Supreme Court Says Gay and Transgender Workers are Protected by Federal Law

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that gay, lesbian and transgender workers will be protected under the civil rights law.

What We Know:

• It was a 6 to 3 vote, making it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person’s sex, sexual orientation and transgender status. The individuals who voted to pass this law was President Trump’s first Supreme appointee, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kegen. The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex and the  justices have now decided this includes gay and transgender people.

No person should be afraid to show the world who they are – and no LGBTQ person should risk losing their job by doing so. Colorado will continue to lead on anti-discrimination policies and my administration will continue to build a Colorado For All. (2/2)

— Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) June 15, 2020

Huge news: #SCOTUS affirms that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This is a landmark victory for #LGBTQ equality.

— Alphonso David (@AlphonsoDavid) June 15, 2020

• Gorsuch wrote, “An employer who fired 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.” 21 states have their own laws that prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender but after Monday’s ruling, LGBTQ employees now have the same protection.
• There are two sets of cases that are being considered here. The first include two gay men who filed a lawsuit because they say they were fired because of their sexual orientation. The second case involves a transgender woman who says she was fired because she decided to embrace her gender identity at work. The gay rights cases that are being examined are Bostock v. Clayton County, GA, No. 17-1618 and Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, No. 17-1623. Gerald Bostock is a gay man who worked for a government program that helped neglected and abused children in Clayton County. He was fired after he joined a gay softball league. The second case involves Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who said he was fired because he was gay. This is a victory for both cases.
• James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project says, “The Supreme Court’s clarification that it’s unlawful to fire people because they’re LGBTQ is the result of decades of advocates fighting for our rights. 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.”

The LGBTQ community makes up 1 million workers who identify as transgender and 7.1 million who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The Trump administration argued that Title VII didn’t cover cases such as these despite the position the government took during the Obama administration. The Justice Department says ‘sex’ is biologically make or female; it does not include sexual orientation.