The Supreme Court achieves a major victory for LGBTQ employees

The Supreme Court achieves a major victory for LGBTQ employees

Transgender activist Amy Stevens sits in her wheelchair outside the Supreme Court on October 8, 2019, as the court holds oral arguments in cases that address workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Transgender activist Amy Stevens sits in her wheelchair outside the Supreme Court on October 8, 2019, as the court holds oral arguments in cases that address workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting sexual discrimination in the workplace protects gay employees from dismissal because of their sexual orientation.

The vote was 6-3 with conservative chief justice John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch joining the four liberal court judges in the majority.

The opinion is available here.

And the court decided in a decision on Monday, In Chapter Seven, Congress adopted a wide language, which makes it illegal for the employer to rely on the employee's gender when he decides to fire that employee 

We do not hesitate to acknowledge today the necessary outcome of this legislative option: an employer who expels an individual just because he is gay or transgender defies the law.

Gorsush wrote to the majority that the legislators who drafted and enacted the legislation did not necessarily need to envision how it could be applied in cases such as those considered by the court since then.

“Most likely, they were not thinking about many of the consequences of the law that have become apparent over the years, including his prohibition of discrimination on the basis of maternity or his prohibition on sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of lawmakers’ imagination is no reason to ignore the demands of the law. 

A group of cases

The court's decision came in several cases brought by gay and transgender officials.

Gerald Bostock was the childcare coordinator for Clayton County, GA. He claimed that he was fired after joining the gay entertainment league in 2013.

He said in an interview with NPR last October: "From that moment on, my life changed." Until then, he said, his job ratings were excellent, and under his leadership, the county "reached a standard of service for 100% of children in foster care, something unheard of in any Atlanta metro program."

However, none of that mattered when a word came out stating that he joined the soft gay league. Neil Gorsuch

"I lost my living. I lost my medical insurance, and I was recovering from prostate cancer when that happened," he said. "It was devastating."

Amy Stevens was presented as a man for six years while working as a funeral director at the Harris funeral home in Livonia, Michigan. But by 2012, Stevens was desperate about her sexual identity, at some point contemplating suicide.

She told NPR last October I stood in the backyard with a gun on my chest. But I couldn't do it

Instead, she decided to go out of work as a transgender woman, informing her colleagues and employer of her decision in a letter. Two weeks after the message was delivered to its boss, she was fired. SCOTUS

Stephens died earlier this year, but her case continued.

Tom Rost, the Harris funeral home owner, who sacked Stephens, explained his decision as a decision necessitated by the reaction he expected from "the families we serve. How would they react to that

 He said, noting that Stevens "directed the Harris funeral home

SCOTUS

Neil Gorsuch