In a case that could have national consequences for employment discrimination against trans people, a federal court judge in Detroit ruled on Thursday that the owners of a funeral home were within their rights when they fired a trans woman for coming out.
Advertisement
The case is Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, No. 14-cv-13710. It marked the first time the agency sued a business on behalf of a transgender person.
But Stephens never went on vacation or made it back to work.
Aimee Australia Stephens was sacked by the funeral home where she worked. “I won’t change that”, she told NBC News. He also said he fired her because Stephens “wanted to dress as a woman” and because “we have a dress code that is very specific that men will dress as men”. The law protects against discrimination in the workplace.
The EEOC said via Twitter that it “is disappointed with the decision and is reviewing next steps”.
Rost claimed that he had a right to fire Amiee Stephens under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
The court acknowledged Rost is a Christian whose “faith informs the way he operates his business and how he presents it to the public”. She worked as a funeral director and embalmer for the home until 2013, when she notified her employers that she would be having sex reassignment surgery and planned to return to work dressed as a woman, which would require her to wear a “skirt-suit” under the home’s dress code.
The Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling was prompted when the arts and craft company objected to providing birth control insurance cover for female employers, as set out by US Department of Health and Human Services, citing the owner’s religious beliefs as its reason. Curiously, Rost also said he wouldn’t have a problem with Stephens dressing as a woman if she did so during non-work hours.
“It would mean any religious employer would suddenly have a defense to firing someone in violation of any civil rights law as long as it was based on religious belief”, says the ACLU’s Josh Block.”It’s a very odd decision and there are a million different ways it can and should be reversed”, Block said. Some observers see this ruling partly as a outcome of the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, in which SCOTUS ruled that a private company may be exempt from a law if its owners object to the law on religious grounds.
Brian Hauss, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union ― which filed a legal brief in support of Stephens ― said in an email that the ruling was “way, way out there” and could have serious repercussions down the road.
“The feds shouldn’t strong-arm private business owners into violating their religious beliefs, and the court has affirmed that here”, said Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Doug Wardlow, who argued before the court on August 11. “If allowed to stand, this decision would seriously jeopardize federal anti-discrimination protections for transgender people, women and people of color”. That’s doubly true in an employment discrimination case, where the universally accepted solution to unlawful termination is a Title VII suit.
Advertisement
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that a Detroit funeral home did not violate the law when it fired a transgender employee.
