Does the law protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination? It should be an easy answer.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Opinions
Does the law protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination? It should be an easy answer.

By Jenny Yang
April 26 at 8:49 AM

Jenny Yang, commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 2013 to 2018, is a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute.

The Supreme Court decided Monday to hear a trio of cases addressing a long-disputed and critically important question: whether discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This issue has profound implications for our understanding of the meaning of equality. Although this question has fractured the United States for decades, the answer should be easy.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bans employment discrimination “because of [an] individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Sexual orientation and transgender status are not listed as specific protected categories. But no such language is required. The beauty of our nation’s civil rights laws is that they protect everyone — including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — who faces discrimination based on sex.

Under Supreme Court precedent, the question should be whether an employer relied on sex-based considerations or took gender into account when taking the challenged employment action. In 1989, the Supreme Court established in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that discriminating against an employee for not conforming to gender stereotypes — in this case, not walking, talking or dressing “more femininely” — is sex discrimination. The court concluded that Title VII means “that gender must be irrelevant to employment decisions.”

In 1998, a unanimous Supreme Court in Oncale v. Sundowner resolved a dispute among the lower courts, finding that Title VII prohibits the “entire spectrum” of sex-based discrimination — even a man harassed by other men. Although Congress may not have contemplated this situation when it passed Title VII, Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing for the majority, called for “common sense” in evaluating claims in “social context,” recognizing that “statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils.”
....

Today, courts are increasingly recognizing that no statutory basis exists for excluding LGBTQ individuals from the rights provided to us all. The ability of millions of Americans to support their families and live with dignity should not need to wait for further congressional action. Congress has already spoken by prohibiting discrimination based on “sex.” And that is why this should not be a hard decision.

[AlexSFCA]

1. the new SC majority can do anything they want now

so I wouldnt expect much from then, they dont care about precedent, they are purey ideologically driven. Our best hope is that Roberts moves to the center and preserves precedents.

[Soxfan58]

2. But didn't people say that Hillary and Deranged Donald

Were the same? Judges have the power and the GOP is stacking.

[Karadeniz]

3. If you're a citizen, you're a citizen. I always considered the lgbt cases to be civil rights cases,

Not freedom of religion or anything else. Civil rights is easy. Anyone can marry, have the right to work, adopt, and if you're in a business open to the public, you're open to the whole public. This isn't hard, unless you're trying to turn citizens into lesser citizens.