Today's landmark Supreme Court decision protecting LGBT employment rights is expected to reverberate across ongoing legislative and legal fights over anti-discrimination provisions in federal laws and Trump administration policies.
One recent Trump administration rule, finalized on Friday, asserts that sexual orientation will no longer be covered by a 2010 health care law that prohibits discrimination based on sex. Civil rights groups seemed poised to cite the Supreme Court's June 15th decision in forthcoming challenges to that new rule. In its watershed 6-3 ruling, the high court found that firing someone merely for being gay or transgender is discrimination based on “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Speaking with Roll Call, David Flugman expressed that litigation involving Title IX of the Civil Rights Act has also turned on the definition of the word “sex” when it comes to equal treatment in education and sports specifically, and so does the Trump administration rule on the health care law.
“That line of case law is going to immediately be bolstered by this case,” Flugman said. “I think this case will be helpful in a number of ways, and just like Title VII itself, we’ll see this decision used in a number of ways we can’t predict.”
Read the full interview here.
