Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co. denied a right to privacy claim of a man who had been “outed” as gay in newspaper articles that reported on his intervention in thwarting an assassination attempt on the life of President Gerald Ford. The court ruled that Sipple could not prove the elements of the privacy tort of public disclosure of private facts because his sexual orientation had not been kept completely secret from friends and acquaintances in San Francisco, although he has not disclosed his orientation to his family. The feminist rewritten opinion reshapes the right of privacy claim to protect LGBT plaintiffs, arguing that permitting limited disclosure is crucial to give such individuals a measure of control over their most intimate information. The feminist approach takes into account constitutional principles of equality and freedom of association when interpreting the scope of the right to privacy, paying close attention to context and the particular interests at stake. The accompanying commentary paints a portrait of Sipple as an involuntary “gay hero” whose life was upended by publicity and reflects on the limitations of law as a vehicle of liberation.

The Introduction to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tort Opinions situates the sixteen rewritten feminist opinions and accompanying commentaries contained in the volume into the broader legal and scholarly landscape. Although the idea of a feminist tort law is still difficult for many to imagine, the Introduction details the rich history of feminist and critical torts scholarship. Many of its recurring themes echo those found in critical scholarship more generally, including taking a gender-aware approach, preferring contextual analyses that tap into women’s lived experiences, and being skeptical of abstract dichotomies that mask implicit hierarchies. The volume contains “classic” cases that appear in virtually every torts casebook as well as lesser-known cases that deserve more attention. A large number of the cases in the volume deal with gender-related injuries caused by sexual violence, abuse, harassment, and invasions of privacy. The portrait that emerges is that of a tort system that undercompensates for sexual and reproductive injury. When courts confront such gender-related injuries, they tend not to apply ordinary doctrinal rules or not to apply ordinary rules with the same force as in other settings. The Introduction lists promising strategies to correct for such bias and make tort law more inclusive and egalitarian.