Kathmandu (Pahichan) September 1 – A group of sixteen states has filed a brief calling on the Supreme Court to rule that it\u2019s legal to fire people for being transgender.<\/p>\n
In the\u00a0amicus brief filed Friday<\/a>, the states recommended the Court consider\u00a0R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission<\/em>, a case about a Michigan funeral home that fired an employee, Aimee Stephens, for transitioning while on the job. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit\u00a0ruled in March<\/a>\u00a0that Stephens\u2019 termination violated Title VII\u2019s protections on the basis of sex, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ hate group,\u00a0has appealed the case<\/a>\u00a0to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court should hear the case, the states argue, and reverse it. Calling the Sixth Circuit\u2019s decision \u201cpolicy experimentation\u201d and an \u201cegregious error,\u201d the states insist that the word \u201csex\u201d can only mean biological sex and should not be interpreted to include gender identity. \u201c\u2018[G]ender identity\u2019 is a wholly different concept from \u2018sex,\u2019 and not a subset or reasonable interpretation of the term \u2018sex\u2019 in Title VII,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n This is accompanied by a full page of dictionary citations that define the word \u201csex\u201d according to \u201creproductive functions\u201d or \u201creproductive organs.\u201d The states also point to language in Title IX that allows educational institutions to maintain \u201cseparate living facilities for the different sexes.\u201d This use of \u201cdifferent\u201d somehow proves \u201cthat Congress was referring to the two biological sexes\u201d whenever it used the term \u201csex.\u201d<\/p>\n The states also insist that because Congress has at times tried to pass laws enumerating protections specifically for \u201cgender identity,\u201d this proves that it\u2019s different from \u201csex.\u201d Likewise, because Congress has used both terms at the same time, that must indicate that the two \u201care not interchangeable.\u201d<\/p>\n These arguments ignore that in the past, courts had ruled against the claim that transgender people are protected under Title VII. The effort by the LGBTQ movement to convince both the courts and Congress to ensure that transgender people cannot be fired just for being trans is a both\/and strategy, not an either\/or one. It is simultaneously true that discriminating on the basis of gender identity requires discriminating on the basis of sex and that enumerating those protections will better safeguard from courts who don\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n The states represented in the suit include Nebraska, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, as well as Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R), Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), and Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R). Utah and Maine have state laws protecting against anti-LGBTQ employment discrimination, but\u00a0none of the rest do<\/a>.<\/p>\n There has already been significant backlash against the brief.<\/p>\n Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear (D), who refused to sign the brief on behalf of the state, called Bevin\u2019s decision to sign on \u201csurprising\u201d given that Kentucky state employees do enjoy protections against anti-LGBTQ discrimination, thanks to an executive order that Bevin has not rescinded. The Fairness Campaign, Kentucky\u2019s state LGBTQ group, has also decried Bevin\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes (R) has\u00a0defended his decision<\/a>\u00a0to join the brief simply because he believes that \u201cCongress \u2014 not the federal courts \u2014 should decide those types of policy questions.\u201d The Alliance for a Better Utah, a government accountability group, believes Reyes\u2019 participation flies in the face of the\u00a02015 \u201ccompromise\u201d law<\/a>\u00a0that created statewide LGBTQ protections in housing and employment.<\/p>\n \u201cSean Reyes\u2019 signature on this amicus brief is a flagrant violation of the spirit of that compromise based in inclusion and acceptance,\u201d said Chase Thomas, policy and advocacy counsel for the Alliance. \u201cWhether gay, straight, bisexual or transgender, every person deserves to be able to pursue a career without fear of discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement<\/a>, the National Center for Transgender Equality\u2019s Harper Jean Tobin described the brief as \u201ca political attack on the humanity of transgender people\u201d and accused the attorneys general and governors of \u201cacting in a complete state of ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n Three other briefs have been filed calling on the Supreme Court to reverse the Sixth Circuit\u2019s decision. Two of them are from organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as anti-LGBTQ hate groups. Roy Moore\u2019s\u00a0Foundation for Moral Law<\/a>\u00a0argues that religion should justify firing transgender people, and\u00a0Public Advocate of the United States<\/a>\u00a0complains that the Sixth Circuit was biased because it was willing to identify Stephens with female pronouns.<\/p>\n Copy :\u00a0thinkprogress.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kathmandu (Pahichan) September 1 – A group of sixteen states has filed a brief calling on the Supreme Court to rule that it\u2019s legal to fire people for being transgender.
\nIn the\u00a0amicus brief filed Friday, the states recommended the Court consider\u00a0R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a case about a Michigan funeral home that fired an employee, Aimee Stephens, for transitioning while on the job. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit\u00a0ruled in March\u00a0that Stephens\u2019 termination violated Title VII\u2019s protections on the basis …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,621,490,11],"tags":[502,458],"class_list":["post-10858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-news","category-slider","category-world","tag-lgbti","tag-transgender"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10860,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858\/revisions\/10860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}