Just in time for your weekend. The Court in the Schroer v. Liabrary of Congress finally reached a verdict, finding for the plaintiff. The court ruled that the Library of Congress illegally discriminated against Schroer when she was denied a job after disclosing her intention to transition from male to female.
As it had with the Library's previous motion to dismiss, the Court found that discriminating against someone for changing gender is "sex discrimination" under Title VII. Interestingly, the Court analogized this to religious discrimination, saying, "Imagine that an employee is fired because she converts from Christianity to Judaism. Imagine too that her employer testified that he harbors no bias toward either Christians or Jews but only 'converts.' That would be a clear case of discrimination 'because of religion.' No Court would take seriously the notion that 'converts' are not covered by the statute."
The ACLU's press release is available here. I'm sure there will be a large amount of coverage on this case, so I'll follow up with some links as they become available and I'll include a discussion of how California has treated cases under Title VII.
My previous blog entries about this case are available here and here and here.
--Michael Sachs
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