Court says law protects transgender workers. SC attorney general begs to differ

A U.S. appellate court in March ruled that federal law protects transgender individuals from unlawful discrimination by their employers.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson disagrees.

Wilson, a dozen other Republican state attorneys general and three GOP governors have requested the U.S. Supreme Court reverse a lower court ruling extending federal workplace protections to transgender individuals.

Wilson and the other attorneys general urged the court to correct the appellate court’s “egregious error and restore the balance of power in our federal system.”

Wilson and other Republican attorneys general argue the 6th Circuit Court’s decision in the case rewrites Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in a way Congress never intended.

The attorneys argue it wrongly expanded the definition of sex discrimination to include discrimination based on gender identity and transgender status, rather than biology.

“It is wrong to discriminate against anybody,” WIlson said in a statement. “Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. Our position in this amicus is a legal position not a philosophical one.

“Until the Obama administration, the concept of ‘sex discrimination’ was thought to include gender at birth rather than gender identity. As a strict constructionist, I believe it is Congress’s job to write the laws, not the courts’.”

The brief Wilson signed onto argues the federal statute does not define “sex,” thus “the ordinary meaning of the word” — the physiological distinction between males and females — prevails.

The case centers around a Michigan funeral home that fired an employee after she told the owner she was transgender and planned to start coming to work dressed as a woman.

A federal district court judge dismissed the case in 2016, stating that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had proven sex discrimination but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act provided the funeral home an exemption from the Civil Rights Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the case on the employee’s behalf, appealed, arguing employers cannot use religion to justify discrimination against transgender employees.

In March, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision, stating “discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transitioning status, is illegal under” U.S. civil rights law.

The ACLU celebrated the appellate ruling, stating it set an important precedent confirming that transgender people are protected by the Civil Rights Act.

“The ruling affirms that transgender individuals are protected by federal sex discrimination laws, and that religious belief does not give employers the right to discriminate against them,” according to the ACLU.

“While we can agree that ‘gender identity’ doesn’t appear in the statute, the 6th Circuit was correct when it determined that discrimination based on transgender and transitioning status is akin to discrimination based on sex and is thus unconstitutional,” the ACLU of South Carolina said in a statement Wednesday evening. “To suggest otherwise is a ridiculous semantics argument to advance a message of division and to deny recognition of a real human condition.

“The determination that employers cannot discriminate based on sex was and is rooted in the fact that a person’s ability to perform a job has nothing to do with anatomy. To advocate that a person who is transitioning or has transitioned does not deserve those same protections is shortsighted and a failure to acknowledge reality.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2018 at 6:02 PM.