By KAYLA DEMICCO
Opinion Editor
“LGBTQ+ Americans have a right to live free from fear and discrimination—and that includes in the workplace,” tweeted Democratic candidate for the 2020 Presidential Election, Elizabeth Warren.
It is truly disappointing that millions of LGBTQ+ Americans can currently be legally fired from their jobs due to their sexual orientation and or gender identity. And unfortunately, we live in a society that whether discrimination is unjustified or not is up for debate just because some people identify differently than what is not traditional.
It is 2019 and in The United States of America, there are only 21 states and the District of Columbia that have state wide protections for employees that identify within the LGBTQ+ community. In these states, there is some kind of “statewide law [that] prohibits discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity.” That is less than half of the states in the country.
In Wisconsin, “three counties and five cities have ordinances prohibiting discrimination due to gender identity,” not including sexual orientation. Within the other states (not all though), there are very few counties and cities that have their own rules to prohibit this kind of unjust discrimination.
In states like Texas with big cities like Austin and Dallas, Arizona with Phoenix and Tucson, and Nebraska with Omaha, they have their own rules to protect LGBTQ+ employees.
However, states like North Dakota and Tennessee, have no rules whatsoever to protect LGBTQ+ employees and in North Carolina, there are only rules to protect people based on their sexual orientation.
It was only recent for New York State to join the rest of states of the North Eastern region of the country in banning discrimination. Governor Andrew Cuomo signed off on the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (or G.E.N.D.A) in January of this year, which extended its employment discrimination protections to transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
Usually New York State is fairly liberal and open-minded about rights for LGBTQ+ people, but one of the cases that will be looked at comes from a man in New York who was fired from his job in 2010 because he told a client he was gay, which made the customer and the customer’s partner uncomfortable, but it was claimed as “inappropriate behavior in the workplace” by the company he worked for.
The Supreme Court will be looking at Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts if 1964 and whether it should also apply to LGBTQ+ worker. They will also be looking over three lawsuits to make their decision which include two separate cases for people who were fired because they are gay, and another who was fired because they are transgender.
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it called for an end to segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Seeing as it was the early 1960s, the LGBTQ+ community was mostly hidden and very quiet about their issues, so it is not a surprise that this concern was not taken care of earlier. In the 1960s, people were not only close-minded, but also did not think about LGBTQ+ people when approving this law as the general public did not know much about them.
The Supreme Court has already made the decision to guarantee the right to same-sex marriage across the country, which was undoubtedly a huge win for the LGBTQ+ community. So, why not give the LGBTQ+ community more rights?
The four out of five justices that were in favor of Obergefell versus Hodges (the same sex marriage case) are still currently serving on the Supreme Court Justice, and by the looks of it, will still be serving once the final decision is made. That might give some kind of hope that the Supreme Court will make the right decision and pass the bill to go against discrimination on a nationwide basis. However, the three out of four that were against same sex marriage are still currently serving.
The two new justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, were both nominated and approved by Donald Trump,. This is the part that people must worry about when thinking about the future of this decision.
According to The Huffington Post, “Trump’s administration reversed the approach taken under former President Obama by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” which enforces federal laws that prohibit workplace discrimination.
According to Bloomberg, “when Barack Obama was president, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said sexual orientation discrimination is covered because “it necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee’s sex.”
During the 2016 Presidential Election, during the Republican National Convention, Trump said, “As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. Believe me.”
That has been one of the biggest lies a president has told has since Bill Clinton told the press that he did not have “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky.
“With more than 100 anti-LGBTQ attacks from the Trump Administration, this is exactly why we need to pass the #EqualityAct now and look toward explicitly protecting LGBTQ people with a constitutional amendment,” tweeted GLAAD, an American non-governmental media monitoring organization founded by LGBT people in the media.
It has been widely talked about before that the Trump Administration is very homophobic and transphobic, so they have argued that Title VII doesn’t cover sexual orientation or gender identity.
“Everyone, regardless of sexuality or gender identity, must be guaranteed equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court must protect those rights, and we must end discrimination in all its forms,” tweeted Democratic candidate for the 2020 Presidential Election, Bernie Sanders.
It is 2019 and the LGBTQ+ community is becoming stronger than ever as the years go on (despite the bigoted society we are currently in) and people need to accept the fact that LGBTQ+ people are humans too and they deserve the same equal rights and protections just as any other minority.
“This shouldn’t be a question. Firing someone for being LGBTQ is discriminatory and wrong,” tweeted Democratic candidate for the 2020 Presidential Election, Amy Klobuchar.
