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In a historic ruling, the Supreme Court has found that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting sex discrimination does, in fact, protect LGBT workers. The law holds that an employer can’t discriminate against an employee based on sex. As such, given a literal reading of the law, not a reading of its intent, it would protect LGBT workers, the court ruled.
Many proponents of LGBT rights felt pleasant surprise on Monday that the court ruled 6-3 in favor of this interpretation. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Keagan were also in the majority.
The Supreme Court currently has more conservative-appointed justices than liberal-appointed justices for the first time in decades. This led to many LGBT rights activists fearing the supreme court would fall on the other side of the Civil Rights Act case. However, text-first justices Roberts and Gorsuch read the 1964 law literally.
Lawyers for businesses and the Trump administration argued that the original intent of the law was in play. In 1964, the understanding of discrimination based on sex only extended to discriminating against someone for being a woman. The employer’s lawyers noted that a broad reading of the Civil Rights Act could bankrupt their businesses. If gay employees can sue over wrongful firing, employers need bankruptcy attorney firms in short order.
On the other side, lawyers for workers argued that discrimination against LGBT people must be on the basis of sex. In the wording of the original law, there is no clarification to the phrase “the basis of sex.”
However, workers’ lawyers laid out a logically sound argument. If you discriminate against a man for dating other men, you’re discriminating against him, partly, for being a man. If you treat a trans employee differently, you’re directly discriminating based on sex.
Speaking for the majority, Justice Gorsuch wrote, “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. 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”.
Gorsuch’s interpretation supports the argument laid out by the workers’ lawyers. The minority in the court, however, feels the ruling was “legislative” in nature. “There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation. The document that the Court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito.
