Supreme Court rules in “landmark” civil rights case partly stemming from funeral home employment issue

On Monday the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in a case that was partly brought to that court from a Michigan funeral home lawsuit alleging discrimination in employment as it pertains to gay, lesbian, and transgender people.

Here is what an article from Real Clear Politics (RCP) says of this decision.  “The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers. ” 

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” 

The article points out that the decision is not likely to be the court’s last word on the issues of LGBT rights.  Lawsuits continue to be pending over transgender athletes and their right to participate in sporting events and even over sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms.

In the RCP article Gorsuch also commented on that aspect of the ruling, “But none of these other laws are before us; we have not had the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms, and we do not prejudge any such question today.”

Funeral Director Daily has brought you updates on this issue since we heard last October that it would be heard at the Supreme Court.  Here is an article that we prepared prior to the case last October.

We also notified our readers only a month ago, that the original plaintiff in the Michigan funeral home case, Aimee Stephens, died at age 59 in May and did not live to see her case concluded, and now won, at the United States Supreme Court.  You can read that article from Funeral Director Daily here.

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