Supreme Court Extends Coverage to LGBTQ Community

The landmark ruling will extend protections to millions of workers nationwide and changes the previous coverage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which previously did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.

The 6-3 opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices.

“Ours is a society of written laws. Judges are not free to overlook plain statutory commands on the strength of nothing more than suppositions about intentions or guesswork about expectations,” Gorsuch, one of the court’s conservatives, wrote in the majority opinion. “In Title VII, Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee.”

“We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” he added.

The LGBTQ community is made of up of approximately 1 million workers who identify as transgender and 7.1 million lesbian, gay and bisexual workers, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute.

If you believe that you are being harassed or discriminated against at work because of your sexual identity or sexual orientation, you now have legal recourse.  Call Gold Star Law to protect your rights.

To read the Supreme Court’s full opinion and dissent, click the link. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf