Supreme Court passes landmark ruling protecting LGBT+ Americans from workplace discrimination

Activists hail decision as ‘watershed’ moment for LGBT+ rights, which have been under threat from Trump presidency

The US Supreme Court voted on Monday to protect LGBT+ Americans from workplace discrimination, in a landmark ruling that has stunned activists, having been passed with the help of conservative justices and in an environment where gay and transgender rights are under attack from the presidency.

“As of today, nowhere in the United States is it legal to fire someone for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. That’s a big deal,” said Roy T. Englert, a Washington appellate lawyer who wrote an amicus brief in the case hoping to persuade conservative justices, such as Neil Gorsuch.

The vote was passed 6-3 with Justice Gorsuch - one of the two justices on the top court appointed by Donald Trump - authoring the majority opinion, saying Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and lesbian workers from discrimination.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Mr Gorsuch wrote.

Torie Osborn, a longtime activist a former head of the National LGBTQ Task Force, told the New York Times that the decision was “bigger than marriage. It’s a watershed.”

The decision follows the Trump administration’s move last week to roll back protections against transgender patients against sex discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies.

The court’s ruling on Monday, which came in the middle of LGBT+ Pride Month, could have a sweeping impact on the US employment landscape.

Of the roughly 8m LGBT+ workers in the US, more than half live in states that do not have anti-discrimination laws covering sexual orientation and gender identity.

US lawmakers expressed their joy at the court’s decision on Monday, with Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders tweeting that it was ”fantastic news.”

“No one in America should face discrimination for being who they are or for who they love,” the erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate wrote.

Not everyone was happy with the majority’s opinion, including dissenting opinion author Justice Samuel Alito.

Mr Alito scolded Mr Gorsuch for presenting his opinion “as the inevitable product of the textualist school of statutory interpretation championed by our late colleague Justice [Antonin] Scalia,” the court’s conservative bellwether who died in 2016 after 30 years on the bench.

“No one should be fooled,” Mr Alito wrote. “The court’s opinion is like a pirate ship. It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justie Scalia excoriated — the theory that courts should “update” old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society.”