In a stunning 6-3 decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch (!), the Supreme Court has ruled that LGBTQ people cannot be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is now against the law to be fired from your job for being LGBTQ. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining: “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,” he wrote. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
Title VII bars discrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, and religion,” but the original statute did not define what “sex” meant. The Trump administration argued that the original intent of the drafters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have included LGBTQ workers, but was focused specifically on women and meant only cis women. Gorsuch doesn’t let them pass it off that way—he acts like an actual textualist. “Only the written word is the law,” he wrote, “and all persons are entitled to its benefit.”
This blog originally appeared at Daily Kos on June 15, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Joan McCarter is a Senior Political Writer for Daily Kos.
