By Theo West
Are you a woman? Imagine if you were fired for wearing a skirt to work.
Are you a man? Imagine getting fired for not wearing a skirt to work.
This sounds ridiculous, right? It sounds unfair. But for many Americans, it’s a reality we must face every day.
Take the case of Aimee Stephens, a Detroit funeral home employee. Aimee is transgender, a woman assigned male sex at birth.
For most of her career, she went undercover, wearing men’s clothing every day and pretending to be a man. When she finally told her boss that she was in fact a woman and would like to start wearing work-appropriate women’s clothing, she was fired.
In 29 states, there are no protections against workplace discrimination of this sort for transgender people like me. If I lived in Michigan like Aimee, my employer could fire me at will, just because I’m transgender. (In fact, I could also be denied housing, credit, or public accommodations.)
Facing this injustice, Aimee Stephens sued. Her case against her employer has now made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
The court will decide whether firing someone because they’re transgender constitutes discrimination “on the basis of sex,” which would be illegal under the Civil Rights Act. If they rule in favor of Stephens, transgender Americans would finally be afforded the same protections that everyone else has as a right.
The Trump administration has argued that the Civil Rights Act doesn’t protect people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. But advocates have countered that it does apply, since discrimination along these lines punishes people who defy stereotypes attached to their assigned sex.
Whatever the court decides, there’s no disputing that transgender people in the United States face alarmingly high rates of unemployment and poverty. In fact, we’re twice as likely to live in poverty as the general population, and 30 percent of us have experienced homelessness at some point.
Against this backdrop, housing and employment discrimination are an added devastation — and in all likelihood part of the reason these numbers are so high in the first place.
So it’s no exaggeration to say the Supreme Court’s ruling will have a drastic material impact on the millions of transgender people living in the United States. Allowing this discrimination to continue will threaten many more with unemployment and economic hardship.
With the court’s current right-wing majority, that’s a real danger. But Congress could address it by explicitly legislating anti-discrimination protections — for the workplace, housing, credit, and everything else — for this vulnerable group.
In fact, the House of Representatives has already passed the Equality Act, which would clearly codify the inclusion of gay, lesbian, transgender, and non-binary people in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, the GOP-controlled Senate has refused to consider it.
Without this legislation, the rights of millions of Americans like me are at the mercy of this Supreme Court.
No matter how the court rules, it’s the responsibility of Congress to ensure that “freedom and justice for all” includes transgender Americans, too. We need laws to prevent people like Aimee Stephens from losing their livelihoods due to employer prejudice.
We’re supposed to be a free country. We’re supposed to be an equal country. It’s time to make it that way.
Theo Wuest is a Next Leader at the Institute for Policy Studies.
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Dennis says
What your talking about here is a mental illness seen help.
Traveling Rep says
God already decided the gender of each of us. Anyone in denial of their God given sex/gender probably has some screws loose – See Gender Disphoria
Just because I claim to be an Ostrich doesn’t make me an actual Ostrich.
Pierre Tristam says
Incidentally, what would god’s gender be?
foodforthought says
Didn’t Jesus refer to God as his father?
Traveling Rep says
I am shocked I tell you, that you would even consider consulting me with such a question. I would’ve thought for certain you would consult the LGBTQ I a plus plus plus plus plus and then there’s the G for God. They are after all, whom you bow down to correct?
Pierre Tristam says
Yes but Jesus also thought god created him in his image. A bit tendentious. Not the best reference. Add to that Jesus’s biographers, none of whom is known to have known much about well over half of humanity, and you’re into a whole different kind of predetermination.
Traveling Rep says
Evidently’Pierre’ translates to ‘Thomas’ in english. It’s always that last breath that an atheist takes when they utter in total faith: “Dear Lord”
Cecil B Demille says
“… a woman assigned male sex at birth.” Ummmm… actually sex is “assigned” in the womb, not at birth. Science… https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181215141333.htm
Sherry says
Excellent comments Pierre!
Maybe we should all take into consideration that the bible was written, translated and manipulated by men. . . naturally from their myopic perspective. Assuming an omnipotent entity as has any gender at all is only for the tiniest of minds.
The Realist says
What gets left out of all of these conversations is that people have businesses to run. Businesses can lose customers because of the employees appearances. Many businesses do not allow people with tattoos to have them exposed while working. I love tattoos but I do understand that practice, Does anyone really want to attend a funeral for a loved one and have to see some guy walking around in a dress? I couldn’t care less if some guy wants to do that on his own time. It doesn’t make them special, stunning or brave.
Pierre Tristam says
For someone with a name like “The Realist,” you sure are stuck in La La Land. You’re surrounded by men who were born as women, and women who were born as men, but who now “walk around” as the gender they identify with. You’d never know they were once of a different gender. If you live in Palm Coast and shopped even at Home Depot for god’s sake, your cashier there was at one time or another a woman who had been a man, and you’d have never known it. At Home Depot. (I know this because she wrote a book about it.) Nor would anyone know at that funeral parlor that Aimee Stephens had once been a man–unless they’re return customers within a particular window, which is more rare than not, as funeral parlors go, and even if they were, do you really think the aggrieved give a shit at that particular moment if the funeral parlor personnel’s clothing may have changed? Do you think anyone but morticians with clinically critical OCD are keeping tabs? And are you really conflating cross-dressers with transgender people? What gets left out of these conversations is that people who have businesses to run have no business running their employees’ private lives. You don’t get to pick your employee’s sexual partners. You sure as hell don’t get to pick your employee’s sex. This isn’t Antebellum cotton-pickin’ freakland anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t Tehran or Jeddah or Vatican City, Hobby Lobby decisions notwithstanding.
Randy Jones says
If you follow the link in the above essay “millions of transgender people” you’ll find:
Table 1. Estimated Population of Adults Who Identify as Transgender by State of Residence
STATE POPULATION PERCENT
United States of America 1,397,150 0.58%
If that’s accurate it means that there’s about one transgender for every 200 adults in the US. Did I do the math right?
The Realist says
Pierre You yourself came to this country, I assume because it is the greatest country in the world. Yet what is the first thing people like you want to do? Change it. Like any typical socialist liberal you attack anyone who disagrees with whatever politically correct crusade you are on at the time.You are the one who is actually in la la land. On a regular basis I feel you try to wipe your ass with the American flag through your words. But that’s ok, you have the freedom for now to say whatever you like. Your democratic socialist friends are working on changing the first amendment so speak freely while you can.
As I said in my comments anyone can dress or act as they wish on their own time. Just like you are free to voice your opinions. As far as conflating cross dressers and transgenders…well at the end of the day a crossdresser is a person of one sex dressing as the other sex and a person that’s transgender..wow could it be?…..does the same thing. If thats what they are into so be it..live and let live. So save your politically correct nonsense for the lemmings that think like you do. Im sure you wont allow this to post because censorship and people like you go hand and hand.
Bill says
WOW and the left call those who disagree with there ideology of MAN made global warming as “science deniers? LOL If YOU want to pretend you are what you are NOT fine just dont expect the whole world to go along with you.
Bill says
So you own a company and hire John Doe he is a good employee but the all of a sudden John now want to be called Joan??? If that fine with you great if not also great as you have hired John not Joan. Why should the whole world buy into another delusions of being something they are NOT?
Pierre Tristam says
Bill, I changed country, nationality, name, religion, language, cuisine and culture even though I was born into all of those things. Most people also change spouses, careers, families, hairstyles and, a bit more regularly, socks and underwear. I don’t see why someone changing sex should bother you so much, particularly since it has nothing at all to do with you, assuming you’re comfortable in your skin. Your comment suggests you may not be as comfortable as you presume. Not that I’m one to judge. Heaven knows my sex is an embarrassment to me half the time, as it should be to you. (Have you checked out the ghastly gender occupying the White House these days? Talk about needing a shrink.)
Shell says
You’re gutless, Pierre.
Pierre Tristam says
Says the anonymous commenter.
Palm Coast Resident says
So if it’s a mental disorder, then why so harsh? It doesn’t cause any hard for a person to identify as a gender which is opposite his or her born sex.
There may be biological factors that cause this to happen to a person–environmental factors combined with certain genetic factors and maybe even some developmental cues that happen. It’s usually a life-long experience–that identity with the opposite gender.
So why does this bother people so much? It doesn’t make rational sense to say, “This is a mental illness,” then to go on and berate the person for espousing what they’ve probably felt was their identity since they were a child–due to what one is considering a “mental illness.” It doesn’t make sense when a name, a pronoun (in the sense that it’s just a word), and style of adorning oneself is already very much subjective. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a psychiatric term or if science eventually establishes that for some people, there are real biological factors conflating gender and sex–making the definition in our human real quite complicated. It doesn’t matter, because there’s no major harm that can come from someone’s life-long identity when that identity, to them, is 100 percent genuine.
People experiencing chronic depression often have no real reason to be sad, but we learned their experience is very much outside of their control, and we care.