In a stunning victory for LGBT employees and the movement at large, the U.S. Supreme Court has held 6-3 that gay and transgender people are protected by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination “because of sex.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority opinion, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The Court decided three cases together, all of which involved a gay or transgender person being fired after their employer learned of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“We agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex. But, as we’ve seen, discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex; the first cannot happen without the second,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.
“[W]hen Congress chooses not to include any exceptions to a broad rule, courts apply the broad rule. And that is exactly how this Court has always approached Title VII.”
In the first case, Gerald Bostock was fired from his post as Clayton County, Georgia’s child welfare coordinator--despite the county winning national awards for its work for foster children under his leadership--after he joined a gay recreational softball league. The Eleventh Circuit dismissed his case as a matter of law, holding that Title VII does not protect employees from being fired because they are gay.
In the second case, Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, mentioned that he was gay and was fired just days later. The Second Circuit held that sexual orientation discrimination does violate Title VII.
Finally, Aimee Stephens was fired from her post as funeral director at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City, Michigan after she notified her employer that she planned to live and work as a woman after she sought treatment for despair and loneliness and was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Similarly to the Second Circuit, the Sixth Circuit held that Title VII bars employers from firing employees because of their transgender status.
Justice Gorsuch relied on the statutory plain meaning of “because of sex” as well as decades of precedent broadly interpreting the meaning of the phrase to outlaw motherhood discrimination and sexual harassment of women and of men. The Court declined to look at the legislative history of the statute’s enactment because the Court found no ambiguity in applying the statute to these cases.
“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result . . . But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.
Justice Alito authored a lengthy and biting dissent, accusing the Court of legislating “under the guise of statutory interpretation.”
“A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall,” Justice Alito argued.
Justice Kavanaugh also authored a dissenting opinion, in which he acknowledged the LGBT community’s decades-long fight for equal rights, but insisted that it is the proper role of Congress, not the Supreme Court, to make such a change to federal law.
LGBT people were already protected against employment discrimination under New York State and City laws. The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (“GENDA”) made gender identity and gender expression protected classes under the New York State Human Rights Law in 2019. The New York City Human Rights Law also outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. However, less than half the states have such protections, underscoring the importance of this decision for much of the country.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes just a few days after the Trump Administration proposed to roll back an Obama-era rule that protected transgender people from discrimination under the Affordable Care Act.
Written by Kacie Candela.
