Supreme Court Rules American Workers Can’t Be Fired For Being Gay Or Trans, Defying White House

In a landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court (which now features two new justices appointed by President Trump) gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans individuals cannot legally be discriminated against by employers – meaning they can’t be fired, or not hired, simply for being LGBTQ.

In decisions in two separate cases, the court finally added LGBTQ people as a “protected class” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The justices conceded that sexual orientation may not have been on the minds of anyone in Congress when the civil rights law was passed back in the wake of President John F Kennedy’s assassination. But the judges ruled that firing a male employee for dating men, but not a female employee for dating men, would represent illegal discrimination.

The rulings were victories for Gerald Bostock, who was fired from a county job in Georgia after he joined a gay softball team, and the relatives of Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who was fired after he told a female client not to worry about being strapped tightly to him during a jump because he was “100% gay”. Zarda died before SCOTUS decided to accept the case.

In a separate case, SCOTUS also ruled that Title VII outlaws discrimination against transgender employees, upholding a lower court ruling that found Aimee Stephens was impermissibly fired from her job at a Michigan funeral home two weeks after coming out as trans to her boss.

Her former employer claimed she was fired for failing to follow the dress code. Like Zarda, Stephens did not live to see the case decided, having died on May 12 while in hospice care for kidney disease.

The cases mark the first notable rulings on gay rights since the retirement of former justice Anthony Kennedy. Notably, the Trump administration opposed the court’s ruling, reversing the stance from the Obama Administration.