On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that a landmark civil rights law protects LGBT people from discrimination in employment. 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. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The ruling protects an estimated 8.1 million LGBT workers across the country, because most states don’t protect them from workplace discrimination. An estimated 11.3 million LGBT people live in the U.S.
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