opinion
At a time when the coronavirus has shut down most communal events — including most of those that had been planned for June Pride Month marking the impact the LGBTQ community has had on the world — the Supreme Court has given us all a reason to celebrate.
The highest court in the land, on Monday, June 15, issued a ruling proclaiming that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status.
We believe that the reasoning offered in the court’s 6-3 opinion — written by Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s first appointee to the panel — is solid not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it tightly focuses on the Civil Rights Act’s demands and not the partisan politics of our time.
This is not “legislation by the judiciary,” as many who are opposed to the decision might angrily complain.
“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result,” Justice Gorsuch concedes in the decision. “Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.”
Gorsuch and the five justices who signed on to the opinion, including Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four “liberal” justices, found that the language of the CRA’s Title VII itself — prohibition of discrimination “on the basis of sex” — and not some interpretation of it, is why discrimination due to orientation or gender identification is illegal.
For example, job discrimination against a person because they are attracted to someone of the same sex cannot be legal, under the CRA, since a person attracted to the opposite sex is not discriminated against. The discrimination stems from the sex of the person “targeted,” which makes it illegal.
The same situation applies in transgender cases. Discrimination against someone who identifies as a gender other than their genetically defined sex at birth is illegal (due to being “based on sex”) because the person would not be discriminated against if they identified with their genetic birth gender.
This ruling — which court observers note follows the “textualist” philosophy of jurisprudence — will have near-term and far-term impact.
According to reporting by USA TODAY, 28 states have little or no workplace protections of their own in place for the LGBTQ community. About 4.5% of the U.S. population, or roughly 11 million people, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer; 88% of them are employed.
In the longer view, cases are pending in lower courts that deal with how federal sex discrimination laws apply in such arenas as education, health care, housing and financial credit. This employment-bias ruling is likely to become precedent for many of these related subjects. As is the case for employment settings, more than 30 states have little or no protections when it comes to protections against such discrimination in public accommodations.
We believe letting the language of the law speak for itself was the right move. Gorsuch and his majority did a good job of explaining their reasoning in the opinion.
This landmark decision provides important legal precedent which hopefully will give public officials and Congress greater confidence in adopting laws that further delineate and protect the rights we all are supposed to enjoy as Americans, yet have been denied to far too many for far too long.
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June 21, 2020 at 07:03PM
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Editorial: Supreme Court ruling shielding LGBTQ from job discrimination correct and just - The Desert Sun
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