Supreme Court bans discrimination on the job against LGBTQ people

WASHINGTON—Civil rights groups, gay rights groups, the AFL-CIO and other unions hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 15 ruling outlawing job discrimination against lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGTBQ) people. And a top legal counsel for the nation’s largest union, the National Education Association, predicted it would extend to other areas of life, too.

“This is a very big case. We really cannot overstate how much is at stake,” Eric Harrington of the NEA Office of General Counsel, said in a prior Q&A.

The unusually direct and plain English language in the 6-3 ruling, written by Donald Trump-named Justice Neil Gorsuch, made clear the law – the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VII and its ban on sexual discrimination – is the law, and that since then the definition of “sex” has expanded legislatively and in the courts to cover LGBTQ people, too.

“We must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being ho­mosexual or transgender 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,” said Gorsuch, joined by the High Court’s four progressive justices and Chief Justice John Roberts, another GOP appointee.

The three other GOP-named conservatives said “no.” As might be expected, ultra-right anti-equality...

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