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The Work Is Never Done

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Equality Virginia’s Vee Lamneck talks to GayRVA about Title VII, The Virginia Values Act, and the connections between LGBTQ and BLM.

On June 15th, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed three historic cases and came to one monumental decision: that Title VII of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Prior to the Title VII decision, it was completely lawful in quite a few states of the union for an employee of a private corporation to be fired or passed up for employment for being LGBTQ.

The Supreme Court made a statement about one of the cases, saying, “Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” – Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, June 15, 2020.

In many ways, this case was a matter of analyzing the Civil Rights Act through a modern lens and recontextualizing the age-old issue of sex discrimination to address the issues of LGBTQ people. When The Civil Rights Act was originally passed, the legislators responsible for its proposal and approval were almost certainly thinking of women, and not of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people. However, when Title VII was reviewed in today’s context, the justices found that the same laws that protected women from discrimination in ‘60’s should also protect LGBTQ people today.

One of the foremost advocacy groups for LGBTQ rights in Virginia is Equality Virginia, an organization that is dedicated to creating a truly inclusive commonwealth for all Virginians, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. Equality Virginia Executive Director Vee Lamneck, who uses they/them pronouns, spoke to us about what this landmark Supreme Court decision means for LGBTQ Richmonders, Virginians, and Americans.

“LGBTQ people have been advocating for their rights for decades,” Lamneck said. “There are many states in the country that have non-discrimination protections in place at the state level, and I am very proud that Virginia is soon to be one of them.”

Lamneck is referring to The Virginia Values Act, which was passed by the General Assembly this spring and takes effect on July 1st. This bill will protect LGBTQ Virginians from discrimination in all public spaces and places of business, not just as employees but as customers and citizens as well.

“This means that LGBTQ people will be able to go about their daily lives without fear of discrimination in housing, in public spaces like restaurants and hotels, and also in employment,” Lamneck continued.

Image via Equality Virginia/Facebook

Lamneck explained that the Virginia Values Act goes farther than the recent Supreme Court decision, protecting LGBTQ people beyond the workplace. “The Virginia Values Act speaks to public accommodations protections, so that you cannot be discriminated against or denied service when you walk into a restaurant or shop or hotel on the basis of your orientation or identity,” they said. “Title VII does not speak to that, which is why there’s a lot more work to do on the federal level.”

While Lamneck is very pleased about the protections Virginians are ensured within the Commonwealth, they still consider it very important to focus on federal protections. “Once Virginians leave the Commonwealth and go to other states, depending on which state you’re in, those protections may not be in place,” they said.

The recent Supreme Court decision is important to ensure that LGBTQ people are protected against discrimination throughout the country, but it’s not the only action taking place at the federal level where LGBTQ rights are concerned. Lamneck pointed out that the Equality Act, a bill that would amend the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes throughout, passed the US House Of Representatives in 2019, and is currently under consideration by the US Senate.

“The passage of the Equality Act will ensure comprehensive protections for LGBTQ Americans,” Lamneck explained. And while there’s still hope within the LGBTQ community that it will be passed at some point, the recent Supreme Court decision does offer some much-needed relief. “This decision is so important,” they said, “especially for those individuals and their families living in states without these protections.”

Aurora Higgs, a 29 year old black transgender woman who is an LGBTQ scholar, activist, and public speaker, has worked with Lamneck and Equality Virginia on campaigns for LGBTQ equality in Virginia. Higgs is very happy to see the Virginia Values Act go into effect later this week, mentioning that previous laws intended to provide protections for LGBTQ Virginians, none of which passed, had all included disappointing limitations. “This law is so much more comprehensive and covers all of the people in the rural areas that are always going to be the most at risk,” Higgs said.

Despite living in a state that now has protections for LGBTQ people against employment discrimination, Higgs was still glad to hear about the Title VII Supreme Court decision. “It will ensure that the same protections that I enjoy in a state that already has those laws in place can be experienced anywhere in this country,” Higgs said. “Traveling for queer and trans people is incredibly daunting, because you never know what the climate of a community is until you’re in it.”

Higgs shared how she in particular has faced real concerns about discrimination in employment over the course of her life — concerns that she hopes will be diminished by the passage of the Virginia Values Act and the recent Supreme Court decision. “It’s really difficult to enforce discrimination policies in a job interview when there are so many factors that they could use as pretext to not hire you,” she said. “I worry about showing up for job interviews and being seen as a professional when I’m trans and black.”

Under the Supreme Court’s new Title VII decision, Higgs said, working conditions will improve for LGBTQ Americans in a variety of ways. “Employers will have to have a fire lit under them to ensure that insurance policies are adequate for trans people and that the workplace culture is adequate,” Higgs said. “As happy as I am I see it, [it’s] not so much a victory as getting one more hurdle out of the way to liberation, which is the final goal.”

Both Higgs and Lamneck drew parallels between LGBTQ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement that has recently swept across the nation. Lamneck explained how the human rights effort of the BLM Movement and the nationwide protests have affected the work of Equality Virginia, and how the fight for LGBTQ rights and Racial Equality are connected. They also illuminated how the discrimination and inequality that LGBTQ people are subjected to is compounded by their race. Race is the hidden, implied context of every conversation, every law and every decision. A black LGBTQ person’s struggle for equality is compounded by their blackness — which makes things harder still. “Even with the Title VII decision, black LGBTQ people are still experiencing disproportionate discrimination in their lives.” Lamneck said. “Our laws need to address systemic racism and inequality.”

Aurora Higgs. Photo via Facebook

To Higgs, it’s clear that the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQ rights movement are fundamentally aligned. “The BLM movement seeks to disrupt not just racism but white supremacy,” Higgs said. “White supremacy has historically been misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic. All of those thing are still present to this day, and they compound one another.”

However, both Higgs and Lamneck agree that the effects of discrimination are magnified by those who exist within multiple marginalized groups. “My experience as a white queer person and the discrimination that I may experience is going to look different than the discrimination of the black trans person next to me because she is experiencing racism, homophobia, and sexism all at the same time,” Lamneck explained.

“There is so much joy and hardship that comes with being black and trans and queer,” said Higgs. “But when you have different dimensions of diversity and marginalization, they compound on one another.”

Higgs believes that the LGBTQ civil rights movement working alongside the Black Lives Matter movement is an ideal way to enable both groups to better understand and support one another. “Although the [Black Lives Matter] movement highlights black lives, it’s really shedding a light on oppression, and I think we all relate to oppression,” she said. “The fastest way to empathy is shared experience.”

While Lamneck is feeling positive about the recent progress in LGBTQ civil rights, they recognize that there’s still a lot more to be done. “This moment reminds us that, yes, this is a victory for the LGBT movement, but also that the work is not done”, Lamneck said. “We need to work to address systemic racism, homophobia, and transphobia. The work for LGBTQ equality must be interwoven with the work to dismantle systemic racism.”

In the future, Lamneck hopes to not only carry on with Equality Virginia’s current mission of fighting for LGBTQ civil rights in the Commonwealth, but to expand that work to encompass other marginalized groups. “I think our work here as an organization needs to continue to restructure as an anti-racist organization,” they said.

For Higgs, the main focus of civil rights activism in the coming years needs to be to increase political representation by and for marginalized groups. “We don’t have hardly any representation in the federal government,” she said. “The most sustainable solution I can think of is having more queer and trans people of color in both appointments at the state level and as elected officials nationwide. I don’t think we can really hope for anything until we have representation in politics.”

For now, though, LGBTQ people in Virginia can breathe slightly easier, knowing that the Virginia Values Act and the recent Supreme Court decision give them more protections against discrimination than they’ve ever had before.

Top Photo via Equality Virginia/Facebook

Trump: ‘I Was Surprised’ With LGBTQ Ruling Since SCOTUS Is ‘Supposed to Be in Our Favor’

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Trump definitely views the Supreme Court ruling in favor of LGBTQ employment rights to be a loss for him and his agenda.

President Donald Trump says he was “surprised” with last week’s historic Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ workers’ civil rights, suggesting he was “supposed” to win.

Trump made clear he viewed the decision as a loss, given that, he says, the nation’s highest court is supposed to “favor” him.

“I was surprised, I was surprised,” Trump told CBN’s David Brody Monday, who asked about the case that was decided by Trump’s first SCOTUS appointee. “Some people felt that it was a decision that they weren’t as surprised as I was. Yeah, I was surprised.”

The court ruled that LGBTQ workers are protected under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Trump has become the most anti-LGBTQ president in modern history.

“Well, so far we’re not doing too well,” Trump continued. “Look: We’ve had a lot of losses, with a court that was supposed to be in our favor. This is just to show what it means.”

“We need – you know you’ll probably have a couple of more judges in the next four years. It could even be more than that, it could be three or four. If you have a radical left group of judges, religion, I think will be almost wiped out in America. If you look at it, pro-life will be absolutely wiped out. So – If you have that happening, pro-life is going to be out, it’s going to be gone.”

Watch:

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Head of Right Wing Group That Spent Millions on Gorsuch Mocked for Fury Over LGBTQ Rights Opinion

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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion protecting LGBTQ rights in the workplace, and the head of a right-wing group that fought to have him appointed is very very angry.

The head of a far right wing activist group is furious conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote Monday’s majority Supreme Court opinion that finds discriminating against LGBTQ workers is illegal.

Judicial Crisis Network, a “powerful dark money group pushing [the] court to right,” ran a $10 million campaign in 2017 to force Gorsuch onto the bench. He is President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee. The group also spent $1 million to block President Barack Obama from putting Merrick Garland on the bench.

In a series of tweets, Carrie Severino blasted Justice Gorsuch and the five others who sided with his opinion. She even claims they are merely trying to appeal to college students by finding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination.

Gorsuch, a textualist who replaced Justice Antonin Scalia on the bench, decided that as written, the actual words of the Civil Rights Act make clear that discriminating on the basis of sex is illegal.

Severino, who also happens to be married to Roger Severino, a far right wing religious activist who heads the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights under Trump, is furious.

President Trump and his administration oppose rights for LGBTQ workers and actively lobbied to have the Court rule discrimination is legal.

On social media many – including some conservatives – are mocking her.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

In Tennessee, A Fundamentalist Attorney Is Attempting To Undo Marriage Equality

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By sending letters demanding county clerks cease issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Tennessee attorney David Fowler is setting the stage for a lawsuit challenging marriage equality in Tennessee and beyond.

Last week, Tennessee attorney David Fowler sent a letter to all 95 of Tennessee’s county clerks demanding that they cease and desist issuing of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His stated reasoning is that the clerks are violating Tennessee’s constitution.

Tennessee is only one of several states in the US that have anti-marriage equality clauses written into their constitutions; Virginia, as it happens, is another. However, in light of the federal precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which made marriage equality the law of the land throughout the US, this should not matter. At the time of that decision, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery stated that Tennessee was required to abide by the Supreme Court decision regardless of the constitutional provision.

Nonetheless, Fowler is making the attempt to legally block same-sex marriages in Tennessee based on that exact constitutional provision. In an interview with the Washington Blade, Fowler rejected the statement of the Attorney General, stating, “It is indisputable that no court has declared the provision in Tennessee’s Constitution unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement.” He then cited an obscure 1984 opinion by a previous Attorney General stating that a law must be considered constitutional “until it is declared unconstitutional by a court of competent jurisdiction.”

Of course, Fowler’s point here is invalidated by the fact that both the Supreme Court and Tennessee District Court Judge Aleta Arthur Trauger have released separate injunctions forbidding the enforcement of Tennessee’s constitutional provision against same-sex marriage.

David Fowler in 2012. Photo by Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia

Fowler, a former Republican state Senator for Tennessee, is in this case serving as general counsel for the Family Action Council of Tennessee’s Constitutional Government Defense Fund. That group is associated with anti-LGBTQ hate group Focus On The Family.

The letter gives a deadline of Feb. 17 for the Tennessee state government to comply with its demands. And while Fowler has not directly stated that he and the group plan to sue Tennessee’s county clerks, he did state in his letter to all 95 clerks that the ministers he represents are considering “what steps should next be taken by them… to be assured that they are not affirming a form of civil marriage contrary to their beliefs.” So legal action may indeed be forthcoming.

This would not be the first time Fowler has attempted legal action to invalidate same-sex marriage in Tennessee. In 2018, he sued Tennessee’s Williamson County, arguing that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision had invalidated all of Tennessee’s state laws concerning religion. That case was dismissed.

Nonetheless, this has to be concerning for the LGBTQ communities of both Tennessee and Virginia, as well as those of any other state with anti-marriage equality clauses still written into their constitution. During the Trump administration, the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed significantly, and there is some concern that a case like Fowler’s, if taken to a high enough court, could reverse the precedent set by Obergefell v. Hodges and bring all those anti-marriage equality clauses back to life.

National Center For Lesbian Rights legal director Shannon Minter dismissed these concerns in an interview with the Washington Blade, saying, “This is a political stunt, not a serious legal threat… If Fowler actually followed through on filing a lawsuit, it would be thrown out. Marriage equality is the law of the land, including in Tennessee.”

For our sakes, let’s hope Minter is correct.

Top Photo by Sixflashphoto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia

The Amazon Trail: Damned If I Know

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In this month’s Amazon Trail, Lee Lynch expresses the feelings of powerlessness and frustration the current Supreme Court wranglings over LGBTQ civil rights have inspired in many of us.

Damned if I know whether or not all the rabble rousing of the last sixty years has done us a lick of good. I thought the issue of our rights was pretty much settled, but on October 8, 2019, Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that gay employees are already protected from job discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 federal civil rights law.

Some of the Justices seemed to believe that inclusion of sexual orientation in Title VII would have appeared preposterous to the court in 1964. Yet, Ms. Karlan argued, the Supreme Court has applied twenty-first century standards to a number of prior decisions. Discrimination against a person because of gender, she stated, already covers discrimination against sexual orientation. 

A woman who dates another woman and is fired for it, is the object of discrimination by the simple fact of her gender. A man will not be fired for dating a woman. The argument is plainspoken and ironclad. Some of the judges needed it repeated many times in many ways.

I’d been out four years by the time Title VII went into effect. The practice of favoring men over women was so blatantly wrong in my mind, I couldn’t believe a law was necessary. It certainly had nothing to do, in the late 1960s, with queer people keeping our jobs. You just shut up and stayed in your closet at work.

When I became a vocational counselor a few years later, my focus was on getting people employed, anywhere, anyhow. There was no question of finessing hires. Women became sewing machine operators at the clothing manufacturers of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Men delivered the raw materials, carted away the completed garments, and, for maybe ten cents an hour more, maintained the sewing machines. To have questioned the part I played in matching the unemployed to jobs by gender was to let my principles — and the law — come between desperate women, destitute men, and their survival. To invoke, or even be aware of, their newly stated rights, was irrelevant for most minimum wage workers.

Hearing Title VII invoked in defense of gay workers in 2019 was an eye opener. Ms. Karlan offered the Supremes, and Congress, an out. New, excruciatingly drawn-out legislation is not needed. If a man is fired because he loves another man, and a woman is not fired because she loves a man, then the original man was fired because he’s a man. Period.

These arguments come up, not because the fired individual is a bad employee, but because the employer has a prejudice, an historical, religious, or personal belief about gay people. In other words, because the employer has the power. Just like the women ruining their eyes and hands sewing, the men destroying their back and knees carting, the fired gay person is a victim of someone who has more power: in these cases, the employer.

The United States was not created to disenfranchise people, although we do a lousy job of respecting the rights of Native Americans and other people of color. When the worker is powerless, the employer can dictate who feeds their families and who doesn’t. Laws have always been bandied about, reinterpreted, applied rightly or wrongly, bent and ignored, depending on who is in power. 

And that’s where the activism of the last sixty years does make a lick of sense. We-the-people must stand against courts which would sustain the imbalance of power, and we must stand for the use of law to protect workers from prejudice, to protect veterans who live in the streets with their war nightmares, to protect women battered into submission by employers and partners, to protect queer people whose existence is an offense in the eyes of all-powerful beholders.

I no longer believe we can stop war, erase bigotry, take power and use it for only good. I no longer suit up with a wet bandana headband for tear gas, carry a rolled-up newspaper for protection, stay ever on the lookout for escape routes should the march, the rally, the sit-down, turn dangerous. I know now that the rabble-rousing must go on and on, if only to keep the lid on the inhumanity of humanity.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2019. Photos via Human Rights Campaign/Facebook

Trump DOJ Tells Supreme Court It Is Legal To Fire Transgender Workers

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The legal brief filed by Trump’s Department of Justice is the most overt step his administration has taken thus far to legalize anti-trans discrimination in the workplace.

Last Friday, the Trump administration informed the U.S. Supreme Court it is the opinion of the Dept. of Justice that it is legal under federal law for employers to fire transgender workers merely for being transgender.

The DOJ’s brief states Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, does not apply to transgender workers.

In reporting the development Buzzfeed calls it one of the Trump administration’s “most agressive steps yet to legalize anti-transgender discrimination.”

Friday’s move comes just days after the DOJ attempted to strong-arm the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into telling the Supreme Court discrimination on the basis of gender identity is not sex discrimination. To do so would have contradicted up to eight years of EEOC findings and rulings.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM