The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case as "R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission" during the 2019-2020 term.
(meta data) TITLE: Supreme Court to Decide Whether Landmark Civil Rights Law Applies to Gay and Transgender Workers - The New York Times (meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2017-07-17T12:19:15-04:00 Skip to contentSkip to site indexPoliticsLog InToday's PaperPolitics|Supreme Court to Decide Whether Landmark Civil Rights Law Applies to Gay and Transgender Workers Supported by # Supreme Court to Decide Whether Landmark Civil Rights Law Applies to Gay and Transgender Workers ImageThe Supreme Court will hear cases based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids employment discrimination based on sex, and whether it applies to sexual orientation or transgender status. CreditCreditT.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times By Adam Liptak April 22, 2019 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would decide whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees protections from workplace discrimination to gay and transgender people in three cases expected to provide the first indication of how the court's new conservative majority will approach L.G.B.T. rights. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said the 1964 act does guarantee the protections. But the Trump administration has taken the opposite position, saying that the landmark legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and, notably, sex, cannot fairly be read to apply to discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status. The three cases the court accepted are the first concerning L.G.B.T. rights since the retirement last summer of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a champion of gay rights. His replacement by the more conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh could shift the court's approach to cases concerning gay men, lesbians and transgender people. Most federal appeals courts have interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to exclude sexual orientation discrimination. But two of them, in New York and Chicago, recently issued decisions ruling that discrimination against gay men and lesbians is a form of sex discrimination. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case from New York, Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, No. 17-1623, along with one from Georgia that came to the opposite conclusion, Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., No. 17-1618. The New York case was brought by a skydiving instructor, Donald Zarda, who said he was fired because he was gay. His dismissal followed a complaint from a female customer who had voiced concerns about being tightly strapped to Mr. Zarda during a tandem dive. Mr. Zarda, hoping to reassure the customer, told her that he was "100 percent gay." Mr. Zarda sued under Title VII and lost the initial rounds. He died in a 2014 skydiving accident, and his estate pursued his case. Last year, a divided 13-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann concluded that "sexual orientation discrimination is motivated, at least in part, by sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination." In dissent, Judge Gerard E. Lynch wrote that the words of Title VII did not support the majority's interpretation. "Speaking solely as a citizen," he wrote, "I would be delighted to awake one morning and learn that Congress had just passed legislation adding sexual orientation to the list of grounds of employment discrimination prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I am confident that one day — and I hope that day comes soon — I will have that pleasure." "I would be equally pleased to awake to learn that Congress had secretly passed such legislation more than a half-century ago — until I actually woke up and realized that I must have been still asleep and dreaming," Judge Lynch wrote. "Because we all know that Congress did no such thing." The arguments in the Second Circuit had a curious feature: Lawyers for the federal government appeared on both sides. One lawyer, representing the E.E.O.C., said Title VII barred discrimination against gay people. Another, representing the Trump administration, took the contrary view. The Georgia case was brought by a child welfare services coordinator who said he was fired for being gay. The 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, ruled against him in a short, unsigned opinion that cited a 1979 decision that had ruled that "discharge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII." The justices also agreed to decide the separate question of whether Title VII bars discrimination against transgender people. The case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, No. 18-107, concerns Aimee Stephens, who was fired from a Michigan funeral home after she announced in 2013 that she was a transgender woman and would start working in women's clothing. "What I must tell you is very difficult for me and is taking all the courage I can muster," she wrote to her colleagues. "I have felt imprisoned in a body that does not match my mind, and this has caused me great despair and loneliness." Ms. Stephens had worked at the funeral home for six years. Her colleagues testified that she was able and compassionate. Two weeks after receiving the letter, the home's owner, Thomas Rost, fired Ms. Stephens. Asked for the "specific reason that you terminated Stephens," Mr. Rost said: "Well, because he was no longer going to represent himself as a man. He wanted to dress as a woman." The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled for Ms. Stephens. Discrimination against transgender people, the court said, was barred by Title VII. "It is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee's status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee's sex," the court said, adding, "Discrimination 'because of sex' inherently includes discrimination against employees because of a change in their sex." John J. Bursch, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the funeral home, said the appeals court had impermissibly revised the federal law. "Neither government agencies nor the courts have authority to rewrite federal law by replacing 'sex' with 'gender identity' — a change with widespread consequences for everyone," Mr. Bursch said in a statement. "The funeral home wants to serve families mourning the loss of a loved one, but the E.E.O.C. has elevated its political goals above the interests of the grieving people that the funeral home serves." James D. Esseks, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Ms. Stephens and Mr. Zarda's estate, said the cases concern elementary principles of fairness. "Most of America would be shocked if the Supreme Court said it was legal to fire Aimee because she's transgender or Don because he is gay," Mr. Esseks said in a statement. "Such a ruling would be disastrous, relegating L.G.B.T.Q. people around the country to a second-class citizen status." There is a second issue in Ms. Stephens's case, one that could allow her to win however the Supreme Court might rule on whether Title VII applies to discrimination against transgender people. In 1989, the court said discrimination against workers because they did not conform to gender stereotypes was a form of sex discrimination. The Sixth Circuit ruled for Ms. Stephens on that ground, too, saying she had been fired "for wishing to appear or behave in a manner that contradicts the funeral home's perception of how she should behave or appear based on her sex." All three cases present the question of how courts should interpret statutes whose drafters might not have contemplated the sweep of the language they wrote. In January, in a minor arbitration case, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote that courts should ordinarily interpret statutes as they were understood at the time of their enactment. In a concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that was not always so. "Congress," she wrote, "may design legislation to govern changing times and circumstances." Quoting from an earlier decision, she added: "Words in statutes can enlarge or contract their scope as other changes, in law or in the world, require their application to new instances or make old applications anachronistic." Follow Adam Liptak on Twitter: @adamliptak. A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Justices to Weigh Wider View of Sex Bias Law. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe ### Related Coverage ## Can a Fired Transgender Worker Sue for Job Discrimination? Nov. 12, 2018Image ## Gay Rights Groups Seek One More Win From Justice Kennedy July 17, 2017Image ## Site Index ### news ### opinion ### arts ### living ### more ### Subscribe
train11177
LGBT employment discrimination in the United States
Federal employees and law.

 The Executive Order states Administration policy but does not and cannot create any new enforcement rights (such as the ability to proceed before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). Those rights can be granted only by legislation passed by the Congress, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. At the start of 2010, the Obama administration included gender identity among the classes protected against discrimination under the authority of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). It was Obamas' wish to further attend to LGBT civil rights not only through legislation, but also the executive branch. In 2012 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not allow gender identity-based employment discrimination because it is a form of sex discrimination. In 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not allow sexual orientation discrimination in employment because it is a form of sex discrimination. 
 In March 2018, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in "EEOC v. RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes" that transgender people are protected by federal sex discrimination laws. By August of that year, 16 states had joined an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the ruling.