SCOTUS Sides With Pride 🏳️‍🌈!

The Supreme Court ruled that no employer can discriminate against Americans who identify as LGBTQ!

For the LGBTQ community, a huge victory for them. The landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision had made gay marriage legal in the United States and its territories. Another one was handed to them and they can thank Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative justice Neil Gorsuch.

R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was a landmark case before the Supreme Court of the United States, related to whether discrimination on the basis of gender identity is covered by the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Oral arguments were heard on October 8, 2019.

They sided with Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It was a victory for a transwoman who died before the ruling came forth. It also was a victory to an openly gay man who was fired from his job

It is illegal to fire a person out of the cannon based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Existing federal laws say that American employers cannot fire anyone because they're gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The Supreme Court had to do their decisions through Zoom since the COVID-19 pandemic halted government services nationwide. The nine justices had to do televised ruling with a few members of the junk food media. The federal courts do not have televised court hearings. You have to have special permission to view the Supreme Court hearings through Zoom.

The 6-3 decision shows that Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas need to get the heads out of their asses. They were the ones who disagreed with the ruling.

Gorsuch, appointed by Donald J. Trump a few weeks after he took office sided with Roberts and the progressive justices on the 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 gay and lesbian workers.

Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion.

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

Trump had argued that sexual orientation and gender identity are covered by the Civil Rights Act.

Aimee Stephens died before the ruling.

Aimee Stephens lost her job as a funeral director in Michigan after she identified herself as woman in 2012. She died in 2020 before the ruling.

Aimee Stephens, presented as a man for six years, worked as a funeral director for the Harris Funeral Home in Livonia, MI. But by 2012, Stephens was in despair over her gender identity, at one point contemplating suicide.

Instead she decided to come out at work as a transgender woman, telling her colleagues and her employer of her decision in a letter. But two weeks after giving the letter to her boss, she was fired.

Tom Rost, the owner of the Harris Funeral Home, who fired Stephens, explained his decision as one necessitated by the reaction he anticipated from "the families we serve. How would they possibly react to this?" he said, noting that Stephens was "the face of the Harris Funeral Home."

The court's decision came in several cases brought by gay and transgender employees.

Gerald Bostock was the child welfare coordinator for Clayton County, GA. He contended that he was fired after he joined a gay recreational softball league in 2013.

This is a huge victory.

Religious affiliated companies can't not discriminate, terminate or retaliate against any American who identities as a member of the LGBTQ community. It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against anyone based on race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religious or ethnic identity.

Members of Black Lives Matter have teamed up with the LGBTQ community to promote awareness.

A solidarity march between the LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter communities will be commemorated by a giant mural stating "All Black Lives Matter" painted at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in Hollywood, California.