The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday morning that an employer who fires a person merely for being gay or transgender violates federal law on civil rights.
The Supreme Court looked at three federal cases, one out of Georgia from the 11th Circuit, and others from the second circuit and the sixth circuit courts of appeals.
“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,” Justice Neil Gorscuh wrote in the court’s opinion.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion. “There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation,” Justices Alito and Thomas stated in the opinion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a separate dissenting opinion. He wrote that under the constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the President in the legislative process, not to the court.
The cases were Gerald Lynn Bostock vs. Clayton County, Georgia; Altitude Express Inc., vs. Melissa Zarda and William Allen Moore Jr., co-executors of the estate of Donald Zarda; and R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Today’s opinion is online at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf.