{"id":86671,"date":"2020-06-16T06:04:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T11:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=86671"},"modified":"2020-06-16T06:04:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T11:04:21","slug":"auto-draft-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/06\/16\/auto-draft-35\/","title":{"rendered":"US Supreme Court Rules Employers Can’t Discriminate Against LGBTQ Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that federal employment laws protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination, delivering a major victory to the LGBTQ community amid concerns over an erosion of their rights in recent years.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nIn a landmark 6-3 decision, the conservative-controlled court ruled that an \u201cemployer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender\u201d violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nConservative Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2017, joined the majority opinion.\u00a0 Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump\u2019s other Supreme Court appointee, led three conservative justices in dissenting, arguing the issue should be settled through legislation.
\n\u00a0
\nThe historic decision came amid concerns that the Supreme Court, where five conservatives hold sway, will roll back legal protections for minorities, including LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning) people. In 2018, the court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
\n\u00a0
\nAlthough 21 states currently prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, there are no existing federal laws against such discrimination. The Supreme Court ruling ends the legal patchwork for LGBTQ worker rights and establishes employment anti-discrimination protection nationwide. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n‘Landmark victory’<\/strong><\/p>\n

LGBTQ rights advocates hailed the ruling, which came nearly five years after the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in the United States.
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cThis is a landmark victory for LGBTQ equality,\u201d Alphonso David, president of Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy organization, tweeted.
\n\u00a0
\nKaty Joseph, director of policy and advocacy at Interfaith Alliance, called the decision \u201ca watershed moment for equality.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\nIn a statement, Joseph said, \u201cToo often employers overstep the boundaries of personal religious freedom \u2013 the right to believe as we choose \u2013 to impose their beliefs on others through staffing decisions and workplace culture. Turning away LGBTQ+ job applicants and employees, or terminating their employment due to their identity, isn\u2019t religious freedom \u2013 it\u2019s discrimination.<\/p>\n

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council disagreed with the ruling.<\/p>\n

“Allowing judges to rewrite the Civil Rights Act to add gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes poses a grave threat to religious liberty. We’ve already witnessed in recent years how courts have used the redefinition of words as a battering ram to crush faith-based businesses and organizations,” concluded Perkins.
\n\u00a0
\nThe civil rights act of 1964 makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against workers \u201cbecause of\u201d their \u201csex, color, religion, sex, or national origin.\u201d \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nThe question before the justices was whether the phrase \u201cbecause of sex\u201d applied to the sexual orientation of LGBTQ employees.
\n\u00a0
\nIn 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, under the Obama administration, ruled that it did.
\n\u00a0
\nOpposing view<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the Trump administration has taken the opposite view, siding with employers in three separate discrimination cases that the word \u201csex\u201d does \u201cnot include sexual orientation.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\nIn two of the cases \u2013 Bostock v. Clayton County and Altitude Express v. Zarda \u2013 the question was whether Title VII\u2019s prohibition against sex discrimination extended to sexual orientation. Gerald Bostock, a social worker, and Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, claimed they were fired because they are gay. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nIn the third case \u2013 R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission \u2013 the justices were asked to determine whether Title VII\u2019s ban on sex discrimination covered transgender people.\u00a0 The transgender woman at the center of the case, Aimee Stephens, who died last month, claimed that she lost her funeral director’s job because of her identity. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nLower courts had sided with the fired employees, leading the employers to appeal to the Supreme Court.
\n\u00a0
\nIn his dissent, Kavanaugh wrote that that while he agreed that LTBTQ people \u201ccannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth,\u201d the decision whether to \u201cexpand\u201d the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex to LGBTQ workers was for Congress and the President to make, not the Supreme Court.
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cBut we are judges, not Members of Congress,\u201d Kavanaugh wrote.
\n\u00a0
\nSince 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have passed competing pieces of legislation that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But an identical bill has yet to pass both chambers during a two-year congressional period, preventing legislation from going to the president\u2019s desk.
\n\u00a0
\nLast year, the House passed the Equality Act by a vote of 236-173. Joseph said it was time for the Senate to follow suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that federal employment laws protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination, delivering a major victory to the LGBTQ community amid concerns over an erosion of their rights in recent years.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In a landmark 6-3 decision, the conservative-controlled court ruled that an \u201cemployer who fires […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}