity committee of the Law School Admissions Council, as an American Bar Association accreditation site evaluator, and a three time director of the CLEO Pre-Law Summer Institute.