The Supreme Court has decided that it will not hear the LGBT job discrimination case. A Georgia woman complained that she was fired from her job because she is a lesbian, a big blow to the LGBT community. Sometime in the near future, the court will most likely hear a case similar to this because the federal appeals court are uncovering whether workplace discrimination laws protect sexual orientation. There is spreading controversy over whether federal civil rights laws give protection to workers and students who are gay, lesbian, or transgender.
This is the 2nd time in the last year that the Supreme Court has stepped away from the argument on whether two civil rights laws, known as Title VII and Title IX - now cover discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In the past, they covered discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin, and discrimination against a certain sex in an educational field. Now the debate is going on if it covers sexual orientation within a workplace. The case that brought this all to light was a Georgia woman named Jameka Evans who was fired from her job because of her sexual orientation. Her and her representatives fought that her employer violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, rejected her claim and dismissed the lawsuit citing that it could not rule, based on past precedent, that discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited under Title VII.
The legal team, under the firm Lambda Legal, claimed that this ruling will leave a split amongst the lower courts which would cause confusion amongst courts across the nation. The Supreme Court did not cite a reason for denying the case, but it will more than likely hear this type of case in the near future. Lambda Legal came out after the statement, “But this was not a ‘no’ but a ‘not yet,’ and rest assured that Lambda Legal will continue the fight, circuit by circuit as necessary, to establish that the Civil Rights Act prohibits sexual orientation discrimination.”
The LGBT civil rights group is now calling on all LGBT Americans to come forward if they have been discriminated based on their sexual orientation at their workplace. They hope this will fuel the courts to pay more attention to this topic in the near future.
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