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Supreme Court rules LGBTQ persons cannot be fired because of their sexual orientation

U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. – LGBTQ people were delivered a victory Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a 1960s-era federal law against employment discrimination applies to them and they cannot be fired because of their sexual orientation.

The court considered a number of cases in making its ruling; in each of these cases, an employer allegedly fired a long-time employee simply for being homosexual or transgender.  Clayton County, Georgia, fired Gerald Bostock for conduct “unbecoming” a county employee shortly after he began participating in a gay recreational softball league. Altitude Express fired Donald Zarda days after he mentioned being gay. And R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes fired Aimee Ste- phens, who presented as a male when she was hired, after she in- formed her employer that she planned to “live and work full-time as a woman.” Each employee sued, alleging sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch joined the court’s four liberal justices in the majority in a 6-3 ruling; the opinion stated:

“Few pieces of federal legislation rank in significance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There, in Title VII, Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. 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. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. 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 extra-textual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.”

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