Supreme Court grants federal job protections to gay, lesbian, transgender workers

A divided Supreme Court further advanced the cause of LGBTQ rights Monday, ruling that a landmark civil rights law barring sex discrimination in the workplace applies to gay, lesbian and transgender workers.

The decision was written by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's first nominee to the cour. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberal justices. Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

"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," Gorsuch wrote. "Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit."

The ruling came in three cases, involving two gay men and a transgender woman, from Georgia, New York and Michigan. The cases, heard in early October, are among the most significant on the court's docket this term.

The challenges from the fired workers picked up where the same-sex marriage battle left off in 2015, when the court ruled 5-4 that states cannot bar gay men or lesbians from matrimony. What was different this time was the court itself: The author of four major opinions expanding gay rights, retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, has been succeeded by the more conservative Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The three plaintiffs were Gerald Bostock, a former child welfare services coordinator from Georgia; Donald Zarda, a former New York skydiving instructor who died at 44 in 2014 but was represented by his sister and former partner; and Aimee Stephens, a former funeral home worker from Michigan who is transgender, and who died March 12.