Today I blogged on Love Bytes Reviews, celebrating this morning’s SCOTUS decision affirming workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans. The court said, that when an employer fires an individual for being LGBT the employer “fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. … the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.”
In this decision, explicitly expressing that “all persons” includes our modern understanding of the spectrum of human sexuality and gender, the SCOTUS takes a huge step towards equality in America.
Definitely something to celebrate, at a time when we need that.
My post: http://lovebytesreviews.com/2020/06/15/recognizing-when-its-not-fair/
Now we need to watch for this rule to try and overturn it. The Trump administration will now allow doctors to discriminate against LGBTQ people The new rule was released on the anniversary of the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/24/21234532/trump-administration-health-care-discriminate-lgbtq
I am hopeful that this decision will in fact make it easier to challenge that removal of protections. Because this decision effectively places LGBTQ identity under the protection umbrella of “sex” in current law. It explicitly applies to transgender identity, since one of the test cases was a trans woman. That makes it excellent precedent for denying this new right to refuse treatment to trans people.
I’m now far more hopeful about a possible challenge to this (especially since the 6-3 decision has leeway for one more dissenter.) But yeah, fingers crossed this egregious attack on trans people’s health doesn’t stand.