Supreme Law Rules in Favour of LGBTQ workers.

The Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian, transgender, and all LGBTQ workers.

It handed a big win to the LGBT community, in a 6-3 opinion ruling that an employer who fires a worker for being gay violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which protected people from employer sex discrimination, as well as discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.

According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, the LGBTQ community is made up of about 1 million workers identifying as transgender and 7.1 million lesbian, gay and bisexual workers.

Twenty-two states plus the District of Columbia have decrees protecting workers based on sexual inclination.

In another case, twenty-one states plus DC have statutes shielding workers from discrimination based on gender identity.

The verdict dealt with three cases. In one, Clayton County, Georgia employee Gerald Bostock was fired from his job as a child welfare advocate for the “unbecoming” conduct of a county employee soon after he joined a gay softball league.

In another, New York skydiving instructor Donald Zarda was fired after mentioning he was gay.

The third case is of a Michigan funeral home worker, Aimee Stephens who was fired after she told her employer that she would be identifying as a woman six years into her employment.

In all three situations, the employers admitted that firing the workers for being gay or transgender. They nevertheless argued that this did not violate Title VII.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which presided over Bostock’s case, agreed with this view. The Second and Sixth Circuits, which heard Zarda’s and Stephens’ cases, ruled differently.

The court validated their inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity under Title VII by focusing on the law’s language, which was against sexual discrimination.

It stated that as long as sex is a factor the discrimination, that is enough to trigger Title VII.