At Mazzoni Center, we provide a continuum of health, wellness, and legal services for clients who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ). In recent decades, legal recognition of the rights of LGBTQ people has changed dramatically. And this past year included one of those landmark decisions that will continue to bring about significant changes for the foreseeable future.

Just over a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that firing an employee because she, he, or they are gay or transgender (and, presumably, bisexual or lesbian) is sex discrimination that violates Title VII, the federal workplace anti-discrimination law. See Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 590 U.S. __, 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1737 (2020). The decision resolved three separate appeals by workers who were fired when their employers learned that they were gay or transgender. The court explained that “when an employer fires an employee for being homosexual or transgender, the employer 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, which is exactly what Title VII forbids.” The court also noted that other potential issues—gender-segregated spaces and dress codes, religious objections—were not before it, and would remain unresolved.