United States: Supreme Court Rules Gay And Transgender Workers Are Protected Under Title VII

In a landmark decision today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia that federal law protects gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers from employment discrimination.

In a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act's ban on sex-based discrimination encompasses discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

"An individual's homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions," Gorsuch wrote. "That's because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex."

"Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result," he continued, "But the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands." According to Gorsuch, a staunch textualist, "only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit." 

Bostock addressed three separate appellate court decisions, each of which involved an employer allegedly terminating a long-time employee simply for being gay or transgender. In the first case, Gerald Bostock, who worked for Clayton County, Georgia as a child welfare advocate, was fired for joining a gay recreational softball league. The county terminated him for conduct "unbecoming" a public employee. In the second case, Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor in New York, was fired after mentioning to a customer that he was gay. And lastly, Aimee Stephens was terminated from her position at a funeral home in Michigan after writing a letter to her employer explaining that she planned to live and work full-time as a woman.

The Supreme Court held that all three plaintiffs properly alleged sex-based discrimination claims because "homosexuality and transgender status are inextricably bound up with sex." The Court reasoned, if an employer fires a male employee for no reason other than the fact that he is attracted to men, the employer is discriminating against him for traits it tolerates in female workers. Likewise, if an employer fires a transgender employee who was assigned male at birth but now identifies as female simply because of her outward gender expression, the employer is penalizing a person assigned male at birth for traits it tolerates in an employee assigned female at birth. In both cases, "the individual employee's sex plays an unmistakable and impermissible role in the discharge decision." 

This ruling adds legal protection for millions of LGBTQ employees. Although gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers in about half the country already enjoyed protection from employment discrimination under state or local laws, the Supreme Court's ruling today ensures gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers will now be statutorily protected nationwide.