Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch Calls LGBTQ Workplace Discrimination Case ‘Really Close’
Justice Neil Gorsuch
The Supreme Court justices sounded closely split Tuesday and a bit uncertain over whether to make it illegal under federal law for companies and public agencies to fire employees solely because they are gay, lesbian or transgender, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch likely the deciding vote, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Trump-appointee Gorsuch described the case as “really close…. Assume for the moment I’m with you on the textual evidence,” he told an ACLU lawyer representing a transgender woman who was fired from her job at a funeral home in Detroit.
“The four liberal justices, joined at times by Gorsuch, said they agreed that firing gay or transgender employees was discrimination based on sex as the law defined it,” writes the Times‘ David G. Savage. “But others, including most of the conservatives, said that Congress in 1964 did not mean to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
