KC residents react to Supreme Court ruling of LGBT people now protected from job discrimination

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    MISSION, KS (KCTV) — The lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community is celebrating a win in the fight for equal rights, but there are also some who believe this will cause chaos, not equality.

It’s a landmark decision for LGBTQ rights.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bars discrimination on the basis of sex, race, origin or religion also protects gay and transgender workers.

Lance Pierce helped found the Kansas City LGBT Chamber of Commerce and runs another LGBT advocacy group called Outspoken.

“We haven’t seen a lot of great things coming out of the Executive Branch, but the Judicial Branch is really holding those checks and balances strong and making sure that the rights of Americans continue to be protected,” Pierce said.

He was pleasantly surprised to see the news Monday morning.

“You know, you could get married on Saturday and come to work on Monday and be fired. So I think this is a really exciting opportunity. Gay, lesbian and trans folks can bring their full selves to work and can stay focused on driving business forward and not worrying about being discriminated against,” Pierce said.

The Kansas City Center for Inclusion says the ruling makes up for the fact that pride parades and festivals this month are canceled due to the coronavirus.

Inoru Wade says LGBT people are discriminated against every day.

“This actually happens a lot more than it doesn’t. We just haven’t been able to give people the opportunity to seek any sort of justice for this,” Wade said.

He hopes the decision not only sets a legal precedent, but a cultural one where LGBT people can be empowered to be their authentic selves everywhere.

But groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom disagree.

In a statement, they say, “Redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women’s shelters, and many other contexts. Civil rights laws that use the word ‘sex’ were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women.”

LGBT advocates say the Civil Rights Act will now do what it was supposed to all along, protect everyone from discrimination.

“I think you’d be surprised how many people are not out at work. And so I think this really opens up the opportunity, specifically for trans people, who have one of the highest unemployment rates within the queer community. This really opens up for them to have rights and to have recourse when they are unfairly fired from their jobs,” Pierce said.

The decision was made 6-3 with Conservative Justices John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch in the majority.

Two groups who are opposed to the ruling sent KCTV5 News statements.

Brittany Jones with Family Policy Alliance of Kansas said the following.

Today, in a narrow ruling the Majority of the U.S. Supreme Court chose to legislate from the bench by including self-identified transgender and gay status within the scope of “sex discrimination” protections in federal employment law. While the Court did not explicitly redefine the term “sex,” it walked dangerously close to expanding that term to mean more than biological sex.

The Court limited its decision to federal employment cases and refused to apply its logic to other issues like religious freedom and women’s privacy rights. While the practical reality of how this will affect women and religious freedom remains to be seen, Family Policy Alliance is grateful that this ruling was not more expansive.

Federal prohibitions on sex discrimination typically exist to combat the historical practice of treating women as second-rate citizens, and giving males advantages and greater opportunities over women. It is imperative for those laws to continue to rest on a male/female definition of sex, and not to expand their applications beyond that. For example, Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs. It allowed women to finally gain opportunities for competitive sports. If a ruling expanded that law’s definition of “sex” beyond “biological sex” it could allow males to receive these same protections intended for women, turning the law on its head and undo years of labored progress for women.

Alliance Defending Freedom said the following.

“Americans must be able to rely on what the law says, and it is disappointing that a majority of the justices were unwilling to affirm that commonsense principle,” said ADF Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch, who served as Michigan’s solicitor general from 2011-13 and argued the case for the funeral home. “Redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women’s shelters, and many other contexts. Civil rights laws that use the word ‘sex’ were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women. Allowing a court or government bureaucrats to redefine a term with such a clear and important meaning undermines those very opportunities—the ones the law was designed to protect.”

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