The US legal system relies on its ability to categorize cases presented to present verdicts in an orderly and timely manner. However, as individual identities become more multifaceted, our legal system fails to encompass all gender and racial identities for which protections exist. The acceptance of queer, nonbinary, trans, and intersex individuals has unveiled issues with the protections given to the traditional male/female dichotomy. These protections for males/females stood as the foundation for civil protections since the founding of our legal system. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed for equal opportunity for all people on the “basis of sex”. This laid the foundation for the continuation of the LGBTQ movement, and lead to equal protections for those who do not fall into the traditional male/female dichotomy. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a non-dichotomous law – it gives protections to individuals without requiring them to self-identify. However, since its ratification, other statues that extended on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 required identification. The Education Amendments of 1972 dictated that all schools must be equal in stature and allowed for the creation of single-sex schools as long as they were all equally funded. It did not dictate how trans, nonbinary, or anyone who does not fit into a male/female dichotomy, fit into this mold. The existence of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a non-dichotomous law grants equal opportunity without requiring self-identification. Through the scope of a traditional feminist philosophical viewpoint, I will analyze what makes the Civil Rights Act non-dichotomous, and whether this framework can be applied to future laws, or if the absence of dichotomies requires further statues to clarify its protections
