IGF CultureWatch

Via the Washington Blade, a look at the chances of Republicans moving an LGBT anti-discrimination bill.

Will GOP deliver LGBT workplace protections? https://t.co/EqTn0oaC4B

— Washington Blade (@WashBlade) April 7, 2017

I agree that Donald Trump might sign a reasonable workplace anti-discrimination bill, and I had forgotten that House Speaker Paul Ryan was a co-sponsor of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which the Democrats failed to move forward when during the first two years of the Obama presidency they controlled the White House and had supermajorities in Congress.

But I don’t think a Log Cabin-backed measure will go anywhere in the current political climate. For one thing, the establishment (i.e., Democratic) LGBT lobbies won’t support a bill that’s limited to employment discrimination and which includes reasonable religious exemptions. Without the support of the Human Rights Campaign, no Democrats will be on board.

The column’s author, Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum and LGBT History Month, says he would back such as measure. But he’s nevertheless dismissive of efforts to balance the competing rights of employment nondiscrimination and religious freedom, as if the latter was nothing but a right-wing ploy—a popular assertion by secular progressive who assign no value to constitutional protections against being forced by the state to violate deeply held religious convictions because, after all, only our rights matter.

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that anti-gay workplace bias is unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reversing an earlier decision from a three-judge panel. As the Washington Blade reports, in a 8-3 decision the court found “discrimination based on sexual orientation constitutes discrimination based on one’s perception of gender stereotypes, which the U.S. Supreme Court has determined is unlawful under Title VII.”

Bulletin | In first, fed'l appeals court rules anti-gay workplace unlawful under current civil rights law https://t.co/hStxaD6I9d @WashBlade

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnson82) April 4, 2017

As I blogged last month, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled 2-1 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on a variety of factors including sex, doesn’t protect against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Unless the full 11th Circuit Court follows the 7th Circuit’s lead and reverses last month’s panel ruling, it Looks like this will be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Kennedy may again be the swing vote.

As I said before, Title VII has already been stretched so far beyond its original intent, to say it can be stretched no further seems arbitrary.

More. An interesting observation from The Volokh Conspiracy site:

The interesting opinion here is not the majority…. It’s Judge Flaum’s. He makes a novel and extremely clever argument (at least to me) to explain why discrimination against homosexuals is sex discrimination using mixed motive theory.

Title VII prohibits me from firing someone for a mix of good and bad reasons (“mixed motives”). So if I fire you because you’re a woman who is bad at your job, but don’t fire men who are equally bad at their jobs, I have violated the law–even though part of the reason for the firing is that you are bad at your job, a lawful (indeed, laudable) reason to fire someone.

Flaum’s innovative observation is to point out that firing someone for homosexuality means that I am firing them based upon TWO facts, not one: the person is 1. a woman who 2. is attracted to women. (Or 1. a man who 2. is attracted to men.) Voila– whether fact number 2 is a prohibited characteristic or not under the law is irrelevant, because firing someone based on fact number 1 is most definitely illegal, and firing someone for a mix of legal and illegal motives is also illegal.

Flaum’s a conservative’s conservative. When he is going out of his way to explain to conservatives the obvious errors of the “sexual-orientation-isn’t-sex” line of argument, it’s time to pack it in.

Walter Olson writes:

The new compromise is being met with peals of outrage from some of the predictable ultras on both sides. But it looks to me like a more careful attempt to respect the legitimate rights of both sides than we’ve seen in this controversy up to now.

"North Carolina Bids To Close the Door On Its Bathroom Wars" — my explanation and defense of #HB142 https://t.co/RXlzpxAOgS

— Walter Olson (@walterolson) March 30, 2017

One problem with ordinances that require restrooms and locker rooms to be open to all regardless of gender, in an effort to end discrimination against transgender men and women, is that you get situations like this: Large Burly Man’ Lurking in Disney Ladies’ Room Should Make Everyone Stop and Think:

If this had been 5 years ago, you bet your ass every woman in there would’ve been like, “Ummm what are you doing in here?”, but in 2017? The mood has shifted. We had been culturally bullied into silenced. Women were mid-changing their baby’s diapers on the changing tables and I could see them shifting to block his view. But they remained silent. I stayed silent. We all did. Every woman who exited a stall and immediately zeroed right in on him…said nothing. And why? B/c I and I’m sure all the others were scared of that “what if”. What if I say something and he says he “identifies as a woman” and then I come off as the intolerant asshole at the happiest place on earth? So we all stood there, shifting in our uncomfortableness…trading looks. I saw two women leave the line with their children. Still nothing was said. An older lady said to me out loud, “What is he doing in here?” I’m ashamed to admit I silently shrugged and mouthed, “I don’t know.” She immediately walked out, from a bathroom she had every right to use without fear.

Gay fashion guru Carson Kressley, formerly of TV’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” was asked by Washington, D.C.’s Metro Weekly about designers who have publicly refused to dress the First Lady Melania Trump in protest against her husband. Kressley’s response:

“Designers are artists and many of them have very strong political views. That’s the beauty of our country. If you don’t want to work with somebody, you don’t have to. I think it’s well within their rights to say no. I don’t think it’s disrespectful. It’s just a personal choice.”

Hmmm. If only LGBT progressives would recognize that same right for photographers, bakers and other creative types.

The New York Post reports that Guy wearing Trump hat sues bar for refusing to serve him. I don’t think the bar did the right thing as a matter of fairness and civility, but I also think suing for service is a bad idea.

The Post further reports that:

A manager said he spoke to the bar owner, and was told, “Anyone who supports Trump or believes what you believe is not welcome here. And you need to leave right now because we won’t serve you!,” according to the suit.

I’d argue this is murkier than cases where business owners are operating out of religious belief and not political pique, but I still think the Trump supporter shouldn’t go running to the state to punish the bar owner.

Yet how many on the left who think the bar did the right thing, or at least had the right to do so, also believe that government should force caterers and wedding planners to provide their services to same-sex weddings?

Earlier this week, AP reported that “in a setback for gay rights advocates hoping for an expansion of workplace discrimination protections,” a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled 2-1 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on a variety of factors including sex, doesn’t protect against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

In 2011, the 11th Circuit ruled that discrimination against a transgender employee did amount to unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII because the individual faced discrimination based on her behavior not conforming to gender stereotypes. In its new ruling, the court clarified that discrimination against an individual who is undergoing a gender transition is based on behavior while discrimination against an employer for being gay or lesbian is based on “status.”

The 11th Circuit ruling follows a decision in which a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit in Chicago last July upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a similar case trying to extend Title VII to include sexual orientation.

LGBT rights groups had hoped these rulings would go their way and “would mark a significant step forward for gay rights,” the AP reported. And indeed, if the courts had extended Title VII to include sexual orientation it would have avoided the need to pass federal legislation like the overly broad Equality Act, which seeks to amend Title VII to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity while decreeing that existing Title VII exemptions based on religious belief may not be used as a defense in suits charging anti-LGBT discrimination.

“Sex discrimination” under Title VII was clearly meant to apply to discrimination based on physical sex, so it seems to makes some sense that it could apply to transgender men and women facing discrimination but not to gay men and lesbians. There is only so far you can stretch an existing statute to try to make it do something it was never meant to do (although that doesn’t stop progressives from trying). However, it does mean that transgender people have far more legal protections under federal law than do gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

We were told we couldn’t pass the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) with only sexual orientation (which had the votes in Congress) and not gender identity (which did not), and so ENDA fell by the wayside. The Equality Act is a fundraising ploy that has no chance of passing in a Republican congress, and would face opposition from some African-American legislators who don’t want to meddle with the Civil Rights Act if the Democrats again take power.

But I don’t see transgender activists saying they won’t accept their court-provided protections under Title VII because they also don’t extend to LGB folks.

More. From the comments, “Will” writes:

Seems to me if you face discrimination because you’re a man who has sex with men (or desires to), and being sexual with a man is something that is stereotypically female behavior, then why wouldn’t that be discrimination against a gay man for “behavior not conforming to gender stereotypes” as prohibited under Title VII?

And

Once the courts expanded Title VII to include “gender nonstereotypical behavior”—which was quite a stretch of the statute, and arguably without foundation—I don’t know how they can find that Title VII protections cover trans people but not gays/lesbians.

On reflection, those do seem like good points. Having stretched Title VII so far beyond its original intent, to then say it can be stretched no further seems arbitrary.