Biden Orders Sweeping LGBT Workplace Protections

 

BIG NEWS:  You can't be fired for being gay or transgender, and the President has your back.

President Biden just issued an executive order protecting Americans against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity — a turning point in our fight for equality under the law. https://t.co/fSuxT8dF8w

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) January 21, 2021

On his first day in his new job, President Biden has signed an executive order directing all federal agencies and employees to enforce and comply with the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling last June that extended Title VII workplace protections to LGBT employees.  Justice Neil Gorsuch - a Trump appointee - wrote the majority opinion, summarizing it thus:

In Title VII, Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.

Hooray!  The President and the Supreme Court have now extended the equal protection of the laws to gay people and trans people.   Finally.  But now is the time for the Congress to make it the law of the land in so many words; equal rights should not depend on the ruling of a court (which can later overrule itself) or on the stroke of a President's pen (which a later President can revoke).  It's true, an Act of  Congress can be repealed by a later Congress; but that would put a sort of triple lock on our equality, which is important.  Perhaps we might even dream of a future day when equality is written into the Constitution - but for now we should look to the Democratic majority in Congress to seal it into law.

Nevertheless, thank you, Mr. President, for upholding justice for all Americans today.  Proud of you!

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