The Supreme Court pronounced that the present federal law prohibits job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status, a significant victory for gay rights advocates and for the evolving transgender rights movement, and a startling one from a gradually more conservative court.
By a 6-3 vote, the court said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers to discriminate a person's sex, also covers both sexual orientation and transgender status. It ratifies rulings from the lower courts saying the discrimination of sexual orientation is a manifestation of sex discrimination.
Surprisingly the decision was written by Neil Gorsuch, the first Supreme Court appointee of President Donald Trump, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and four more liberal members of the court to form a majority.
According to NBC News, Gorsuch stated it would be illegal to fire individuals for being transgender, homosexual, or constituting behaviors or traits that would not have been questioned in members of different sex. He added that Title VII forbids the necessary and undisguisable role of sexual orientation in making decisions.
Moreover, Gorsuch uttered those who embraced the Civil Rights Act might have not foreseen their work to come up to this particular result and the limit provided by the imagination of the drafters served no reason to take no notice of the demands of the law. He added that the law is only comprised of the written words and all people are entitled to its benefits.
According to Deadline, 21 states across the nation have laws prohibiting job discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Seven more states come up with providing that protection only to public employees. Those laws remain in effect, but Monday's ruling means the federal law extends the same protections for employees who are members of the LGBTQ community in the rest of the country.
CBS News also reported that the case has been acknowledged by gay and transgender rights groups as a significant one, much more important than their fight to have the right to marry because most of the LGBTQ adults have or need a job. They recognized that not everyone in Congress considered sexual orientation when civil rights were passed. But they uttered when a male employee was fired from his work by an employer only because he is dating a man, but not firing a female employee who dates men, then this is a violation of the law.
US President Donald Trump, during senior citizen issues at the White House roundtable, considered the decision to be very powerful.
On a statement, Trump said since the Supreme Court ruled, Americans should live with the decisions passed by the court.
Gay right advocates commemorated the ruling.
According to James Esseks, American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project director, the clarification of the Supreme Court that firing people because they are LGBTQ is unlawful is the outcome of decades of fighting for the LGBTQ rights. Esseks said the court has caught up to the country's majority, who already realized that discrimination against the LGBTQ is both unlawful and unfair.
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