WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark
civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from
discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a
conservative court. Photo: Joseph Fons holding a Pride Flag, walks back and forth in front of the
U.S. Supreme Court building after the court ruled that LGBTQ people can
not be disciplined or fired based on their sexual orientation June 15,
2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a
key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that
bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses
bias against LGBT workers.
"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," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote
for the court. "Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the
decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."
Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.
"The
Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms
of the statute, but that is preposterous," Alito wrote in the dissent.
"Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of
'sex' is different from discrimination because of 'sexual orientation'
or 'gender identity.'"
Kavanaugh wrote in a separate dissent that
the court was rewriting the law to include gender identity and sexual
orientation, a job that belongs to Congress. Still, Kavanaugh said the
decision represents an "important victory achieved today by gay and
lesbian Americans."
The outcome is expected to have a big impact
for the estimated 8.1 million LGBT workers across the country because
most states don't protect them from workplace discrimination. An
estimated 11.3 million LGBT people live in the U.S., according to the
Williams Institute at the UCLA law school.
But Monday's decision is not likely to be the court's last word on a host of issues revolving around LGBT rights, Gorsuch noted.
Lawsuits
are pending over transgender athletes' participation in school sporting
events, and courts also are dealing with cases about sex-segregated
bathrooms and locker rooms, a subject that the justices seemed concerned
about during arguments in October. Employers who have religious
objections to employing LGBT people also might be able to raise those
claims in a different case, Gorsuch said.
"But none of these other laws are before us; we have not had
the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms,
and we do not prejudge any such question today," he wrote.
The
cases were the court's first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony
Kennedy's retirement and replacement by Kavanaugh. Kennedy was a voice
for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made
same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States. Kavanaugh
generally is regarded as more conservative.
The Trump
administration had changed course from the Obama administration, which
supported LGBT workers in their discrimination claims under Title VII.
During the Obama years, the federal
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
had changed its longstanding interpretation of civil rights law to
include discrimination against LGBT people. The law prohibits
discrimination because of sex, but has no specific protection for sexual
orientation or gender identity.
In recent years, some lower
courts have held that discrimination against LGBT people is a subset of
sex discrimination, and thus prohibited by the federal law.
Efforts
by Congress to change the law have so far failed. The Supreme Court
cases involved two gay men and a transgender woman who sued for
employment discrimination after they lost their jobs.
Aimee Stephens lost her job as a funeral director in the Detroit area
after she revealed to her boss that she had struggled with gender most
of her life and had, at long last, "decided to become the person that my
mind already is." Stephens told funeral home owner Thomas Rost that
following a vacation, she would report to work wearing a conservative
skirt suit or dress that Rost required for women who worked at his three
funeral homes. Rost fired Stephens.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled that the firing constituted sex
discrimination under federal law. Stephens died last month. Donna
Stephens, her wife of 20 years, said in a statement that she is
"grateful for this victory to honor the legacy of Aimee, and to ensure
people are treated fairly regardless of their sexual orientation or
gender identity.
The federal appeals court in New York ruled in favor of a gay
skydiving instructor who claimed he was fired because of his sexual
orientation. The full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 10-3 that
it was abandoning its earlier holding that Title VII didn't cover sexual
orientation because "legal doctrine evolves." The court held that
"sexual orientation discrimination is motivated, at least in part, by
sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination."
That ruling
was a victory for the relatives of Donald Zarda, who was fired in 2010
from a skydiving job in Central Islip, New York, that required him to
strap himself tightly to clients so they could jump in tandem from an
airplane. He tried to put a woman with whom he was jumping at ease by
explaining that he was gay. The school fired Zarda after the woman's
boyfriend called to complain.
Zarda died in a wingsuit accident in Switzerland in 2014.
In
a case from Georgia, the federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled against
Gerald Bostock, a gay employee of Clayton County, in the Atlanta
suburbs. Bostock claimed he was fired in 2013 because he is gay. The
county argues that Bostock was let go because of the results of an audit
of funds he managed.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
dismissed Bostock's claim in a three-page opinion that noted the court
was bound by a 1979 decision that held "discharge for homosexuality is
not prohibited by Title VII."
fonte: by MARK SHERMAN, The Associated Press
https://local12.com
