The supreme court has ruled that a landmark 1964 civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination in a historic victory for the LGBTQ+ community.
The six-to-three verdict is the biggest victory for LGBTQ+ rights since the court upheld marriage equality in 2015 and for the first time extends federal workplace protections to LGBTQ+ workers nationwide.
The case concerned whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex, also covered LGBTQ+ workers.
“Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. 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. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” justice Neil Gorsuch wrote.
The three cases the court heard, Altitude Express Inc v Zarda, Bostock v Clayton county, and RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes v EEOC concerned whether or not a federal ban on sex discrimination forbids employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers.
The Harris Funeral Homes case centered on Aimee Stephens, a trans woman fired after her boss claimed it would violate “God’s commands” if he allowed her “to deny [her] sex while acting as a representative of [the] organization.”.
Stephens’ case was the first trans rights case to come before the supreme court and came at a time when attacks on trans people have spiked and the federal government and conservative states have moved to erode the rights of trans people.
Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock, both gay men, alleged they were fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation.
Zarda, a skydiving instructor, lost his job after revealing to a female client he was gay ahead of a tandem jump – he had thought the disclosure would make her more comfortable with their close physical contact.
Bostock, an award-winning child social services coordinator, was fired from his job in Georgia after his boss discovered he had joined a gay softball league.
Before the ruling job discrimination against gay and transgender workers was still legal in much of the nation. Some 29 states currently allow some form of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodation.
Under the Trump administration many conservative state legislatures have advanced bills that target the rights of transgender people in particular. On Friday the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era healthcare protections for transgender Americans.
The defendants in the cases have been supported by a cohort of rightwing groups including the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian group.
After the ruling ADF tweeted: “Redefining sex discrimination will cause problems in employment law, reduce bodily-privacy protections for everyone, and erode equal opportunities for women and girls, among many other consequences.”
Americans must be able to rely on what the law says, and it is disappointing that a majority of the justices were unwilling to affirm that commonsense principle. pic.twitter.com/6RsFFt2bLY
— AllianceDefends (@AllianceDefends) June 15, 2020
Objecting to the ruling justice Samuel Alito called the decision “breathtaking” in its arrogance and an “illogical” misreading of Title VII. “In 1964, ordinary Americans reading the text of Title VII would not have dreamed that discrimination because of sex meant discrimination because of sexual orientation, much less gender identity,” he wrote.
Both Stephens and Zarda died before the verdict. Speaking to the Guardian last September, Stephens said: “In my own mind I have to wonder are these people even awake. Trans people have been around, Lord knows, for hundreds, thousands of years and we’ve interacted with them all the time and we haven’t had problems. So why are we dreaming up problems now that don’t exist?”
Jay Kaplan, Stephens’ lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said losing her job had been devastating for Stephens. “Her job was so important to her. It was her calling and her purpose in life and when it was taken away it was devastating,” he said. “Being in this case was so meaningful to her.”