Trump administration asks Supreme Court to legalise firing employees just for being transgender

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to set a legal precedent that would make it acceptable to fire an employee for being transgender.

The wording of the brief, filed on Friday, would only protect workers from discrimination based on their “biological sex”:

Title VII does not prohibit discrimination against transgender persons based on their transgender status. It simply does not speak to discrimination because of an individual’s gender identity or a disconnect between an individual’s gender identity and the individual’s sex.

The Justice Department’s argument is that “the ordinary public meaning of ‘sex’ was biological sex” when the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.

Under Barack Obama, the Justice Department asserted that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act did protect transgender workers but erstwhile attorney general Jeff Sessions reversed that stance the year Donald Trump took office.

No final decision has been made but this could set a dangerous precedent should the Trump administration get their way.

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