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US Supreme Court Says Civil Rights Law Protects LGBTQ+ Workers
The US Supreme Court ruled Monday, June 15, that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian, and transgender workers.
The landmark ruling will extend protections to millions of workers nationwide.
The Trump administration had argued that Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bars employment discrimination based race, religion, national origin, and sex did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation. The administtaion said that if Congress wanted to protect gay and transgender workers legislators could pass a new law.
Jutice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
“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,” Gorsuch wrote.
The decision was the first on LGBTQ+ rights since the retirement in 2018 of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinions in all four of the court’s major gay rights decisions.
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