A transgender Michigan woman has made history as the U. S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear her wrongful termination lawsuit — one of three landmark cases…
A transgender Michigan woman has made history as the U. S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear her wrongful termination lawsuit — one of three landmark cases that pit religious freedom against gay and transgender rights in the workplace.
At issue is whether a 1964 federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against gay or transgender workers. LGBTQ advocates argue it does, while religious-rights groups and the Trump administration maintain it does not.
In the Michigan case, a transgender woman alleges that a metro Detroit funeral home wrongfully fired her for transitioning from a man into a woman, calling the move discriminatory.
But the funeral home and religious rights advocates maintain the termination was legal because, they say, an employer can’t be forced to make decisions that go against its sincerely held religious belief: in this case, that a person’s sex is a «God-given gift» that shouldn’t be changed.
The controversy has played out in the courts, with U. S. District Judge Sean Cox in Detroit siding with the funeral home, concluding transgender individuals are not a protected class under federal employment laws, and that the employer had a right to uphold its religious beliefs.
The U. S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling, concluding the firing was a form of sex discrimination and that federal laws protect transgender people from such treatment — a position held by numerous courts across the country.
Now, it’s up to the U. S. Supreme Court to decide.
The case involves Aimee Stephens, a funeral director who was fired in 2013 from her job at R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Home in Garden City after disclosing her decision to transition from a man into a woman. During her six years of working at the funeral home, she hid her female appearance, but decided in 2013 to go public with the truth, in a letter to her employer.
