Laws protect LGBTQ workers
High court ruling expands anti-bias rights in workplace
A divided Supreme Court further advanced the cause of LGBTQ rights Monday, ruling that a landmark civil rights law barring sex discrimination in the workplace applies to gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
The court’s ruling is likely to have a sweeping impact on federal civil rights laws barring sex discrimination in education, health care, housing and financial credit. Lawsuits pertaining to those laws are pending in lower courts, which are required to follow Supreme Court precedent.
The dramatic ruling came in three cases, involving two gay men and a transgender woman. The cases, heard in early October, were among the most significant on the court’s docket.
The majority opinion of the 6-3 decision was written by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s first appointment to the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices. Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
WASHINGTON – A divided Supreme Court further advanced the cause of LGBTQ rights Monday, ruling that a landmark civil rights law barring sex discrimination in the workplace applies to gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
The decision was written by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s first nominee to the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices. Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Gorsuch wrote.
“Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee. We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.”
The ruling is likely to have a sweeping impact on federal civil rights laws barring sex discrimination in education, health care, housing and credit. Lawsuits pertaining to those laws are pending in lower courts, which are required to follow Supreme Court precedent.
In addition, the Trump administralaw tion’s brand-new rule narrowing the legal definition of sex discrimination in health care to omit transgender people will be jeopardized. The ruling does not, however, help when it comes to ongoing discrimination against LGBTQ people in public accommodations.
The ruling came in three cases, involving two gay men and a transgender woman, from Georgia, New York and Michigan.
The three plaintiffs were Gerald Bostock, a former child welfare services coordinator from Georgia; Donald Zarda, a former New York skydiving instructor who died at 44 in 2014 but was represented by his sister and former partner; and Aimee Stephens, a former funeral home worker from Michigan who is transgender and who died March 12.
At issue: the text of a 1964 civil rights barring employment discrimination based on sex, and whether that term should be understood to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Lawyers for the two gay workers said they were fired for dating men, while female employees were not. Lawyers for their employers said they were treated the same as if they were female employees who dated women.
James Esseks of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Zarda and Stephens, said: “The court has caught up to the majority of our country, which already knows that discriminating against LGBTQ people is both unfair and against the law.”
Alito, who wrote more than 100 pages in dissent for himself and Thomas, accused the court’s majority of writing legislation, not law.