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posted by on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the about-time dept.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals—which sets precedent in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin—ruled

that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The plaintiff, a college teacher, said she was reprimanded for kissing her girlfriend, then was not given full-time work at the college and was dismissed. The college denied that it discriminated against her.

MP3 audio of the oral arguments is available.

additional coverage:


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:27PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:27PM (#489887) Journal

    In the story submission, I ought to have written that the quote was the Chicago Tribune's words, not the court's. The court's Web site doesn't work properly for me, so I didn't find a link to the opinion.

    http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/ [uscourts.gov]

    Lambda Legal, which did the legal work for the plaintiff, has a long quote from the opinion.

    http://www.lambdalegal.org/blog/20170404_court-rules-employers-cant-discriminate-against-gay-employees [lambdalegal.org]

    So does Findlaw:

    Viewed through the lens of the gender non-conformity line of cases, Hively represents the ultimate case of failure to conform to the female stereotype (at least as understood in a place such as modern America, which views heterosexuality as the norm and other forms of sexuality as exceptional): she is not heterosexual.

    -- http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2017/04/federal-court-civil-rights-act-protects-gay-lesbian-workers-from-discrimination.html [findlaw.com]

    Besides physical changes to the body such as growing a beard or having a penis constructed, a transgender person perceived as female might ask to be referred to with male pronouns, take a male name, or dress as a man (and analogously for people perceived as male). You see that the court did mention sexual orientation, but it's parenthetical to the main idea of "failure to conform to the female stereotype." That transgender people would be covered is an assumption, though. It's one that was made in some of the reports and I thought it a good one so I made it in the headline. Certainly transgender people "fail" to match gender stereotypes. That's actually a definition of "transgender":

    2. noting or relating to a person who does not conform to societal gender norms or roles.

    -- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transgender [dictionary.com]

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