Transgender case said to widen anti-bias law

WASHINGTON — Lawyers described as significant a recent court ruling that targets bias against transgender people. A federal appeals court, rejecting the position of President Donald Trump’s administration, ruled this month that transgender people are protected by a civil-rights law that bans workplace discrimination based on sex.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati held that job discrimination on the basis of transgender status was inherently sex discrimination and that the employer in the case could not claim an exemption from the law because of his religious beliefs.

Scott Rabe, an expert on employment law at the firm Seyfarth Shaw, said the ruling was important because “it addresses two hot-button topics in the field: the scope of the definition of ‘sex discrimination’ under Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] and the impact of laws protecting the free exercise of religion in the workplace.”

The case was brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an independent federal agency, on behalf of a funeral director who was fired by a Michigan funeral home after informing the owner that she intended to transition from male to female.

The owner of the home, Thomas Rost, a Christian, said forcing him to employ the transgender worker would violate his religious beliefs and would therefore breach the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

But the court disagreed. Job discrimination based on a person’s transgender status violates Title VII, it ruled.

Doron Kalir, a Cleveland State University law professor, said the ruling showed how judges were “extending the protection of Title VII … to a more diverse workforce of gays, lesbians and transgender people.”