#and made it legal for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ customers

[theriverdalereviewer]

HOW BAD DO THINGS NEED TO GET IN THIS COUNTRY FOR THINGS TO CHANGE

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

On Thursday, Justice Neil Gorsuch released a 26-page opinion venting outrage about a legal dispute that does not exist, involving websites that do not exist. Yet this case, built on imaginary grounds, will have very real consequences for LGBTQ consumers, and for anti-discrimination laws more broadly. All of the Court’s Republican appointees joined Gorsuch’s opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis.

That said, the fake dispute that Gorsuch imagines in his 303 Creative opinion involves a reasonably narrow legal question.

In the past, Christian right advocates have sought sweeping exemptions from state and federal civil rights laws, rooted in their expansive notion of “religious liberty.” Often, these lawsuits claimed that the Constitution’s safeguards for people of faith allow anyone who objects to LGBTQ people on religious grounds to defy any law prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

303 Creative involves a much narrower dispute. The case centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who wishes to expand her business into designing wedding websites — something she has never done before. She says she’s reluctant to do so, however, because she fears that if she designs such a website for an opposite-sex couple, Colorado’s anti-discrimination law will compel her to also design wedding websites for same-sex couples. And Smith objects to same-sex marriages.

As Gorsuch summarizes her claim, Smith “worries that, if she [starts designing wedding websites,] Colorado will force her to express views with which she disagrees.”

This is not a religious liberty claim, it is a free speech claim, rooted in well-established law, which says that the First Amendment forbids the government from compelling people to say something that they would rather not say. In ruling in Smith’s favor, the Court does not say that any religious conservative can defy any anti-discrimination law. It simply holds that someone like Smith, who publishes words for a living, may refuse to say something they don’t want to say.

The full implications of Gorsuch’s opinion are not entirely clear. In the past, religious conservatives have argued that artists and artisans of all kinds — including bakers, photographers, and floral arrangement designers — should also be allowed to discriminate under the First Amendment, because all artistic work necessarily entails some kind of expression. Gorsuch punts on this question, writing that “hypotheticals about photographers, stationers, and others, asking if they too provide expressive services covered by the First Amendment,” are not present in the 303 Creative case.

And it is worth emphasizing that the particular kind of work that Smith does, writing words on a publicly available website, fits more snugly within the First Amendment than a similar claim brought by a wedding cake designer or a florist.

Before this case was argued, I wrote that if Lorie Smith had been approached by a same-sex couple and refused to design a wedding website for them, and if she had then been sued for refusing to do so, then she would have a very strong First Amendment defense against such a suit. As the Supreme Court said in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (2006), “freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.” And that includes the right of a web designer to refuse to write words on a website that they do not wish to write.

But none of these events have actually happened. And, for that reason, the Supreme Court should have dismissed the case.

THIS CASE SHOULD HAVE NEVER MADE IT THIS FAR

The frustrating thing about this case is that it involves an entirely fabricated legal dispute. Again, Lorie Smith has never actually made a wedding website for a paying customer. Nor has Colorado ever attempted to enforce its civil rights law against Ms. Smith. Indeed, in its brief to the Supreme Court, Colorado expressed doubt that its anti-discrimination law would even apply to Smith.

Yet Gorsuch’s majority opinion repeatedly paints Smith as a hapless victim, oppressed by wicked state officials who insist that she must proclaim a dogma that she denies. As he writes in the very first paragraph of his opinion, “Colorado does not just seek to ensure the sale of goods or services on equal terms. It seeks to use its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe.”

This claim is simply untrue. Colorado has not brought any enforcement action against Smith, or taken any other step to compel her to say anything at all — or to design any website that she does not want to design. Nor has anyone ever sued Smith for allegedly violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

Indeed, in one particularly amusing turn, Smith alleged during an early stage of this litigation that she was approached by a man about doing some design work for his wedding to another man. Yet, after the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant contacted this man, she learned that he never reached out to Smith — and that he was married to a woman.

These facts matter because federal courts, including the Supreme Court, do not have jurisdiction to decide hypothetical cases. As a unanimous Supreme Court held in Texas v. United States (1998), “a claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’” So the Court should have told Smith to go away and come back when she had a real dispute with the state of Colorado.

303 Creative, moreover, is the second time Gorsuch has taken such liberties with the truth in order to rule in favor of a religious conservative. Almost exactly one year ago, Gorsuch handed down the Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), a case about a public school football coach who, after games, would walk to the center of the 50-yard line and ostentatiously kneel down and pray before students and spectators — often while surrounded by players, community members, and even members of the press.

Indeed, in her dissent in Bremerton, Justice Sonia Sotomayor included a photo of Coach Kennedy holding such a prayer session, as a throng of uniformed football players and other individuals kneel with him, and as people holding video cameras look on.

And yet, Gorsuch’s opinion in Bremerton claimed that Kennedy merely wanted to offer a “short, private, personal prayer,” and then Gorsuch ruled in favor of Kennedy based on this fabricated version of Kennedy’s actual conduct.

Needless to say, this is aberrant behavior by a Supreme Court Justice — and really by six Supreme Court justices, since all of the Court’s Republican appointees joined Gorsuch’s decisions in 303 Creative and Kennedy.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“Alice in Wonderland” at the Supreme Court :: December 6, 2022

Robert B. Hubbell

         On Monday, the Supreme Court held a bizarre hearing on a case the Court should have refused to hear. The reactionary majority bent over backward to accept review of 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case that was hand-crafted by religious advocacy groups to expand the grounds for discriminating against LGBTQ people. Based on comments by the reactionary justices during oral argument, the majority will rule that business owners can discriminate against LGBTQ people if their business offers services that involve “speech” of any kind. 303 Creative v. Elenis is merely the latest step in the Court’s effort to advance the religious agenda of the Christian evangelical base that successfully appointed Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

         The oral arguments regarding 303 Creative devolved into offensive and unhinged hypothetical questions from Justice Alito because the case does not present an actual “case or controversy”—as required by the Constitution. In general, the jurisdiction of federal courts is limited to real disputes in which the plaintiff can show actual injury. (That is a gross oversimplification of a complicated judicial doctrine, but stick with me for a moment!)

         The 303 Creative “controversy” was manufactured by a religious advocacy organization (ADF). The plaintiff is a web design company that might—in the future—offer such services for weddings. But the plaintiff does not yet offer that service, may never do so, and (therefore) has not yet been asked to provide those services to a same-sex couple. Nonetheless, the plaintiff asks the Court for an advisory ruling about its obligations under a Colorado statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

         The metaphysical nature of the alleged “case or controversy” in 303 Creative is explained by Mark Joseph Stern’s article in Slate, The Easy-to-Miss Twist That Makes the Supreme Court’s New Gay Rights Case So Strange. Per Stern,

No same-sex couple has ever asked Smith to make them a wedding website; in fact, she has never made a wedding website for anyone. Her work to date focuses on local politicians, dog breeders, contractors, and houses of worship—not celebrations of life events.

Smith one day might be asked to make a same-sex couple’s website, ADF asserted. And when that day comes, she wants the right to say no.

There is no live controversy, and therefore no facts against which the justices could test their legal theories. It would be supremely helpful to know, for instance, how Smith would have responded to a request from a same-sex couple.

         Critically, the Colorado statute at issue would permit the plaintiff to refuse to make a custom website for same-sex couples, but if the business offers “off the shelf” website designs for sale to the public, Colorado requires those “templates” to be made available to everyone. But 303 Creative claims it can refuse to sell a standardized product to same-sex couples. As explained by Ian Millhiser in Vox,

The main thing that Colorado’s law requires, according to the state, is that once a web designer agrees to sell a particular web design to the public, it must provide the same service to people of all sexual orientations.

         The “Alice-in-Wonderland” quality of the alleged “dispute” presented to the Court resulted in wildly speculative hypotheticals as the justices attempted to grapple with a case that presented no actual dispute. Particularly offensive was Justice Alito, who asked questions about a “Black Santa Claus” being photographed “with a child who’s dressed up in a Ku Klux Klan outfit.” After Alito posed his offensive hypothetical, he then said the following (apparently as a sarcastic “joke”):

You do see a lot of Black children in Ku Klux Klan outfits, right? All the time!

         The bizarre hearing should cause the justices to conclude they erred in granting review of the case and dismiss the appeal. (Hold onto your keyboards, my attorney friends! No one knows what “Certiorari was improvidently granted” means!) But the conservative majority will not do so; instead, it will chip away at the right of LGBTQ people to be treated like “people”—human beings who possess the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities as all other Americans.

         The rightward lurch of the Court coincides with efforts of many state legislatures to legitimize discrimination against LGBTQ people by prohibiting discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in educational settings. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law has inspired a variety of similar bills in a dozen states. Such bills serve as a wedge for legitimizing future discrimination against other groups. They are also culture war “cluster bombs” designed to conceal the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party.

         Florida’s attack on LGBTQ people is a lesson not lost on Vladimir Putin, who today imposed his own supercharged “Don’t Say Gay” law. See Cathy Young in The Bulwark, Russia to Gays: Shut Up and Disappear. (The law prohibits all public speech or actions deemed to encourage “distorted notions of the social equivalency of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations.”)

         Of course, Putin is using discrimination against LGBTQ people to distract attention from Russia’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine. And although Putin’s law is more comprehensive than Florida’s, his modus operandi is identical to that of Ron DeSantis: Attack a vulnerable minority to intimidate others into submissive obedience. Such is the way of all dictators—and religious reactionaries across the ages.

         Sadly, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has decided to aid and abet the efforts of religious reactionaries in America to impose their parochial views on the strong majority of Americans who do not share those views. Today in the Supreme Court, the target of that reactionary minority was the LGBTQ community. We must resist attacks on the rights and dignity of LGBTQ people with all our might—just as we must also defend the full personhood and citizenship of women, ethnic and racial minorities, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups subject to discrimination by MAGA extremists.

[alilozano]

The Creative LLC v. Elenis Supreme Court Decision: A Threat to LGBTQ Rights

Introduction

In recent years, the United States has made significant strides in recognizing and protecting the rights of LGBTQ individuals. However, the Supreme Court decision in Creative LLC v. Elenis has raised serious concerns about the potential erosion of these hard-fought rights. The Creative LLC v. Elenis decision is dangerous for LGBTQ rights and holds broader implications.

Narrowing the Definition of Discrimination

One of the primary concerns surrounding the Creative LLC v. Elenis decision is the potential narrowing of the legal definition of discrimination. The case centered on a clash between the rights of LGBTQ individuals and claims of religious freedom. The decision, while siding with religious objections in this particular instance, has the potential to set a dangerous precedent by allowing religious beliefs to be used as a justification for discrimination against LGBTQ individuals.

By ruling in favor of Creative LLC, the Supreme Court signaled that religious beliefs can override anti-discrimination protections. This not only threatens LGBTQ rights but also raises questions about the broader implications for civil rights in the United States. It sets the stage for future cases where religious exemptions might be invoked to discriminate against marginalized groups, potentially undermining the progress made in protecting these communities.

Impact on Public Accommodations

The Creative LLC v. Elenis decision primarily concerned public accommodations, particularly in the context of wedding services. However, the implications extend beyond weddings. It opens the door for businesses to claim a religious exemption from providing services to LGBTQ individuals, not only in the wedding industry but across various sectors. This could lead to a scenario where LGBTQ individuals face (additional) discrimination when seeking housing, healthcare, or other essential services, based on a business owner's religious objections.

The decision thus jeopardizes the fundamental principle that businesses open to the public must serve all customers equally, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such a shift undermines the inclusivity and nondiscrimination principles that have been central to the fight for LGBTQ rights.

Encouraging Discrimination

The Creative LLC v. Elenis decision may embolden those who seek to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals. By allowing religious beliefs to serve as a potential justification for discrimination, it sends a message that certain groups can be singled out and denied services simply because of who they are or whom they love. This not only harms LGBTQ individuals but also fosters an environment where intolerance and discrimination can thrive.

Uncertainty in Legal Protections

The decision adds to the uncertainty surrounding the legal protections afforded to LGBTQ individuals. While progress has been made at the federal and state levels to establish anti-discrimination laws, this ruling muddles the waters by introducing the possibility of religious exemptions. LGBTQ individuals may now find themselves in a precarious position, unsure of whether they can access essential services without facing discrimination.

Conclusion

The Creative LLC v. Elenis Supreme Court decision is widely perceived as a dangerous development for LGBTQ rights in the United States. By allowing religious objections to potentially override anti-discrimination protections, the decision not only narrows the definition of discrimination but also sets a concerning precedent for future cases. It has the potential to impact public accommodations and encourage discrimination, creating uncertainty for LGBTQ individuals who may face discrimination in various aspects of their lives. Protecting LGBTQ rights and ensuring equal treatment under the law remains a crucial challenge, and this decision highlights the ongoing struggle for equality and inclusivity.

[lenbryant]

LONG POST-Robin Abcarian writes about the religious fan fiction that won the Supreme Court case for the Alliance Defending Mustache Man. (Because lying is no longer a sin, it doesn't count that the facts were just made up.)

(LATimes) Column: How the ripple effect of the Supreme Court’s 303 Creative decision could swamp civil rights

By Robin Abcarian, Columnist July 12, 2023

Now that the legal door has been opened to anti-LGBTQ+ bigots or racists, there’s just no telling how far the Supreme Court’s license to discriminate will go.

Last month, the court’s conservative majority ruled that a website designer in Colorado would not violate the state’s antidiscrimination law if she refused to create wedding websites for gay couples.

Mind you, Lorie Smith, the proprietor of 303 Creative, was not actually creating wedding websites at that point, but she wanted to know in advance whether it would be OK to turn away gay people because she abhors same-sex marriage.

Smith is represented by the right-wing Christian legal juggernaut Alliance Defending Freedom, which is hellbent on reversing LGBTQ+ rights.

To Smith, her lawyers attested, same-sex marriage “is not only problematic because it violates God’s will, but also because it harms society and children because marriage between one man and one woman is a fundamental building block of society and the ideal arrangement for the rearing of children.”

In telling their client’s story, the ADF laid it on thick: “Lorie believes that our culture’s movement away from God’s design for marriage is particularly pronounced in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which held that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

I thought it was bizarre to be able to bring a lawsuit with imaginary facts, but as Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky explained to me, federal law allows for such a thing, especially if the situation seems likely to arise eventually.

“No one should have to eat a mushroom in order to know if it’s poisonous or not,” Chemerinsky said. “She says, ‘I am not going to set up this business if I have to serve same-sex couples, so let me know in advance.’ ” Fair enough.

As for reports that Smith made up the gay couple she claimed had contacted her for wedding website services (even though she hadn’t launched that business yet, hmmmm), Chemerinsky said it no longer matters whether they existed or not.

“Once the court decides,” he said, “you can’t challenge the case.”

It will come as no surprise that the Alliance Defending Freedom also represented the Colorado baker who won a limited Supreme Court victory in 2018 after he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Later — and I tell you this to demonstrate that fears about the repercussions of Supreme Court-sanctioned discrimination are not far-fetched — the same baker, Jack Phillips, found himself back in court after refusing to make a cake celebrating a gender transition.

What he can and can’t refuse to do remains contentious: The state appeals court found that Phillips violated Colorado’s antidiscrimination law.

How so? Because the customer, Autumn Scardina, had simply ordered a pink cake with blue frosting. That design, said the court, had no message or imagery that could be construed as violating the baker’s rights.

Of course, the ADF has appealed the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court.

But back to the 303 Creative decision.

In this case, the Supreme Court said, essentially, “Why, yes, of course, Ms. Smith, if same-sex marriage goes against your beliefs, then by all means you may refuse service.” The court’s opinion did not turn on the fact that her beliefs arise from her religion (although they do), but that her freedom of expression — her 1st Amendment rights — would be violated if Colorado forced her to create websites for same-sex couples, or fined her for not doing so.

Making a wedding website may indeed involve the maker’s creative expression. But what else falls into that category?

“In the wedding context,” said Chemerinsky, “it could be designing a cake, floral arrangements, stationery. In other contexts, it could be a cabinet maker — all of it is open.”

There really is no stopping point.

“Doubtless, determining what qualifies as expressive activity protected by the First Amendment can sometimes raise difficult questions,” opined Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who may not be able to define expressive activity, but will undoubtedly know it when he sees it.

The ACLU, staunch defender of the 1st Amendment, said the court got it all wrong. The case was not about free expression but about

discrimination.

“Properly framed,” ACLU attorneys wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief, “the question presented is whether an artist who has chosen to open a business to the public at large, can constitutionally be prohibited … from discriminating against customers on the basis of a protected characteristic.” In Colorado’s antidiscrimination law, those characteristics include race, color, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, among others.

It is too soon to see exactly what ripple effects this unfortunate decision will have. But you can be sure it will be construed in many corners as a license to discriminate based purely on personal beliefs.

As Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser put it after the decision came down, “A business may think that it can refuse to serve interracial couples because it believes interracial marriage is wrong. A payroll company may … refuse service to women-owned businesses because the business owner believes women should not work outside the home. A bookseller of religious texts may believe it can refuse to sell books to a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints because he doesn’t believe it to be a legitimate religion.”

Thanks to the Supreme Court, the possibilities for discriminating against those who have traditionally been protected by civil rights laws are endless.

Heckuva job, justices.

@robinkabcarian

[ohioprelawland]

Supreme Court Rules Victory for a Christian Graphic Designer Refusing to Provide Service to a LGBTQ Couple

By Zeyu Su, The Ohio State Class of 2025

July 10, 2023

Recently, on June 30, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian graphic designer located in Colorado, who refused to provide service to a same-sex couple. Lorie Smith, who owns and runs a business called 303 Creative, looked to expand her business into the area of designing webpages for weddings, and that caught the same-sex couple’s attention. Hoping to celebrate their same-sex weeding, the couple reached out to Lorie Smith, the Christian graphic designer based in Colorado, requesting her to create and design an online website to celebrate their weeding. However, Lorie denied their request, claiming she did not want to create and design a website for them out of her religious objections.

The court ruled a 6-3 decision for the 303 Creative LLC V. Elenis case, which resulted in a victory for Lorie Smith and her business. The court ruled that forcing Lorie to create webpages that she did not want to would be a violation of her free speech rights and her First Amendment rights. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was one of the Justices that made the decision in this case along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, wrote that “All manner of speech – from ‘pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,’ to ‘oral utterance and the printed word’ – qualify for the First Amendment’s protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet” (de Vogue & Cole, 2023). It is worth mentioning that in the state of Colorado, there is a law that bars any form of discrimination based on gender, race, sexual orientation, or other personal characteristics.

This decision means that artists, photographers, videographers, writers, or other types of artistic creative designers can refuse to offer “expressive services” if those services violate and counter their own beliefs. However, that does not mean that all types of businesses have the rights to refuse services for members of the LGBTQ community. Businesses that do not engage in speech and expression, such as restaurants and hotels, are still obligated to serve members of the LGBTQ community, since those businesses provide services that are not under and covered by the First Amendment.

The decision is a huge blow to the LGBTQ community, as it serves as a big pushback for the progress that was made by the LGBTQ community in the past years, as the changes that they fought to bring true social equality to the LGBTQ community could be reverted. For example, in 2015, same-sex marriage was made legal nationwide by the Supreme Court, which was one of many vital changes that expanded the rights of the LGBTQ community. Many are worried that it could be the start of a wave of things to come that are negative and harmful to the LGBTQ community, such as allowing companies and businesses to discriminate members of the LGBTQ community by not offering services to them. President Biden claimed the ruling decision was “disappointing” in his recent statements, and it “weakens long-standing laws that protect all Americans against discrimination in public accommodations – including people of color, people with disabilities, people of faith, and women” (Antelman, 2023). Justice Sonia Sotomayor also warned that this court decision could allow a range of businesses to enforce discrimination targeted at the LGBTQ community, called it a sad day for American Constitutional Law and members of the LGBTQ community.

______________________________________________________________

Antelman, D. (2023, June 30). Supreme Court rules for business owner who denied services to LGBTQ customers. Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News. https://whdh.com/news/supreme-court-rules-for-business-owner-who-denied-services-to-lgbtq-customers/

Vogue, A. de, & Cole, D. (2023, July 1). Supreme Court limits LGBTQ protections with ruling in favor of Christian web designer | CNN politics. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/politics/supreme-court-303-creative-lgbtq-rights-colorado/index.html

[sentinelleblr]

"Justice Neil Gorsuch released a 26-page opinion venting outrage about a legal dispute that does not exist, involving websites that do not exist. Yet this case, built on imaginary grounds, will have very real consequences for LGBTQ consumers, and for anti-discrimination laws more broadly."

"The case centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who wishes to expand her business into designing wedding websites — something she has never done before. She says she’s reluctant to do so, however, because she fears that if she designs such a website for an opposite-sex couple, Colorado’s anti-discrimination law will compel her to also design wedding websites for same-sex couples. And Smith objects to same-sex marriages."

"The frustrating thing about this case is that it involves an entirely fabricated legal dispute. Again, Lorie Smith has never actually made a wedding website for a paying customer. Nor has Colorado ever attempted to enforce its civil rights law against Ms. Smith. Indeed, in its brief to the Supreme Court, Colorado expressed doubt that its anti-discrimination law would even apply to Smith."

[trans-advice]

APRIL 22, 2019 7:18 AM

AMAG Pharmaceuticals

Supreme Court to rule on workplace bias against gay and transgender employees

The Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for a landmark civil rights decision next year on whether gay, lesbian and transgender employees are protected nationwide from being fired or not hired under the federal law that bars sex discrimination in the workplace.

After weeks of internal debate, the high court agreed to confront the issue amid a growing consensus in much of the nation that such discrimination is unjustified and should be illegal.

The justices voted to hear three cases that came to conflicting results. In two cases — involving a gay man in New York and a transgender woman in Michigan — lower courts ruled in favor of the employees and found such bias violated the ban on discrimination “because of sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the third case, a gay man in Georgia had his discrimination suit tossed out. In doing so, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, quoted a 40-year-old precedent to hold that “discharge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII,” the section of the federal law that covers employment.

The cases, to be heard in the fall, pose the most far-reaching civil rights dispute for the court since its ruling four years ago upholding same-sex marriages nationwide.

Then, by a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that the Constitution’s protection for individual liberty and equal treatment extended to same-sex couples and gave them an equal right to marry nationwide.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, but fellow Republican-appointee Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined the court’s liberals to uphold gay marriage.

After Scalia’s death and Kennedy’s retirement, the court’s conservative majority has been joined by President Trump’s two appointees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

The four liberal justices who voted in favor of same-sex marriage will almost surely vote to outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender identity. But to prevail, they will need at least one of the court’s conservatives.

California and 20 other states expressly prohibit discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people in the workplace. But Congress has not adopted a similar provision in federal law.

Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced the Equality Act to extend such protections under federal law. That measure is expected to pass in the Democratic-controlled House but languish in the Republican-led Senate.

The Supreme Court’s ruling will probably be handed down next spring as the presidential election campaign is in full swing.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers said most Americans wrongly assumed that discrimination against LGBTQ people in the workplace is already illegal. In the New York case, Don Zarda, a skydiving instructor, was fired after he casually told a customer he was gay. Aimee Stephens, who was born biologically male, was fired shortly after she informed the Michigan funeral home where she worked that she was transitioning to female.

“Most of America would be shocked if the Supreme Court said it was legal to fire Aimee because she is transgender or Don because he is gay,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project. “Such a ruling would be disastrous, relegating LGBTQ people around the country to a second-class citizen status. The LGBTQ community has fought too long and too hard to go back now, and we are counting on the justices not to reverse that hard-won progress.”

Ironically, the legal argument to ban such workplace discrimination relies heavily on a principle and a court precedent set by Scalia, who said judges should interpret laws based on their actual wording, not on the intent of the lawmakers at the time.

The Civil Rights Act made it illegal for employers to discriminate against individuals because of their race, sex, religion or national origin. In 1998, Scalia spoke for the court in a ruling that allowed a male worker on an oil drilling platform to sue for sexual harassment by other male workers.

“Male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not the principal evil Congress was concerned with,” Scalia wrote in Oncale vs. Sundowner Offshore Services. “But statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.”

Several appellate courts have cited that precedent in ruling that discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender identity is illegal sex discrimination under Title VII. In doing so, those judges agreed that Congress in 1964 did not intend to protect gay, lesbian or transgender people. Nonetheless, they said the words of the law make clear that the employees who were fired were victims of discrimination because of sex.

The Trump administration is likely to join on the side of the employers. In October, U.S. Solicitor Gen. Noel Francisco filed a brief in support of the funeral home that fired Stephens, the transgender woman. He described the “principal owner, Thomas Rost, as a Christian who sincerely believes that the Bible teaches that a person is an immutable God-given gift … and that he would be violating God’s commands if he were permit one of the funeral home’s funeral directors to deny their sex while acting as a representative of the organization.”

The Trump administration has adopted a similar legal view in support of the religious liberty rights of some businesses to refuse to participate in same-sex weddings.

Francisco said that when the 1964 act was adopted, the word “sex” meant biological sex. It did not apply to gender identity or to sexual orientation, he said.

He noted that until 2017, the federal appeals courts had steadily ruled that Title VII did not extend to discrimination based on sexual orientation. But not long after, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York adopted a new and broader view of the law.

“Legal doctrine evolves,” the 2nd Circuit Court ruled last year, siding with Zarda, the skydiving instructor. The judges noted that in 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the federal law, “held for the first time that sexual orientation is inherently a sex‐based consideration.”

The two cases on sexual orientation — Altitude Express vs. Zarda and Bostock vs. Clayton County — will be joined together and decided as one.

The case of the transgender employee — R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes vs. EEOC — will be decided separately.

[lindentreeisle]

The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, for the layman

Hey, y’all.  I know there’s a lot of alerts going out now about this decision being released, and as is usual in these situations, there’s going to be a LOT of bad, panicked reporting by people who haven’t read the decision or don’t understand it.  I was just reading it and explaining it to my brother, so I thought I’d put something up here.

Here’s the short version:

They ruled for the baker

But it was very narrow, so don’t freak out

The Commission that heard the discrimination complaint and ruled against the baker was unfair, so he gets a new hearing

The Court did not give the ok to discrimination

More below the cut if you want to see detailed explanations/analysis.

First, the opinion is here, if you want to give it a read yourself.  Second, DON’T PANIC.  Yes, the baker won.  But he won on a very narrow grounds, and not the ones his bigoted supporters leaned heavily on.  This is not an all-out victory for the forces of discrimination.  And while a total defeat of the baker would have been better, in the current Supreme Court “it could have been worse” is not the worst result we could have had.

There’s going to be a lot of legal analysis (check out Scotusblog for a good sampling of analysis by lawyers) but my quick and dirty take is that the Supreme Court punted.  I think the Court desperately wanted to avoid making a Big Decision on whether the state has a right to bar discrimination when it’s based on religious belief.  They may well have not had a clear majority either way.  And Justice Kennedy, who wrote the opinion for the majority, is a well-known swing vote.  So what they were able to get 7 of 9 to sign on to is a victory for the baker that avoids making any declarations that are generally applicable: a very case-specific decision that will be hard for anti-gay bigots to use as a weapon.

The ruling was essentially that the baker had a right to “neutral and  respectful consideration of  his claims” when he was brought before the Colorado Commission on Civil Rights and pled religious belief as a reason for his discriminatory practices.  (This is, in my view, an extremely pissant argument.)  The opinion talks about how the commissioners made comments at the public hearing that were negative towards the baker, and therefore indicated that they were biased against his religious beliefs.  Justice Kennedy adopts a scandalized tone when he says that the commissioners actually compared the baker’s practices to defenses of slavery and the holocaust!!!  But what the commissioner actually said was that religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, including things like slavery and the holocaust.  Which is...you know...a fact.  I guess it’s discrimination against religion to state facts that make religion look bad?

The majority also compares the Commission’s handling of this complaint to several other complaints where they upheld the rights of bakers to refuse to make cakes with anti-gay messages, and says that this is an indicator that the Commission was biased against religion.  Of course this is a completely false equivalence; the bakery case is not about whether or not a business has to produce a first amendment expression they disagree with, it’s about whether a business can disregard public accommodation laws by claiming he doesn’t believe in them.  To be plainer, saying these two situations are identical is like saying a business refusing to sell bumper stickers to black people is the same as a business refusing to print “fuck n**s” bumper stickers.  You don’t have to be a lawyer to see those two things are not the same.

If the punting didn’t tell you already, you can see how deeply divisive this case was based on the fact that there are THREE concurrent opinions and one dissent.  he dissent is by Ginsburg and Sotomayor, who unsurprisingly view this as a clear-cut case of discrimination that the Commission correctly identified as such.  The concurrences are interesting only in that they tell you where particular justices stand and therefore what they are likely to do in future cases; concurrences do not make new law and can be cited only as non-binding statements, which we call “dicta.”

Kagan wrote a concurrence in which Breyer joined, solely to point out the false equivalence of comparing the baker who wouldn’t serve gay grooms-to-be to the bakers refusing to make cakes with anti-gay messages, and state that they felt the difference in results was based on a neutral reading of the discrimination law.  Gorsuch wrote a concurrence in which Alito joined, leaning heavily on the false equivalence and how it proves religious discrimination.  He says that because the Commission was so mean to the baker, they need to just give him the same ruling that it gave the bakers who refused to make cakes with bigoted messages.  Thomas wrote a concurrence in which Gorsuch joined, saying that he would have found that baking a custom cake is a creative endeavor entitled to first amendment protection.  (This was the biggest argument of the bigoted set, not surprising that Thomas liked it.)

No surprises on this one.  Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas firmly on the religious nutjob side; Ginsburg and Sotomayor on the progressive side; Kagan, Breyer, Kennedy, and Roberts hugging the fence.  Roberts didn’t sign on to either of the conservative concurrences, which is strange- especially given his vehement dissent from the Obergefell decision, which found that marriage was a fundamental right for gay as well as straight couples.

What’s interesting, and what I’m sure has progressive lawyers salivating, are the meaty bones tossed to the anti-discrimination advocates by the majority opinion.  Despite the concurrences, six justices signed on to the majority, which is therefore not a plurality and will be cited as the law of the case.  So when future lawyers are writing their briefs and type “Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission said...” they can follow it with:

“The Court’s precedents make clear that the baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, might have his right to the free exercise of religion limited by generally applicable laws.”

“Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity  and  worth.  For that reason the laws and the  Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts”

“Nevertheless, while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.”

“Yet if that exception were not confined, then a long list of persons who provide goods and  services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in  a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.”

“Petitioners conceded, moreover, that if a baker refused to sell any goods or any cakes for gay  weddings, that would be a different matter and the State would have a strong case under this  Court’s precedents that this would be a denial of goods and services that went beyond any  protected rights of a baker who offers goods and services to the general public and is subject  to a neutrally applied and generally applicable public accommodations law.”

“And any decision in favor of the baker would have to be sufficiently constrained, lest all  purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons in  effect be allowed to put up signs saying “no goods or services will be sold if  they  will  be  used for gay marriages,” something that would impose a serious stigma on gay persons.”

So while delivering a victory for an individual bigot, the majority opinion of the Court made it ABUNDANTLY clear that the state absolutely has the right to regulate businesses to protect gay people from discrimination, and that an absolute refusal to serve gay people based on religious belief would be illegal.  I consider this important: not only is it a slap in the face for anti-gay bigots, the simple fact is that whenever you make a legal argument, even something that should be simple and obvious, you need to be able to cite the law or precedent to support what you’re saying.  The quotes above are a pile of ammo for any lawyers briefing or arguing the issue of LGBTQ discrimination.

[easyfoodnetwork]

For Trans People in the Service Industry, Discrimination Is an Unfortunate Reality of the Job

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “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,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf https://ift.tt/3dR4WkV

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “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,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf via Blogger https://ift.tt/3dOiTjb

[confrontingbabble-on]

How to avoid falling prey to a religious financial scam...

Don’t give any religious groups money...! Many divert donations for disaster relief...to religious expansion...or their own personal benefit...

See...Secular Charities and Aid groups...

American Civil Liberties Union

The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of constitutional protections and guarantees relating to First Amendment rights, including the freedom to practice religion or choose not to, equal protection, due process, and right to privacy.

Amnesty International

AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

and other international human rights standards. In pursuit of this vision, AI’s mission is to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights.

DefCon: Campaign to Defend the Constitution

DefCon is an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right. It includes a blog on religious freedom issues, action alerts, and in-depth articles on scientific, religious, and legal issues of the day.

Doctors without Borders

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in nearly 70 countries.

DonorsChoose.org

a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack.

EWB Canada

Engineers Without Borders Canada focuses on creating systemic and lasting change to battle global poverty. Currently, their geographic focus is on sub-Saharan African countries, namely Malawi, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Zambia and Liberia. EWB invests in people - smart systems changers, and they incubate the systemic innovations that these leaders create to accelerate rural African development. It’s not about projects. It’s not about technology. It’s about people working with people to create lasting, scalable change that unlocks human potential.

EWB-USA.org

Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) helps to provide clean water, electricity, sanitation systems, and education. The concept is very similar to Doctors Without Borders.

Foundation Beyond Belief

Foundation Beyond Belief's (FBB) mission is "To demonstrate humanism at its best by supporting efforts to improve this world and this life, and to challenge humanists to embody the highest principles of humanism, including mutual care and responsibility."

Goodwill Industries

Unlike their counterpart, the

Salvation Army

which is an evangelical Christian "charity" that is also politically and socially-active promoting religion, Goodwill is a secular organization that runs thrift stores coast-to-coast. From their page: "Our network of 165 independent, community-based Goodwills in the United States and Canada offers customized job training, employment placement and other services to people who have disabilities, lack education or job experience, or face employment challenges."

Kiva.org

lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world.

Oxfam International

Oxfam International is a confederation of 12 organizations working together with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty, suffering and injustice. The Oxfams operate in over 100 countries worldwide working with local partners to alleviate poverty and injustice.

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the diversity of life on Earth. An environmental group that protects natural habitats and the wildlife within them. Focuses on "science-based" initiatives.

Population Connection

Population Connection is the national grassroots population organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth's resources. Works against faith-based policies that are supported by the Religious Right.

Rotary/Rotary International

Secular organisation, the world's first service club organisation. Clubs are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds. Motto is "service above self". Notable project is global Polio eradication.

Secular Avenue/SAFE

Secular Avenue is an atheist charity reaching out to people in the secular community. Mission is to help secular individuals achieve safety, stability, and autonomy. The SAFE program helps people who are unsafe at home due to leaving religion, domestic abuse, or coming out as LGBTQ.

The SEED foundation

National nonprofit that establishes urban public boarding schools to prepare students from underserved communities for success in college.

S.H.A.R.E.

The Secular Humanist Aid and Relief Effort or S.H.A.R.E. was developed over twenty years ago for those who wish to contribute to those people afflicted by natural or human disasters without having to use the intermediary of a religious organization. S.H.A.R.E. is a program of the Council for Secular Humanism, which for 29 years has been the leading organization promoting the rights and values of secular humanists in the U.S. and abroad.

The Union of Concerned Scientists

The leading science-based non-profit working for a healthy environment and safer world.

United Nations Children's Fund

UNICEF mobilizes political will and material resources to help countries, particularly developing countries, ensure a "first call for children" and to build their capacity to form appropriate policies and deliver services for children and their families. UNICEF provides emergency and disaster relief.

Wheelchair Foundation

The Wheelchair Foundation is a non-profit organization leading an international effort to provide free wheelchairs to every child, teen and adult who needs one, but cannot afford one. For over 10 years, the Wheelchair Foundation has been delivering hope, mobility, and freedom to people with disabilities, in an effort to provide at least 1,000,000 wheelchairs around the world.

From...http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Secular_charities

[jennymanrique]

Orgullo Hispano Group welcomes LGBTQ immigrants

Carlos González, left, and Jesús Gallardo exchange gifts and hugs during a Christmas party for LGBT Latinos at the Resource Center in Dallas on December 16, 2018. Photo: Ben Torres

For a little over five years, Martín Balderrama has been devoting two Mondays of his month to meet with a group of friends-turned-family to talk about sexually transmitted diseases, condoms, medication, prevention and —of course— what unites them as Hispanics: their shared experience of being LGBTQ immigrants.

 This Monday, December 19th, was not the exception.

 About 20 Latinos over age 18, self-identified as gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, listened to Balderrama as he led a Christmas party with Secret Santa, dinner, hugs and, most of all, acceptance and tolerance.

 "We are contributing our two cents to make Hispanic-speaking people aware of protection and the risks we face in our sex lives and as members of the gay community," said Balderrama, a leader of Grupo Orgullo Hispano (GOH), an offshoot of Resource Center, a nonprofit promoting physical, emotional and social health among the LGBTQ community in Dallas.

 Balderrama is a natural leader. For the occasion, he donned a Christmas hat and came up with a new Secret Santa system using numbers and colors.

 Born in a small town in Sonora, Mexico, bordering Arizona, he never found a space where he could feel comfortable with his sexuality, let alone find free HIV tests or talking openly about the use of PrEP, an antiviral drug that helps lessen the risk of getting the virus, even though it doesn't replace condoms.

 "This is a new drug. Many young people are using it, but they don't use protection because they think they no longer need it," Balderrama, who is married to a U.S. citizen, said.

 "We have stressed there are many venereal diseases PrEP doesn't protect from. This group understands that and shares it with their husbands, partners and friends who are not coming to the group."

 GOH members have become ambassadors for these conversations.

 They invite ever more Hispanics to do community work promoting a healthier community in bars and inclusive churches.

 They also take part in peaceful civil protests advocating for their rights.

 "It's refreshing having a place outside the night clubs where regulations are a lot healthier, with a nice vibe and where you feel welcome from the start," said Jesús Gallardo, 37, from San Luis Potosí, Mexico, who came to Dallas about seven years ago with his husband, Richard Puga, 31.

 "Unfortunately, we don't represent a real percentage of the Hispanic gay community out there because they are used to a different atmosphere. Hopefully, many more would dare to come here."

 Although most members are immigrants from Mexico, there are also some Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Peruvians and Cuban José Manuel Santana.

 Even though the National Assembly of Cuba voted this year to legalize same-sex marriage and for a ban on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, that's not the Cuba Santana knew as he grew up, where homophobia was rampant and the state promoted aversion therapies for the so called effeminates.

 "I arrived here five years ago from Cuba. Everything down there is complicated," Santana said.

 "Here in Dallas I'm free. I have had the experience of coming into a great family. I have my partner, and I can be myself," he said.

 Santana is married to a U.S. citizen, who's the only non-Latino member of the group, although a son of Basque parents.

 In Mexico, same-sex marriage is legal in a dozen states and Mexico City. But the country still lacks a national law.

 "I know many things have changed, but when I lived there [in Mexico], gay people had to live under the rope (sic), gathering in small groups at private homes. Otherwise you risked getting beaten or even killed," said Luis Berrios, a 51-year-old hairdresser from Torreón, Coahuila.

 "Now, there are more spaces where you can claim your rights, but machismo in Latin America is strong and people here have overcome that," he added.

 However, all agreed that tolerance and inclusivity gets thinner and more complex as you cross certain borders in North Texas.

 In Plano, Fort Worth and Frisco suburbs, those spaces no longer feel that safe.

 It isn't easy for two men to walk hand in hand on the streets or show mutual affection.

 The reason behind Dallas being called an "alternative" city, it is because its gay community has grown substantially: There exist whole neighborhoods where they're part of the local identity and even churches like Cathedral of Hope, where LGBTQ people can profess their religion and hear mass in Spanish.

 "It is true that we have been able to celebrate some achievements together, like when same-sex marriage became law nationwide,” Balderrama said.

 "But we have had to also address the hate crimes and the attacks against our community that sometimes make national headlines."

 They face hate incidents, as when Gallardo and Purga turned out to vote and a man handed them a flyer saying marriage is exclusively a man-and-woman business.

 But also other, more violent ones, as the shooting on early October in a San Antonio gay bar, where three people were injured.

 Especially worrisome for them are some policies of President Donald Trump, who wants to roll back Obama administration gains for their community, like transgender public school students being able to use bathrooms matching to their gender identity, and the recruitment of transgender men and women in the military.

 "Before Trump was elected, we were encouraging those eligible to vote to do it, because we saw many changes coming for us — but not just because we're gay, but because we're immigrants," Balderrama said.

 "We invited immigration experts to give us a talk. Even someone from the police came to explain what we could do if ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents showed up at our houses."

Those who haven't come out of the closet

 Disinformation is also a concern.

 "In Dallas, a high rate of Latinos is getting infected from sexually transmitted diseases, higher than other populations — and all because of lack of awareness", Carlos Grimaldi, a 35-year-old Puerto Rican and a father of two, said.

 "That ignorance and taboos are what our group is trying to eradicate. Sadly, many of the people getting the diseases haven't come out of the closet because they're ashamed and make the mistake of foregoing protection for fear of asking or for not knowing how to navigate the system. People in that grey zone are our greatest concern."

 The group has made it possible for some members to acknowledge their bisexuality and freely share the traumas they carry from their home countries, were largely macho cultures are the rule.

 Here, they learn everything from how to use condoms to how to prepare for sex life with information they don't usually get at school or from their parents.

 "Here at the Resource Center clinic, we hand out condoms for free, offer free HIV tests and help in Spanish. Many people are ashamed of asking. It's a silly shame, because all of us have a sex life and it should be totally normal," Balderrama said.

 Isis Salazar, the only transgender woman in the group who joined five years ago, admitted she would never have approached the group if it wasn't for the invitation from a transexual woman.

 She came in after going through a depression because of a breakup.

 Originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco, from where she emigrated at 13, Salazar said she was immediately accepted by all the men of the group and that she hasn't faced problems to express her gender identity.

 "I told my mom that I was gay when I was 15 in high school,”, said Salazar, 42. “Since then I knew I wanted to go further and not be just a gay boy," she said.

 "I started to meet transgender girls and I asked them about the steps I had to do for the transition. When I started taking hormones I told my mom. Being from a Mexican family, although she did not take it badly, there were difficulties at first."

Now, she said, her whole family, including brothers and nephews, accept her for what she is, and though she sometimes hear "derogatory" or "demeaning" comments from customers at her workplace, she has never had issues using ladies' restrooms at public places.

 "The LGBTQ experience is unique," she said. "But for us [in the group], it's about having found a real family here in Dallas."

Want to read this piece in Spanish? Click here

[savetopnow]

2018-03-21 20 BUSINESS now

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[itsfinancethings]

Rarely has a single Supreme Court term created such alternating spasms of anger and joy, bouncing back and forth across the ideological aisle. And rarely has that seesaw reaction been so concentrated into a single, salient cultural issue – the perceived conflict between gay rights and religious liberty.

By the end of this term, however, a trend seemed clear – a slice of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan, seemed set on settling this conflict, if not once and for all, at least by providing a framework that can and will guide future courts. In doing so, they were pursuing a coherent legal philosophy that was grounded neither in the originalism of the court’s most conservative quartet of judges, nor in the “living constitution” malleability of progressive jurisprudence.

For more than a decade, one of the most contentious battles in American politics has centered around the clash between LGBTQ Americans seeking legal recognition for their families and greater legal protection from discrimination in schools, workplaces, and businesses and traditional religious Americans who seek the liberty to advocate for their sexual moral norms (which generally reserve sex for marriage and define marriage as the union of a man and a woman) in the public square and to enforce those norms in their own private institutions (at church, at the workplace).

The questions raised have been legion, and not all of them have been settled. Same sex marriage was decided in 2015, but undecided until this term was the question whether federal anti-discrimination law (which bans discrimination on the basis of “sex”) also prohibited an employer from firing an employee simply because they are gay or transgender.

At the same time, the court wrestled with important religious liberty cases. Among them, could a Christian baker be forced to custom-design a cake for a same-sex wedding? Were anti-discrimination laws applicable to Christian schools who hired teachers engaged in faith-based instruction?

And through it all, activists have clamored, “Which will it be? Gay rights or religious liberty?”

Congress has proven useless in reaching any kind of resolution to the dispute. The Equality Act – a Democratic initiative that extends broad workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans and explicitly limits the reach of religious liberty – passed the House in 2019 and is going nowhere in the Senate. Republicans, for their part (and much to the frustration of social conservatives), are largely content to simply block Democratic legislation without passing any additional affirmative protections for religious freedom.

A piece of compromise legislation, called “Fairness for All,” has gone nowhere. Modeled broadly on a legislative compromise in the state of Utah which extended workplace protections for LGBTQ citizens while also carving out strong religious liberty protections for religious institutions, Fairness for All has few friends on either side of the aisle. Both sides view it as retreating on core goals of their respective movements

Progressive activists don’t like to see accommodations made for religious institutions that employ hundreds of thousands and minister to millions. They feel the act exposes too many LGBTQ Americans to hurtful discrimination. Conservatives, in the words of Public Discourse editor-in-chief Ryan Anderson, argue that Fairness for All “allow[s] the government to use civil rights law as a sword to punish citizens for disagreement on sexual ideology.”

For example, if a Christian employee states at a secular workplace that he or she believes that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, is that evidence of hostile environment harassment? Should a non-religious athletic league be free to reserve athletic competition to contests between biological males and biological females, rather than including transgender athletes?

Legislatively, no one is moving. The last significant religious liberty legislation was passed during the Clinton Administration. No one is compromising. The Supreme Court, however, has. By shifting alliances from case to case, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kagan are enacting a new legal regime, and it’s starting to look a lot like Fairness for All.

In hindsight, the outlines of this judicial compromise were first outlined in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which held that the Constitution protected a right to same-sex marriage. Near the end of his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy specifically noted that religious believers could continue to articulate their sincere objections to same-sex marriage. “The First Amendment,” he wrote, “ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered.”

Since that case, Roberts and Kagan have been in the majority of every opinion relevant to the clash between gay rights and religious liberty. In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Justice Kagan (along with Justice Breyer) joined the Republican-nominated justices to hold that the state of Colorado may not target a Christian baker for his religious beliefs after the baker refused to custom-design a cake that celebrated a same-sex marriage.

This term, Justice Roberts (along with Justice Gorsuch) joined the Democratic-nominated justices in Bostock, a case extending workplace nondiscrimination protections to gay and transgender Americans.

Less than a month later, Justice Kagan (again with Justice Breyer) slid back over to join the Republican nominees in Our Lady of Guadalupe, a case that broadly extended the scope of the so-called “ministerial exception” to nondiscrimination laws. The ministerial exception prohibits the state from applying all nondiscrimination laws to ministerial employees. At a stroke, the Supreme Court rendered Bostock entirely inapplicable to tens of thousands of religious employees at thousands of religious institutions across the United States.

Do you see the pattern? Does it not look a lot like Fairness for All? The court is extending nondiscrimination protections in secular spaces while blocking targeted discrimination against people of faith and also expanding the autonomy and liberty of religious organizations.

This is the point where originalists like me start to pull (what’s left of) our hair out. While the resulting jurisprudence may well reflect a cultural and legal compromise that many Americans like, it is not the role of courts to reach for political and cultural consensus. Negotiation and compromise across differences is the lifeblood of the legislative branch, and indeed negotiation and compromise to reach resolutions in a divided, pluralistic nation helps knit together our national fabric.

By punting through inertia or cowardice the most contentious questions entirely to the courts, Congress removes disputes to the governmental body most removed from the people. It undermines the democratic process. Congress subordinates itself in the hierarchy of American constitutional power, and thus the body closest to the people is now America’s weakest branch.

It’s hard to place the lion’s share of the blame for our nation’s emerging “juristocracy” on courts when the nation’s activists recognize congressional impotence and react accordingly. Why waste time and money with fruitless and frustrating lobbying, when you can file a lawsuit and force a judicial response? Judges can’t simply ignore complaints filed in their courts. They have to act, by granting or dismissing claims.

Those actions then generate appeals, those appeals have different outcomes, and then the Supreme Court has to step in to settle conflicts. The operation of law itself compels judicial action. Consequently, it makes sense for activists to blanket the nation in litigation in the hopes of reaching the Supreme Court.

And so, here we are. Decades of recent history have taught us that dominating the Supreme Court is an elusive, if not impossible, goal in a closely-divided nation. Smart justices can exercise outsized power (as Justice Kennedy did for years) when their votes are up for grabs.

Thus, judicial compromise to reach necessary outcomes is just as inevitable in court as it’s become impossible in Congress. When the Court has to act, it will act, and in this area of important cultural conflict, the compromise has emerged.

Justices Roberts and Kagan have set the terms. It’s not “gay rights or religious liberty.” It’s gay rights and religious liberty. Religious institutions have more autonomy. The secular workplace is now more open to LGBTQ Americans. And ordinary Americans are left to wonder why Supreme Court justices seem to be the last true negotiators left in America’s constitutional republic.

[usuallyleftnight]

On Tuesday, Melissa Zarda was dealing with two things at home in Kansas City, Missouri: the loud barking and mischief of her new foster puppy Winnie, a cattle dog/pitbull mix, while—above the din—relishing the hard-fought, historic victory she had just won in the Supreme Court in the memory of her beloved, deceased brother Donald.His was one of three cases featuring LGBTQ people fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity that SCOTUS yesterday ruled, 6-3, were illegal under the sex discrimination provisions of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The ruling—embracing the cases of gay men Zarda and Gerald Bostock and trans woman Aimee Stephens—has been hailed as one of the most significant in recent years, setting the protection of LGBTQ people from workplace discrimination in legal precedent.The Supreme Court’s Historic LGBTQ Ruling Is Now a Valuable Legal Weapon Against BigotryMelissa took on the case after Donald died in a base jumping accident in Switzerland in October 2014.“Don would be extremely happy and overjoyed by the decision,” Melissa told The Daily Beast. “I can see his face right now, I can see it so well, it’s like he is almost here. His face is absolutely beaming, and he had a smile bigger than any room anyway. He could light up a room. It’s been an amazing journey. I’m so glad he stood up. I’m so glad that Gerald stood up. I’m so glad that Aimee stood up. I’m just so pleased we’re here, talking about this right now.”“On a grander scale this case wasn’t just about Don,” Melissa said. “Don knew that too. I know this will impact millions of people for the good. To have Don’s memory and legacy on the right side of history like that is incredible.”Leading up to the publication of Monday’s decision, “I was nervous and scared,” Melissa said. “When you get used to all this bad news, you think, ‘OK, another one is coming,’ Maybe, when the decision was announced, it made me that much happier because I couldn’t quite believe it.” Her husband, Matt Cathlina, had been more optimistic, reminding Melissa of how positive she had left the Supreme Court the day the case was heard last October. “Our team did so good, they were so skilled,” Melissa said. “I knew we definitely had a chance.”“I woke up knowing it could be that Monday, but didn’t have any idea. I was refreshing the Supreme Court website over and over and not seeing anything. I was getting nervous.” Melissa went for a walk, came back, refreshed it more, and the site crashed, “meaning something big had probably happened.”Melissa wrote to the ACLU legal team, who wrote back that she, Don, the LGBTQ campaigners, had won.“I was overjoyed, my heart was racing, pounding,” Melissa said. “I think I was smiling and crying at the same time. I was doing 10 things at once: texting, crying, smiling, and laughing—it was like a shot of adrenalin. What’s happening with the country is so tragic and awful, we needed this shot of good news desperately right now.”She shared the news with Bill Moore, Don’s surviving partner, who teamed up with Melissa in leading the case, with legal backing from the ACLU alongside lawyer Greg Antollino and Pam Karlan of the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Melissa also messaged her and Don’s mother Shirley, sister Kim, Matt, and their extended group of family and supporters. “It’s amazing, there are no words for how happy we are with this decision,” Melissa, a graphic designer, said. “So many LGBTQ friends and family members are so relieved that they will be safe from discrimination in the workplace, especially now when the economy isn’t well and unemployment is so high.”Shirley, Melissa and Don’s mom, didn’t understand “what a huge scale this was” until she saw the many articles about the case and TV news segments. “She is beyond excited,” said Melissa. “She is telling everyone she can. She is a proud mom. She was always an advocate for Don. This was so important to her. It has also brought up a lot of memories and emotion for her. She still struggles with Don’s death and his not being here.”“We have this euphoric happiness, but also a bittersweet sadness that he is not here to enjoy it with us. It’s hard, but also good news at a time when we need good news.”When it came to the ruling, Melissa was “pleased it was 6-3 and not closer. I was pleased that Gorsuch wrote the decision, and that he understood. I disagreed with Alito, saying this was legislating. For me, it couldn’t be clearer that this was the right interpretation of Title VII. It seemed as plain as day.”* * *As The Daily Beast previously reported, Donald Zarda was fired in 2010 from his job as a skydiver with Long Island company Altitude Express after coming out to a customer. The trial court found that Title VII did not cover sexual orientation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed that holding, claiming that sexual orientation discrimination was a subset of sex discrimination. Like the funeral firm that employed Aimee Stephens, Altitude Express took the case to the Supreme Court—and lost. An “incredibly smart” young boy, Donald was always intrigued by airplanes and air travel, Melissa told The Daily Beast last year. Both his mother and father had pilot licenses. As an adult he spent a lot of time skydiving with friends and others who shared his passion. Melissa is scared of heights, and “a huge regret” was that she never jumped with her brother. He was warm, generous, and loving as a brother, and loved sharing his professional passion with others.Donald’s family was immediately supportive after he came out. “It was almost not an event,” said Melissa. He did so in his mid-20s. “I don’t think he was delaying telling us for any other reason than he was busy traveling the world and skydiving. He was not around that much.”He went back to school to get a degree in aviation-related management and administration. “Anything that involved being in the air was all he cared about.”His death had been devastating. “Even years later the emotion tied up with it is still that intense,” Melissa said last year. “He kept our family together. We’re still tight, but he was such a force. It has been a devastating loss, unbelievably hard.”Donald felt strongly that he was a victim of homophobia. “He absolutely was a fighter,” Melissa said. “He could not stand anything unfair. He felt he had been discriminated against, and was immediately prepared to fight. He knew it was wrong, and he was going after it. He wanted to stand up, in case it happened to anyone else.”“Don was devastated when he was fired,” Melissa told The Daily Beast after the SCOTUS decision. “His job and career and skydiving meant the world to him. He was afraid of what would happen after has fired. It was hard to get work elsewhere, and he worried he would be looked at as a troublemaker.”“He was confused and upset. He would call us, and we would console him and do our best to be there for him and support him. I would say this weighed very heavily on him in the last years of his life. Skydiving had been everything to him, and then this case became everything to him.”* * *In the wake of their Supreme Court victory, Melissa does not know yet if the family will pursue the case directly with Altitude Express. “We’ve barely had a chance to get any sleep. It’s good to bask in this victory and how wonderful it is, but if we wanted to focus our energy on what comes next there is so much work that needs to be done in getting the Equality Act passed. It’s sitting in Congress, when people are still being discriminated against in housing, education, health care, and credit. There is still a lot of work to do.”Donald would not have expected the case to go this far, Melissa said. “He would have been very surprised, but happy everything turned out the way it did.”Melissa said she was “ashamed” that before her brother’s experience she was “totally ignorant of the scale of discrimination out there. I couldn’t relate. When Don first called about what had had happened, I said, ‘Well, that’s illegal, duh.’ I had no idea. I said, ‘We know that’s illegal. You need to do something about that.’”Like many people, Melissa thought that surely anti-LGBTQ discrimination was already outlawed. The Supreme Court case highlighted how far the law has fallen behind social and cultural evolution. The stories sent to her by LGBTQ people who had been fired for their sexual orientation and gender identity “opened” Melissa’s eyes further, she said. “I am so grateful for that,” Melissa said. “I can’t pretend to know what they have been through. But I want to listen and be there for them and do what I can to help them. The case has definitely made me see outside of my bubble a little bit. It’s been a good perspective shift, and really heartwarming to get support from so many strangers.”Melissa noted that the vast majority of Americans believe that LGBTQ people should be protected from discrimination, as revealed in a CBS News poll, “so the Supreme Court decision was a long time coming and overdue.”Melissa plans to work on helping make the Equality Act law, as well as volunteering for other causes such as Black Lives Matter and animal rescue.“Too many people out there suffer discrimination,” Melissa said. “This is America, 2020. Nobody should be discriminated against.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[velmaemyers88]

Why are pro-LGBTQ companies bankrolling anti-LGBTQ extremists in Congress? – ThinkProgress

By almost all measures, AT&T has been a stalwart supporter of LGBTQ equality for a long time. It has protected workers from sexual orientation discrimination since 1975. It sponsors the Trevor Project to help LGBTQ youth in crisis. It received a perfect 100 score from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in its annual equality index, ranking among the nation’s most inclusive places to work.

By any measure, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is among the nation’s most anti-LGBTQ bigots. He defended bans on same-sex marriage as “sound public policy” and spearheaded the effort to block the elected government in Washington, D.C., from enacting marriage equality. He boasted of receiving a “True Blue Award” from the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated anti-LGBT hate group. He consistently earns a 0 score on HRC’s congressional scorecard, ranking among the lawmakers most virulently opposing equality.

Yet, AT&T’s corporate political action committee has given tens of thousands of dollars to Jordan’s campaigns since 2010, helping bankroll the re-elections of a man who HRC once inducted into its anti-equality “Hall of Shame” for “proactively [working] to undermine existing legal protections and promote anti-LGBT discrimination.” And AT&T’s PAC has given more than $400,000 to other firmly anti-LGBTQ members of Congress in recent years.

An AT&T spokesperson told ThinkProgress that its PAC contribution decisions are guided by its “Core Values and candidates’ positions on issues that impact AT&T’s business.”

But it is hardly alone in its seemingly contradictory political giving.

A new activist pressure group called Zero for Zeros aims to change that. In recent days, it has released a list of more than two dozen major companies with 100 HRC scores, urging them to stop their donations to Jordan and other lawmakers with zero HRC ratings.

Lane Hudson, a longtime LGBTQ-rights activist, is campaign manager of the effort. He explained in an interview with ThinkProgress that “to really glean out the worst of the worst, the ones who take extra actions to work against our community, the ones that really fight against equality,” the group filtered the people with zero ratings even further. After picking 10 U.S. representatives and 19 senators with the worst ratings, the group found 49 had used their corporate PACs to support the worst.

Hudson explained that he understands that companies make PAC contributions based on more than just LGBTQ issues. “[I]t doesn’t surprise me,” he said, that the companies’ corporate PACs are “supporting politicians that are connected to those other issues.” But, he added, it is important that these companies hold lawmakers to a higher standard.

“What we’re asking those companies to do is to apply their corporate values to their political giving,” he said. “They create safe and welcoming workspaces for their LGBT employees. They market to LGBT customers. They support their LGBT employee resource groups. They march in full force at [Pride events] around America and sometimes abroad … These are companies that have been with us for a long time and helped us win a lot of the progress that we made and their political contributions to these people threaten to undermine everything we’ve done, and undermine their own efforts.”

On Tuesday, Zero for Zeros released a list of 14 technology and lifestyle companies with otherwise stellar pro-equality records, but also a history of PAC contributions to anti-LGBTQ extremists. On Wednesday, it released an additional list of 13 financial services giants in the same category.

ThinkProgress reached out to each of the 27 companies for comment. Five responded with statements. Two declined comment.

Those responding included:

American Airlines

American Airlines has been recognized by the Human Rights Campaign for nearly two decades as a leader among U.S. companies when it comes to workplace policies and practices for LGBTQ team members. American participates in the political and public policy process in a number of ways, including by making contributions from our political action committee. With respect to the contributions that we make, we don’t agree on every issue with the lawmakers to whom we make contributions, but we fundamentally believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect — and equally under the law. We are proud to stand with the LGBTQ community, and our commitment to equality for all of our team members and customers is unwavering.

AT&T

For over four decades we’ve been committed to the LGBTQ+ community, have led the way in adopting workplace policies that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and are strong supporters of legislation extending full civil rights protections to the LGBTQ+ community. Through political action committees, our employees support candidates on both sides of the aisle. But that doesn’t mean that they support every candidate’s views on every issue. Our committees of employees who make PAC contribution decisions are guided by our Core Values and candidates’ positions on issues that impact AT&T’s business.

Capital One Financial Corp

Capital One’s longstanding support for the LGBTQ+ community reflects our core values and our commitment to diversity, inclusion and equality. Our efforts to ensure non-discrimination and equal opportunity in the workplace include the early adoption of policies, benefits and other practices that apply equally to our LGBTQ+ associates. We work with and support legislators and policymakers who are relevant to our business, our associates, our customers and our communities. We support candidates on a bipartisan basis. Our support for any candidate should not suggest that we agree with their positions on every issue.

Intel

Intel does not support discrimination in any form. The Intel PAC continuously evaluates its contributions to candidates.

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance

[T]hank you for recognizing MassMutual’s stellar pro-LGBTQ record and 100% HRC rating year over year. At MassMutual, we help all customers secure their future and protect the ones they love, regardless of race, gender, age, abilities, place of birth, religion or who they love. We actively advocate for inclusion, fairness and equality, value people for who they are, and celebrate all diversity. From our people policies to our involvement in pro-LBGTQ amicus briefs to lending our voice to specific ballot initiatives, we have an established record of active and engaged support for the LGBTQ community.

Citigroup and Wells Fargo each said that they had no comment.

Amazon, AT&T, Cigna Corp, Cisco Systems, Compass Bank, Dell Inc., Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Facebook, Google, JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, Mastercard, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, PNC Financial Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sap America, T-Mobile, and Visa did not respond as of publication time.

HRC national press secretary Sarah McBride told ThinkProgress in a statement that while the corporate equality index “captures LGBTQ-inclusive policies, practices and benefits, there isn’t a one size fits all way to consistently score companies on the scope and impact of their political donations.”

“We do monitor employers’ contributions to anti-LGBTQ ballot measures and organizations whose primary mission includes anti-LGBTQ advocacy,” she added. “It is important for reporting like this that asks tough questions of corporations and brings these donations into the public discussion. The Corporate Equality Index is a critical tool for advancing LGBTQ equality in the workplace, but it is not the only tool.”

Hudson said he and his team are talking with the companies and are hopeful that they will take anti-LGBTQ extremism into account more in their future PAC giving.

“This effort is meant to not be an attack on these companies, because we view them as our allies. They have invested in their employees and customers and been with us in these court battles,” Hudson said. “We sent letters to their CEOs and I also reached out to the government affairs staff and asking them for a conversation about this, so we can talk about why it’s important not only to the LGBTQ community but to their employees and their customers and to the overall movement in general and how it can be beneficial to their business.”

This story has been updated to include comment from AT&T.

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