The court affirming federal protections for gay and transgender employees opens a new door in the ongoing struggle for civil rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s monumental ruling last week that LGBTQ employees are protected by federal civil rights laws was one culmination of decades of hard-fought advocacy by the LGBTQ community.
For one thing, claims under Title VII would have to be first filed as a “charge of discrimination” with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency overseeing employment discrimination issues, or a state counterpart. This is because Title VII requires employees to show that they’ve exhausted their administrative channels for seeking remedy.
Until this point, it was largely up to state and local jurisdictions to extend civil rights laws to LGBTQ employees. Only some 22 states and Washington, D.C., had barred discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while a few other states offered more limited version of such protections, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ civil rights advocacy group.
Carmelyn Malalis, chair and commissioner of the agency, said the agency’s approach speaks to a mission dating back to its origins in the Forties, when then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia established a committee amid race riots in the city over police brutality.
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