US Supreme Court Holds Transgender and Sexual Orientation Discrimination are Covered by Title VII

On June 15, 2020, the US Supreme Court held that transgender and sexual orientation are prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The reasoning is straightforward:  in order to decide if the employer wanted to fire a homosexual or transgender employee, the employer had to consider that employee’s sex.  The Court said what the employer called this decision making process was irrelevant (e.g., it’s about being gay, not about sex), because in order to decide it wanted to terminate someone for being gay, the employer had to consider the employee’s sex as part of determining with whom that employee spent time in his or her private life.   The same is true for a transgender individual:  the employer has to consider this employee’s sex to make that decision.  The Court said the plain language of Title VII prohibits this. 

Alito, Thomas and Kavanaugh dissented. 

The case can be found at this link.