Nathaniel M. Glasser, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Business Insurance, in “Appellate Rulings Push Transgender Fight Closer to High Court,” by Judy Greenwald.
Following is an excerpt:
Litigation over allegations of workplace discrimination due to sexual orientation may have taken a step closer to U.S. Supreme Court review after an appellate court ruled for a worker in a transgender rights case earlier this month.
The federal appeals court ruling that a person’s transgender status is protected from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the third recent appellate court ruling on a related issue and increases the momentum toward a review by the high court on gender conformity under the statute, experts say.
The March 7 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. involved Aimee Stephens, who was fired about two weeks after she informed her employer and co-workers at her Detroit-based funeral home that she was undergoing a gender transition to female from male. …
“I think we’ll see many more of these lawsuits not just pursued, but appealed in other circuits around the country,” said Nathaniel Glasser, a member of law firm Epstein Becker Green P.C. in Washington.
He said now that “two courts have seriously considered and adopted the rationale of the EEOC” in concluding Title VII protects sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, if employers “weren’t already paying attention to what the EEOC has been saying, they should look carefully now in those areas and also at the EEOC’s other enforcement priorities to ensure that their own policies and practice are in line with those priorities.”
