In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that an existing civil rights law will extend protections to gay, lesbian, and transgender workers.
The decision on Monday said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on sex, also covers sexual orientation. The decision upheld rulings from lower courts that said sexual orientation was a form of sex discrimination, according to NBC news.
The Trump administration argued that Title VII did not extend to claims of gender identity, taking the opposite stance of the Obama administration.
The 6-3 opinion was written by Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“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. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Gorsuch wrote.
“There is simply no escaping the role intent plays here: Just as sex is necessarily a but-for cause when an employer discriminates against homosexual or transgender employees, an employer who discriminates on these grounds inescapably intends to rely on sex in its decision making,” Gorsuch opined.
The decision centers around three cases: two were concerning men who had been fired from their jobs for being gay, and the third case was of a transgender woman who was fired shortly after coming out to her co-workers as trans.
The case of Gerald Bostock, who was a child welfare services coordinator in Georgia and had received positive performance reviews, was fired after he joined a gay softball team.
Donald Zarda was a skydiving instructor who was fired after mentioning to a client that he was gay. Zarda passed away before the case reached the Supreme Court.
And lastly, the case of Aimee Stephens, who was employed as a funeral home director and was fired not long after she told her co-workers that she was transgender. Stephens also passed away before the ruling.
“They’ve ruled. I’ve read the decision, and some people were surprised, but they’ve ruled, and we live with the decision,” President Donald Trump said of the decision. “Very powerful. Very powerful decision, actually.”
