The Supreme Court of the United States, SCOTUS, ruled Monday that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected characteristics in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This offers protections for approximately one million transgender and 7.1 million lesbian, gay and bisexual workers.
And it will likely doom the Trump administration’s new proposed regulations stripping health-care protections from transgender individuals.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices in the majority in this monumental 6-3 decision.
The Supreme Court reached the decision after considering a trio of cases all filed in 2018. Aimee Stephens, Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock, are the LGBTQ employees at the center of these cases. But two are deceased now.
Gorsuch
Writing for the majority, Gorsuch argued that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is fundamentally no different than discrimination based on sex.
“An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,”
GORSUCH
The rulings rest on a pair of arguments the court heard in October in which justices considered whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that prohibits workplace discrimination, applies to LGBTQ and transgender workers.
Human Rights Campaign
Today is a victory for LGBTQ employees in the United States, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of Human Rights Campaign, HRC.
“Our community owes a great deal of gratitude to Aimee Stephens, Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock, the LGBTQ employees at the center of these cases.”
“Zarda passed away in 2014 and just this May, Aimee, too passed. They deserved to be a part of this moment,” Warbelow said.
She said, “With this momentum at our backs, we must push forward together and turn this win into even bigger ones come November’s elections.”
Justice Samuel Alito accused Gorsuch of textualist heresy in a long dissent he wrote. Justice Clarence Thomas concurred.
