Equal Protection and The Domestic Violence Industry

The resources available to protect women who are victims of domestic violence are staggering. They are also a huge lobby of interest groups dedicated to suppressing information about the actual numbers and effects of domestic violence where men are the victims. Not long ago, a group of men in California won an appeal challenging statutes that gave money to domestic violence programs whose resources and services focused only on women. The California court found that the statute (actually, an exception to the Constitutional clause!) violated the rights of men to be treated equally with respect to the funding of domestic violence programs. You can find the case at: Woods, et al. v. Shewry, et al., C056072 (Cal. App. 10/14/2008) .

In October 2009, a Kanawha County, West Virginia judge struck voided regulations for domestic violence programs. Although I have been unable to locate the opinion and find the news reports of the decision unclear and conflicting, it is worthy of noting that more often, courts are taking a hard, cold look at the way State and Federal monies are spent on programs that violate the rights of citizens to government services, based on their gender. For example, can the Montgomery County Commission for Women be far behind?