Fired for being transgender: The fight for LGBTQ workers' rights
 

This Gay thread is courtesy of black racist Dead Eye one of the two biggest homophobic bigoted hateful assholes on GFY.

People like Dead eye like people being fired based on their sexuality, as a matter of fact he specifically stated that he doesn't want to know if people around him are okay and if he does know then that homosexual is being flagrant and shoving it down his throat. To pieces of shit like Dead eye being who you are honestly is an act of aggression.


It's unfortunate that in 2019 people can be discriminated against based on their sexuality.

Fired for being transgender: The fight for LGBTQ workers' rights

It took Aimee Stephens several months to write a letter to her boss explaining that she was a transgender woman and planned to start coming to work as her true self.

She had been working as a funeral director and embalmer for RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City, Michigan, for almost six years. She loved her job, but didn't want to hide who she was anymore.

She agonized over what to say in the letter, wrote several drafts and sought input from her therapist. Finally satisfied, she handed the letter to her boss in the summer of 2013.

"He read it, he folded it up and put it in his pocket," Stephens recalled in an interview with CNN. "And basically stood up and walked away."

She was fired two weeks later.

Stephens filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which then sued the funeral home claiming that firing Stephens for being transgender was unlawful sex discrimination based on her employer's sex- or gender-based expectations.

"I was proposing to go from being a man in a suit to a woman in a dress and they couldn't handle that part," Stephens said.

Her boss stated that he fired Stephens because she "was no longer going to represent himself as a man" and "wanted to dress as a woman," court papers show.

The funeral home had a dress code that required male funeral directors to wear pant suits and women to wear skirt suits.

According to court documents, her boss believed that authorizing Stephens to wear the uniform for female funeral directors would make him complicit "in supporting the idea that sex is a changeable social construct rather than an immutable God-given gift."

"The goal is to help family and friends of deceased to get through the grieving process," said John Bursch, senior counsel and vice president of Appellate Advocacy at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious group representing the funeral home.

The company also worried Stephens' transition would distract customers. "If a funeral home employee looks one way one day and a different way another day, when the family comes in later, that is taking the focus off the grief and onto the funeral home," said Bursch.

The Sixth Circuit Court ruled in favor of Stephens in March 2018, saying that the funeral home engaged in unlawful discrimination against her on the basis of her sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The funeral home has since appealed the ruling and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case later this year.

The funeral home said it appealed the decision because it claims it is being punished for a change in federal law that it could not have anticipated. "Businesses should be able to rely on the meaning of laws as they are written, not subjected to the whims of a court imposing its policy preferences after the fact," said Bursch.

By agreeing to hear Stephens' case, in addition to two others this fall, the Supreme Court is set to determine whether sexual orientation and gender identification are considered protected classes under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin.

But lower courts have been split on whether the law bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identification.

Under the Obama Administration, Attorney General Eric Holder interpreted that Title VII prohibited employment discrimination based on an individual's gender identity, including transgender status.  

It's great to see people fighting back for unfair business persecution against LGBTQ individuals :thumbsup