The Department of Justice told federal agencies that gay and transgender students are protected from discrimination under civil rights laws.
This reverses the Trump administration guidance that sought to limit the impact of a Supreme Court decision last year extending employment discrimination protections to LGBTQ workers.
Pamela Karlan the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division in a memo said that based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, the 1972 education civil rights law known as Title IX should be read as covering gay and transgender students.
Karlan wrote,
“After considering the text of Title IX, Supreme Court caselaw, and developing jurisprudence in this area, the Division has determined that the best reading of Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ is that it includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
In educational institutions that receive federal funding, Title IX prohibits discrimination
“on the basis of sex.”
The court ruled 6-3 last year that the language in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting employment discrimination based on “sex” covered workers’ gender identity and sexual orientation.
Karlan was named principal deputy assistant attorney general by the Biden administration in February after arging the case on behalf of Gerald Bostock, who was fired from his job with Clayton County after discussing his involvement with a gay softball league.
LGBTQ advocates see this as a watershed moment for civil rights, predicting that the majority’s interpretation of “sex” would extend similar protections in areas like housing, education and health care.
But just days before Biden was inaugurated Trump told his DOJ to issue a memo saying it would not be applying the standard in the Bostock decision to other areas.
On Inauguration Day Biden signed an executive order pledging to
“prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.”
Two days later the DOJ rescinded the Trump administration’s memo.
Amazing that we are “all created equal’ is worthy of applause in 2021, but after Trump, apparently it needs to be restated. The GOP hates it when minority groups get the same rights they have.
(via The Hill)
