Tag: LGBT protections

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U.S. Supreme Court Refuses Appeal Of LGBT Lambda Legal Employment Discrimination Case

From Lambda Legal:

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will not review the Lambda Legal case on behalf of Jameka Evans, a Savannah security guard who was harassed at work and forced from her job because she is a lesbian.

“By declining to hear this case, the Supreme Court is delaying the inevitable and leaving a split in the circuits that will cause confusion across the country,” said Greg Nevins, Employment Fairness Project Director for Lambda Legal.

Several federal courts have affirmed the argument that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, when properly understood, protects LGBT employees. Most notably, the full Seventh Circuit overruled four of its precedents and ruled in April that Lambda Legal client Kimberly Hively could proceed under the Civil Rights Act with her claim that Indiana-based Ivy Tech Community College discriminated against her because she is a lesbian.

In April of 2015, Evans filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia against her former employer, Georgia Regional Hospital, arguing that the hospital violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against her because of her sexual orientation and her nonconformity with gender norms of appearance and demeanor.

The district court dismissed the case. In January of last year, Lambda Legal filed an appeal on Evans’ behalf, arguing that she must have her day in court, citing rulings by several federal district courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) finding that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination and thereby a prohibited employment practice.

On March 10, 2017, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit held that it was compelled by a 1979 ruling to reject Evans’ sexual orientation discrimination claim.

Lambda Legal asked the whole court to rehear the case so that it could reexamine the 1979 precedent, but unlike the Seventh Circuit and Second Circuit, the full Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear the case on July 6. Citing a clear conflict among the circuits, Lambda Legal filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. Today, the Supreme Court denied review.

Evans is part of Lambda Legal’s efforts to establish and enforce employment discrimination protection for all LGBT people and everyone living with HIV. 

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Louisiana Appeals Court Strikes Down LGBT Protections

Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Gov. John Bel Edwards’ attempts to protect LGBTs who work for the state government are unconstitutional.

The Democratic governor’s positions were challenged by GOP Attorney General Jeff Landry.

From The Times-Picayune:

“We do not live under a King in Louisiana; we have a Governor, an independent Attorney General, an elected Legislature, and a Court system who are all involved in the governing of our State,” Landry said in a written statement. “I applaud the professionalism and attention of the Court of Appeal in these matters.”

The decision comes after a three-judge panel reviewed Edwards’ executive order protecting LGBT state workers and contractors to determine whether it is constitutional.

“The Governor’s Executive Order in this case goes beyond a mere policy statement or directive to fulfill law, because there is no current state or federal law specifically outlining anti-discrimination laws concerning and/or defining sexual orientation or gender identity,” reads the decision written by Judge Toni Higginbotham on behalf of the court.

“The current laws simply prohibit discrimination based on a person’s biological sex,” she wrote.

Edwards wanted the LGBT nondiscrimination policy to apply to all of state government. His order prohibited harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, similar to bans on racial or religious discrimination.

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North Carolina Governor Issues Executive Order Prohibiting LGBT Discrimination By State Agencies

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has signed an executive order that prohibits any state agency, or contractors who do business with the state, to discriminate against LGBTs.

The executive order adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s list of protected classes at least in terms of state agencies or those who do business with the state.

Cooper told the media, “By requiring companies that contract with the state to have non-discrimination policies, the state can promote protections for more North Carolinians outside of state government.”

Cooper is also proposing a settlement in the lawsuit challenging House Bill 2 and House Bill 142, the so-called bathroom bill and it’s repeal legislation.

The proposal would allow transgender citizens use of public restrooms and other facilities that match their gender identity.

A federal judge still has to sign off on that settlement.

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Major Companies Urge SCOTUS To Take Up LGBT Workplace Discrimination Case

Major American corporations have signed on to an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court urging the high court to rule that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace.

The Trump administration has taken the opposite opinion.

From the AP:

The 76 businesses and organizations – including American Airlines, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Starbucks and Microsoft – filed a brief Wednesday encouraging the high court to take up the issue. They want the court to take a case out of Georgia in which a gay woman who worked as a hospital security officer says she was harassed and punished for dressing in a male uniform and wearing her hair short. Jameka Evans, who worked at Georgia Regional Hospital at Savannah from 2012 to 2013, ultimately left her job and sued.

The question in her case is whether a federal law barring workplace discrimination “because of…sex” covers discrimination against someone because of their sexual orientation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Barack Obama took the view that it does. But President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on gender but doesn’t cover sexual orientation.

The businesses’ court filing says they and their employees would benefit if the court agreed to take the case and rule that Title VII covers sexual orientation discrimination.

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Attorney General Issues “Religious Freedoms” Guidance Which Undermines LGBT Protections

Attorney General Jeff Session

Donald Trump promised his evangelical/religious supporters he would work to undercut LGBT protections and today his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, issued new guidance to agencies that will allow a simple claim of a violation of religious freedom to justify LGBT discrimination.

From the AP:

The guidance, an attempt to deliver on President Donald Trump’s pledge to his evangelical and other religious supporters, effectively lifts a burden from religious objectors to prove that their beliefs about marriage or other topics are sincerely held.

Under the new policy, a claim of a violation of religious freedom would be enough to override concerns for the civil rights of LGBT people and anti-discrimination protections for women and others. The guidelines are so sweeping that experts on religious liberty are calling them a legal powder-keg that could prompt wide-ranging lawsuits against the government.

This new guidance comes a day after Sessions rescinded an Obama-era policy protecting transgender people from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

More from the Washington Blade:

Key portions of the memos should be troubling to proponents of LGBT rights. The memo to agencies allows individuals to act or abstain from action according to their religious beliefs and prohibits the government from targeting religious individuals and organizations for acting on those beliefs.

Although the memo asserts the change won’t enable anti-LGBT discrimination under the law, that language is found nowhere as a limiting principle in the memos themselves. That assurance is left out in important passages asserting the primacy of religious freedom that could be construed to allow anti-LGBT discrimination.

Under the principles of the guidance, for example, a Social Security administrator charged with processing benefits applications could see an application for same-sex spousal benefits and refuse to process that application for religious reasons.

From the Human Rights Campaign:

“Today the Trump-Pence administration launched an all-out assault on LGBTQ people, women, and other minority communities by unleashing a sweeping license to discriminate,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “This blatant attempt to further Donald Trump’s cynical and hateful agenda will enable systematic, government-wide discrimination that will have a devastating impact on LGBTQ people and their families. Donald Trump and Mike Pence have proven they will stop at nothing to target the LGBTQ community and drag our nation backwards. We will fight them every step of the way.”

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Justice Department: Anti-LGBT Discrimination Is Legal Under Federal Law

On the same day that Donald Trump unexpectedly announced a ban on transgender soldiers in the U.S. military, his Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief declaring anti-LGBT discrimination is lawful in a current employment discrimination case

From Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade:

In a 23-page brief, the Justice Department under U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejects the notion that sexual-orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“The essential element of sex discrimination under Title VII is that employees of one sex must be treated worse than similarly situated employees of the other sex, and sexual orientation discrimination simply does not have that effect,” the brief says. “Moreover, whatever this Court would say about the question were it writing on a blank slate, Congress has made clear through its actions and inactions in this area that Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination does not encompass sexual orientation discrimination. Other statutes and rules may prohibit such discrimination, but Title VII does not do so as a matter of law, and whether it should do so as a matter of policy remains a question for Congress to decide.”

Although the Justice Department under the Obama administration never took an official view on whether sexual orientation discrimination is prohibited under Title VII, the brief effectively turns a Justice Department that once argued for protections for LGBT people into an institution that seeks to undermine them.

The reasoning in the brief contrasts with the determination of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the independent agency charged with enforcing federal workplace civil rights laws. In 2015, the EEOC found in the case of Baldwin v. Foxx anti-gay discrimination constitutes sex discrimination under Title VII.

Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, issued this statement, “In one fell swoop, Trump’s DOJ has provided a roadmap for dismantling years of federal protections and declared that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may no longer be protected by landmark civil rights laws such as the Fair Housing Act, Title IX, or Title VII.”

Here’s a recap of actions the Trump administration has taken against LGBT folks since Trump was inaugurated.

But remember, Donald Trump promised during the 2016 campaign how much “better” for the gays he would be than Hillary Clinton.

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Queen Elizabeth II Vows To Protect LGBTs From Discrimination

During Queen Elizabeth II’s address to Parliament today, her Majesty specifically promised to protect LGBTs from discrimination.

From the speech:

“My ministers will seek to enhance rights and protections in the modern workplace. My  government will make further progress to tackle the gender pay gap and discrimination against people on the basis of their race, faith, gender, disability or sexual orientation.”

Additionally, there was conspicuously no mention of President Trump visiting the UK this fall causing some to wonder if the trip has now been cancelled.

The speech is cued up below for the mention of LGBT protections.

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North Carolina: Gov. Roy Cooper Plans Executive Order Addressing LGBT Protections

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who received much criticism for supporting the fake “repeal” of his state’s anti-LGBT law HB2, announced yesterday that he plans to issue an executive order addressing protections for the LGBT community.

The Democratic governor made the remark to a sympathetic audience in Washington, D.C., where he said he would also continue to fight against discrimination and push for voting rights and education funding.

In a question-and-answer segment with the organization’s executive vice president for policy, Carmel Martin, Cooper explained his decision to accept a compromise repeal of HB2 even though it left him at odds with some activists and members of his own party.

“My goal is statewide LGBT protections in North Carolina, and I’m going to keep fighting every day until I get to that point,” he said, to applause. “… It would have been politically and probably emotionally easier for me to keep pounding the table and not accept a compromise but I knew it wasn’t right.”

Cooper did not elaborate on the executive order on LGBT protections, which would only apply to the departments that the governor controls. Asked about it in a later phone interview, Cooper said he had promised to do more.

“I said when we repealed HB2 and initiated the compromise, we needed to take additional steps to make sure we protect LGBT residents,” he said. “We’re working on an executive order that will help further those goals.”

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Congressional Democrats To Re-Introduce The Equality Act Tomorrow

Via press release:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 2 at 11AM ET, members of the U.S. Congress will gather in the Capitol’s Rayburn Room with advocacy leaders and LGBT Americans who have suffered discrimination to announce the re-introduction of historic legislation to ban discrimination against LGBT individuals in federal law.

The Equality Act would outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, and other areas of law where discrimination is already prohibited for other protected classes.

In most states, this discrimination – including being fired, refused an apartment or mortgage, or refused service at a restaurant based on LGBT status – is not explicitly outlawed. The Equality Act would make clear that LGBT Americans are fully protected from discrimination under federal law.

WHO:
Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley
Rep. David Cicilline
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer
Senate Assistant Democratic Leader Patty Murray
Sen. Tammy Baldwin
Sen. Cory Booker
Chad Griffin, President, Human Rights Campaign
Winnie Stachelberg, Executive Vice President, Center for American Progress
Mara Keisling, Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality
Emily Martin, General Counsel and Vice President, National Women’s Law Center

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Podcast: Chechnya’s Human Rights Violations Against Gays, Survivor Contestant Outed As Trans, Study Shows Marriage Improves Health For Aging LGBTs

In this week’s LGBT headlines on The Randy Report podcast:

• Gay and bisexual men are being rounded up, tortured and killed in Chechnya. Click here to sign Amnesty International’s petition denouncing the horrific human rights violations.

• A transgender contestant was dramatically outed on the CBS reality show, “Survivor.”

• Virginia’s Supreme Court slaps down anti-LGBT activists who attempted to remove protections for LGBT students.

• A University Of Washington study on LGBT aging shows, unsurprisingly, that marriage improves health and happiness among LGBTs.

• Indie actor/director Gerald McCullouch (“CSI,” “Bear City,” “Daddy”) releases his new documentary, All Male, All Nude, which goes behind the scenes at the country’s only all nude, all male, gay strip club located in the heart of The Bible Belt.

Hit play below to catch up on these LGBT stories and more.

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