Judge Rules That Workplaces Can Have Policies Against Trans Employees
October 4, 2022A judge in Texas has issued a ruling against federal guidance ensuring workplace non-discrimination protections for trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming employees.
According to LGBTQ Nation, in an October 1 ruling, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, declared that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued guidance that incorrectly interpreted the June 2020 Supreme Court ruling Bostock v. Clayton County.
The 2020 Supreme Court decision found that discrimination against gay and transgender employees is a form of sex discrimination forbidden by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
One year later, the EEOC issued guidance stating that the ruling required workplaces with more than 15 employees to allow all transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming workers to use the pronouns, dress codes, facilities, and healthcare practices matching their gender identities.
In response, the state of Texas sued the EEOC, and Judge Kacsmaryk just ruled in the state’s favor. Although the 2020 Supreme Court decision declared that employers can’t discriminate against workers for their sexuality or gender identity, he ruled that it doesn’t protect an employee’s “correlated conduct.”
As such, Kacsmaryk declared the EEOC’s guidance unlawful and said that Texas doesn’t have to follow it. However, the matter is far from settled because 20 Republican-led states have also sued the EEOC over the guidance, alleging that the federal agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not following the required process for making new rules and also the Constitution’s 10th Amendment by trampling on states’ authority over privacy expectations in workplaces.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling isn’t entirely surprising considering that he once served as the deputy general counsel for the First Liberty Institute (FLI), an organization that generally represents conservative Christians, attacks the separation of church and state, and opposes LGBTQ+ rights.
In a 2015 opinion piece, Kacsmaryk decried marriage equality and LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination legislation.
“Five justices of the Supreme Court found an unwritten ‘fundamental right’ to same-sex marriage hiding in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment – a secret knowledge so cleverly concealed in the nineteenth-century amendment that it took almost 150 years to find,” he wrote.
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