US Supreme Court to decide if employers can legally fire staff because they are gay or transgender

Laverne Cox highlighted case at Emmys

Laverne Cox was first openly transgender actor nominated for an Emmy (Getty)

The US’s highest court is set to rule whether an employer can fire a worker because they are gay or transgender, a vastly important test case that Laverne Cox used the Emmys’ Red Carpet to publicise.

The Supreme Court has returned for its next nine-month term, with justice Clarence Thomas absent due to an unspecified illness, and is set to rule on a flurry of cases that range from human rights to criminal justice.

For many, few will be more important than the trio of cases that are being heard on Tuesday and will determine whether an employer can fire someone for being gay or transgender.

Section – or title – seven of the Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, prohibits discrimination based on gender. Under the administration of Barack Obama, the law was interpreted to extend to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

That remains the official position of the equal employment opportunity commission (EEOC), the independent agency tasked with overseeing the application of federal laws in the workplace.

Yet, when Jeff Sessions became attorney general under Donald Trump, he wrote a memo saying the justice department did not agree with that interpretation. CNN said in August that the Trump administration had repeated its view that it did not believe federal employment law that bans discrimination based on sex also encompassed discrimination based on transgender status.

“On Tuesday, the court will hear three major LGBTQ civil rights cases that could decide how federal non-discrimination laws apply to LGBTQ people. In each case, a worker was fired – not because of their performance or work ethic, but because they are part of the LGBTQ community,” wrote Robin Maril, associate legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organisation.

“No one deserves to be denied a job or fired simply because of who they are or whom they love. Period.”

The legal battle was highlighted recently by Laverne Cox, star of shows such as Orange Is the New Black, and the first openly transgender performer to be be nominated for a an Emmy.

“When I got my Emmy nomination this year, my third one, I was like this is weird. I thought, there has to be a bigger reason and I thought, OK, maybe it’s about this case and maybe its about raising awareness so that everyone knows our lives are in danger,” she said.

“And a lot of people aren’t talking about this case and it has implications for the LGBTQ community, but it has implications for women and anyone who doesn’t conform to someone else’s idea of like how you should be a man or a woman or both or neither.”

The cases the court will hear involve Aimee Stephens who says she was fired from her job at a Michigan funeral home before returning to work after undergoing gender transition, Gerald Bostock who said he was fired from his job as a social worker in Georgia because he joined a gay softball league, and New York skydiver Donald Zarda, who was fired after he told a female client, who wondered about being strapped so tightly to him during a tandem jump, not to worry because he was “100 per cent gay”.