By Lyra Bordelon
On Monday, June 14, the Supreme Court of the United States backed up the city of Lewisburg’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights; the 6-3 opinion of Bostock v. Clayton County, GA, places both sexual orientation and gender identity under protections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“I was so happy when I saw that,” said Lewisburg Mayor Beverly White. “The Supreme Court stands for what we stood for; what we were trying to say is that all people should be treated equal, especially in employment and housing.”
Lewisburg’s Ordinance 254 was passed in 2017, providing employment and housing protections for LGBTQ+ residents of the city, preventing employers or landlords from firing or evicting them based solely on sexual or gender orientation. The new Supreme Court opinion makes these job protections the law of the land federally. Specifically, the ruling means the employment protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes sexual and gender identity. The act outlaws “particular employment [practices] that causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Lawyers fighting for the plaintiffs in each case argued that to discriminate based on gender identity or sexual orientation is inherently discriminating on the basis of sex.
“Take an employer who fires a transgender person who was identified as a male at birth but who now identifies as a female. If the employer retains an otherwise identical employee who was identified as female at birth, the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth. Again, the individual employee’s sex plays an unmistakable and impermissible role in the discharge decision,” explains Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in the majority opinion. Gorsuch was appointed to the court by President Donald Trump in 2017.
White was one of the five City Council members in Lewisburg that voted for the ordinance’s passage. With a number of individuals seeking to make public comment in support for and against the ordinance, the City Council meeting had to be held at WVSOM rather than City Hall to accommodate the volume of people. Of those that voiced dissent, one common “fear-mongering” trope, White noted, involved restroom use of transgender individuals with the gender they identify with. Before and since the passage of the ordinance, these fears have been unfounded.
“There have been no crimes committed in regard to transgender people in the bathroom,” White said of the years the ordinance has been in place.
With employment-related protections enacted, the Supreme Court decision could allow LGBTQ+ individuals to seek further protections under the Civil Rights Act, including federal housing discrimination protections, such as the ones passed in Lewisburg.
“The ordinance was about equal employment and housing for transgender and gay individuals,” White said. “They are doing what any of us are trying to do, just live our lives.”