Fighting for all Americans?

 

Trump once declared,

“So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.”

In his acceptance speech on November 9, 2016, Trump announced,

“I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me.”

At  7:52 PM on 11 February 11,  2019, Trump tweeted.

“We are fighting for all Americans, from all backgrounds, of every age, race, religion, birthplace, color & creed. Our agenda is NOT a partisan agenda – it is the mainstream, common sense agenda of the American People.”

At 6:42 PM on July 17 2019, Trump Tweeted.

“The Republican Party is the Party for ALL Americans. We are the Party of the American Worker, the American Family & the American Dream. This is the proud banner the Republican Party will carry into the Republican National Convention next summer in the great city of Charlotte, NC!”

On CBN’s “The Brody File” in 2011, he said,

“There can be no discrimination against gays.”

But ARE we all Americans, and does Trump actually oppose discrimination against GLBT people?

The Trump Department of Justice has filed an amicus brief in two cases involving Gay workers and whether or not they are covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination “because of sex”, arguing that courts nationwide should stop reading the civil rights law to protect Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender workers from bias because it was not originally intended to do so.

Just as courts nationwide should stop reading that the Constitution protects personally owned assault weapons that were nor originally intended to be owned for any purpose other than a “well regulated militia”.

Right.

Trump’s Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to declare that federal law allows private companies to fire workers based only on their sexual orientation.

This would legalize anti-Gay discrimination in the workplace.

Lower courts have ruled that targeting someone for their sexual orientation is an illegal form of both sex discrimination and sex stereotyping under Title VII based on the idea that a person doing his job wouldn’t be targeted if he was a woman dating a man.

But now, according to the DOJ, Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination only prohibits unequal treatment between “biological sexes”, and companies should be able to fire people because they are transgender as well.

Because Congress did not explicitly say that sex in Title VII encompasses GLBT people, the administration argues that the law cannot apply to sexual orientation.

This product (because of its high electronegative nature) will also reduce the effects of pharmacy viagra excessive buildup of harmful minerals in your blood stream (like aluminum). This is because spinal dysfunctions will affect the viagra free developmental milestones of the baby. Put differently, every customer experience and interaction viagra cialis generico must be infused with passion and sincerity. Kamagra or Sildenafil Citrate (its generic http://greyandgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Court-of-Appeals-Ruling-in-Shutter-NYLJ-1997.pdf discount viagra usa name) is available in the form of pills with dosages like 20 mg, 25 mg or even 50 mg and are known as PDE5 inhibitors. The administration wants the Supreme Court to explicitly limit the Civil Right Act’s protections to exclude GLBT people.

The amicus brief states,

“Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination because of sex does not bar discrimination because of sexual orientation. The ordinary meaning of ‘sex’ is biologically male or female; it does not include sexual orientation. An employer thus discriminates ‘because of … sex’ under Title VII if it treats members of one sex worse than similarly situated members of the other sex. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, standing alone, does not satisfy that standard.”

Because, “We are fighting for all Americans.”

The Justice Department claims that Congress only intended to ban discrimination because someone is male or female, and Congress should have amended Title VII to include GLBT right if they tended the law to cover that, but didn’t.

The Supreme Court agreeing with the amicus brief could limit the scope of Title VII and assert that state and federal laws banning sex-based discrimination have no application for sexual orientation or gender identity even in public schools.

In spite of what many people think and claim, there are no federal laws protecting GLBT people from workplace discrimination, and, although several GLBT people have used Title VII in discrimination cases and have won in some lower courts, other courts have reached the opposite conclusion.

Trump already plans to let federal contractors discriminate against workers based on their boss’s religious grounds or for just being Transgender.

The amicus brief is related to three cases.

One case is Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, now before the Supreme Court, dealing with an employee having been fired by Clayton County whose case was dismissed in a lower court.

Another is the case of Donald Zarda, who sued his employer because the company terminated him for his sexual orientation and prevailed at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge in the latter case had ruled,

“A woman who is subject to an adverse employment action because she is attracted to women would have been treated differently if she had been a man who was attracted to women. We can therefore conclude that sexual orientation is a function of sex and, by extension, sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination.”

In the third case, Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled

“if she had been a man married to a woman … and everything else had stayed the same, Ivy Tech would not have refused to promote her and would not have fired her. … This describes paradigmatic sex discrimination.”

In spite of these uneven rulings, two out of three in favor of the plaintiff, the Justice Department claimed in a brief in 2017 that Title VII doesn’t address sexual orientation because that “has been settled for decades”.

Also in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 1989, that found that a denied promotion because the female employee didn’t appear feminine enough violated the Title VII ban on sex discrimination which includes a ban in sex stereotyping in the workplace, and in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 1998, where Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also banned workplace harassment in the case of a man who was perceived to be gay, it would appear things are not so settled.

Oddly, the brief goes on to say.

“An employer who discriminates against employees in same-sex relationships thus does not violate Title VII as long as it treats men in same-sex relationships the same as women in same-sex relationships.”

Apparently equally applied discrimination because of sexual orientation is not discrimination?

The amicus brief applies to the three cases that will be heard by he Supreme Court on October 8, 2019.

Leave a Reply