Supreme Court agrees to hear Michigan transgender discrimination case

Tresa Baldas
Detroit Free Press

A transgender Michigan woman has made history as the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear her wrongful termination lawsuit — one of three landmark cases that pit religious freedom against gay and transgender rights in the workplace.

At issue is whether a 1964 federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against gay or transgender workers. LGBTQ advocates argue it does, while religious-rights groups and the Trump administration maintain it does not. 

In the Michigan case, a transgender woman alleges that a metro Detroit funeral home wrongfully fired her for transitioning from a man into a woman, calling the move discriminatory.

But the funeral home and religious rights advocates maintain the termination was legal because, they say, an employer can't be forced to make decisions that go against its sincerely held religious belief: in this case, that a person's sex is a "God-given gift" that shouldn't be changed.  

The controversy has played out in the courts, with U.S. District Judge Sean Cox in Detroit siding with the funeral home, concluding transgender individuals are not a protected class under federal employment laws, and that the employer had a right to uphold its religious beliefs.

Aimee Stephens sued a Garden City funeral home which she says wrongfully fired her for transitioning from a man into a woman, calling the termination discriminatory. The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear her case.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling, concluding the firing was a form of sex discrimination and that federal laws protect transgender people from such treatment — a position held by numerous courts across the country.

Now, it's up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide.

The case involves Aimee Stephens, a funeral director who was fired in 2013 from her job at  R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Home in Garden City after disclosing her decision to transition from a man into a woman. During her six years of working at the funeral home, she hid her female appearance, but decided in 2013 to go public with the truth, in a letter to her employer.

"What I must tell you is very difficult for me and is taking all the courage I can muster. I am writing this both to inform you of a significant change in my life and to ask for your patience, understanding and support ..." Stephens wrote in the letter. 

"I have a gender identity disorder that I have struggled with my entire life. ... I have felt imprisoned in my body that does not match my mind, and this has caused me great despair and loneliness. .... I cannot begin to describe the shame and suffering that I have lived with. Toward that end, I intend to have sex reassignment surgery."

Two weeks later, Stephens was fired.

“What happened to me was wrong, it was hurtful and it harmed my family. I hope the Supreme Court will see that firing me because I’m transgender was discrimination,” Stephens said in a statement released by the ACLU, one of multiple legal groups handling the historic cases.

The Supreme Court will ultimately decide whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin, also covers discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has held that it does, though opponents argue it’s not the federal agency’s call to make.

“Businesses have the right to rely on what the law is – not what government agencies want it to be – when they create and enforce employment policies,” stated Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that is representing Harris Funeral Homes and wants the Supreme Court to answer this question: “Who has the authority to rewrite federal law?”

The legal group also defended the funeral home’s firing decision.

“This should have been an open-and-shut case,” ADF stated. “After all, small businesses are allowed under the law to differentiate between men and women in their dress codes.”

In addition to Stephens' case, the Supreme Court has decided to hear two similar lawsuits involving gay workers who were fired from their jobs for their sexual orientation. One of the firings happened in New York, where the appeals court sided with the employee; the other happened in Georgia, where the appeals court ruled in favor of the employer.

According to the ACLU, if the Supreme Court overturns court rulings that favor fired employees,  it would take away existing protections from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

Related: 

Federal court upholds firing of transgender funeral director

Feds' letter on transgender kids sends 'powerful message' to schools

“Most of America would be shocked if the Supreme Court said it was legal to fire Aimee because she’s transgender or (a man) because he is gay," said James Esseks, director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project. "Such a ruling would be disastrous, relegating LGBTQ people around the country to a second-class citizen status. The LGBTQ community has fought too long and too hard to go back now, and we are counting on the justices not to reverse that hard-won progress.”

Others disagree.

Doug Wardlow, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom group, which defended the funeral home in the Michigan case, has argued:

"The government doesn't have the ability to force business owners to violate their religious beliefs about human sexuality, or anything else for that matter," said Wardlow, stressing the issue for the funeral home was that Stephens wanted to dress like a woman at work.

"The funeral home would have had no problem if Stephens wanted to dress that way on his own time," Wardlow said. "The problem was that he wanted to dress as a member of the opposite sex while at work ... on company time, and present himself in a way that contradicts (the owner's) religious beliefs."

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com