Joseph Fons, holding a Pride Flag, stands in front of US Supreme Court, June 15, 2020 (Kevin Dietsch/UPI)
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upholds civil rights for gay and transgender workers.
Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative judge Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee, joined the court’s four moderates to deliver the landmark decision protecting gay and transgender Americans from workplace discrimination
Rights activists were happily stunned that the backing from Roberts and Gorsuch prevented the Trump Administration from removing protections under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The ruling is seen as the most significant since the Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.
The decision came three days after the Administration removed healthcare protections for transgender patients.
Trump’s camp has been insisting that sex is biologically determined at birth, diluting civil rights protections to fit. Previous Trump orders have targeted transgender military personnel and access to bathrooms. The Administration has weakened protections for transgender employees of government contractors. It is considering a policy that permits homeless shelters to consider biological sex rather than gender identity in placement decisions, even if a transgender woman faces abuse when placed with men.
See TrumpWatch, Day 284: Judges Blocks Trump Ban on Transgender Military Service
“A Watershed”
Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion, said:
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.
It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.
Writing for himself and Judge Clarence Thomas, Judge Samuel Alito complained that the Court was making law: “What the court has done today — interpreting discrimination because of ‘sex’ to encompass discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity — is virtually certain to have far-reaching consequences. Over 100 federal statutes prohibit discrimination because of sex.”
In a separate dissent, Trump appointee Judge Brett Kavanaugh insisted that transgender people were not covered under the 1964 Civil Rights Act: “To think that sexual orientation discrimination is just a form of sex discrimination is not just a mistake of language and psychology, but also a mistake of history and sociology.”
Trump appeared to concede defeat in a comment to reporters, “They’ve ruled. I’ve read the decision, and some people were surprised, but they’ve ruled and we live with their decision.”
The cases before the Court included two lawsuits from gay men who said they were fired because of their sexual orientation, and a one from a transgender woman who was dismissed by a Michigan funeral home after she said she would start working in women’s clothing.
Torie Osborn, a former head of the National LGBTQ Task Force, summarized the significance of Monday’s decision was “important in terms of impacting millions and millions of lives of ordinary people. It’s bigger than marriage. It’s a watershed.”
