On the same day that President Donald Trump tweeted that the military should ban transgender people from serving, the U.S. Department of Justice doubled down. That is, in a pleading filed yesterday in a federal appellate court, the United States of America revealed its position that our federal laws that protect…
That according to Lambda Legal, a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of the LGBT community. From last week’s Lambda Legal press release: Lambda Legal announced it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied its…
Most notably, HR Dive interviewed me on supporting transgender employees at work during their transition!!! (There’s also something about the Senate and House introducing the Equality Act, which would amend Title VII to explicitly ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And, another district court judge has ignored binding precedent…
Yeah, that’s basically it. Keep calm and carry on. There was a lot of talk over the past week or so about how the Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty would create carte blanche for discrimination against LGBTQ and women. (Exhibit A, B, C). Yeah, that didn’t happen. Indeed,…
The trailblazing Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals achieved a monumental result. And it only took 53 years after the enactment of Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964. Below, I have a breakdown of yesterday’s historic decision in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College. Let’s start with the court’s…
It was déjà vu all over again yesterday. In its much anticipated decision in Christiansen v. Omnicom Group, Inc. (opinion here), the Second Circuit concluded that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not cover discrimination based on sexual orientation. Like the Eleventh Circuit a few weeks ago, a three-judge…
On Friday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, generally considered one of the more conservative appellate courts, issued a mixed-bag ruling in a high-profile LGBT-rights case. Sex stereotyping is unlawful; Title VII covers gender-nonconformity claims. In Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital (opinion here), the Eleventh Circuit reaffirmed that Title VII of the Civil…
I received a bunch of reader emails yesterday with requests for future blog posts. One reader requested a follow-up to yesterday’s post about service animals and the ADA, asking that I address what happens when a service animal causes allergy issues for co-workers. Another reader sought input on heated political discussions…
Late last month, I blogged here about some smoke signals from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that it may be backpedaling on pursuing discrimination claims on behalf of a transgender employee, in a case where the employer had raised a religious-freedom defense. Since then, other dominos have fallen, which indicate that…
Yep. From Jeremy Peters at The New York Times (here): The White House said on Monday that President Trump would leave in place a 2014 Obama administration order that created new workplace protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. … The decision to keep the order, the statement added,…