LGBTQ Workplace Protections: Analyzing The Supreme Court's Landmark Ruling

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on workplace protection for LGBTQ workers. The justices ruled 6-3 that portions of the Civil Rights Act extend to gender identity and sexual orientation. We analyze the historic decision and its impact.

Guests

Greg Stohr, Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News. (@GregStohr)

Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. (@krishayashi)

Sunu Chandy, legal director of the National Women’s Law Center. (@SunuChandy)

Jennifer Finney Boylan, writer-in-residence at Barnard College. New York Times opinion columnist. Author of “She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.” (@JennyBoylan)

Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group. (@EdWhelanEPPC)

From The Reading List

Bloomberg: “Workers Can’t Be Fired for LGBT Status, U.S. Supreme Court Says” — “A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law protects gay and transgender workers from job discrimination in a watershed decision that gives millions of LGBT people in dozens of states civil rights they had sought for decades.”

NPR: “Aimee Stephens, Transgender Woman At Center Of Major Civil Rights Case, Dies At 59” — “Aimee Stephens’ Supreme Court case is over the question of whether employers can fire workers for being transgender.”

New York Times: “Civil Rights Law Protects Gay and Transgender Workers, Supreme Court Rules” — “The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination, handing the movement for L.G.B.T. equality a stunning victory.”

Vox: “The Supreme Court is finally taking on trans rights. Here’s the woman who started it all.” — “’I found it a little overwhelming when I realized that I could be in the history books,’ Aimee Stephens told me Monday morning.”

New York Times: “Harry Potter and the Scales of Justice” — “‘I used to think people like you should be, you know, exterminated,’ the nice young man said to me. ‘But after listening to you speak, I’ve really changed my mind!'”

Washington Post: “HUD to change transgender rules for single-sex homeless shelters” — “Single-sex homeless shelters could choose to accommodate only people whose biological sex matches that of those they serve, under a rule to be proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the coming weeks.”

Human Rights Campaign: “Press Release: Human Rights Campaign: Supreme Court is On Right Side of History for LGBTQ Rights” — “Today, the Human Rights Campaign responded to a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court affirming that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”

Them: “LGBTQ+ Workers Now Protected Under Civil Rights Statute, Supreme Court Rules” — “In a landmark victory for LGBTQ+ rights, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision on Monday to protect LGBTQ+ employees against workplace discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

ADF: “Press Release: U.S. Supreme Court redefines ‘sex’ in federal law” — “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that courts and federal agencies can exceed their constitutional boundaries and redefine what ‘sex’ means in federal law.”

Vox: “The Supreme Court has given trans people reason to hope again” — “I met Aimee Stephens, the transgender woman at the center of perhaps the biggest LGBTQ court cases in US history, the day before the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments over whether it is legal for employers to fire queer or trans workers simply for being LGBTQ.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org. [Copyright 2020 NPR]