Attorney General Holder informed all Department of Justice component heads and United States Attorneys in a memo that the department will no longer assert that Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex excludes discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender discrimination, reversing a previous Department of Justice position. Title VII makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate in the employment of an individual “because of such individual’s…sex,” among other protected characteristics.
“This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status,” said Attorney General Holder. “This will help to foster fair and consistent treatment for all claimants. And it reaffirms the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting the civil rights of all Americans.”
December 19, 2014
The Justice Department makes a big move on transgender rights.
"Attorney General Holder announced today that the Department of Justice will take the position in litigation that the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to claims of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status."
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71 comments:
When will us color-blind, left-handed guys get some help?
And why not? Industrial Strength unreality that can create law suits out of thin air. Lawyers celebrate!!!
But there are serious questions whether the Justice Department are North Korean agents.
Attention ladies - we will soon be pissing on the lids of your public toilets. This is your just reward.
Does this mean my claim of being "a lesbian trapped in a man's body" finally gives me free access to ladies locker rooms and showers?
perhaps, but more significantly for society, it means that Trans people can sue if denied wait staff jobs at Hooters
Oso, I think, or at least hope you mean "seat."
And worse, dudes in the locker room at the health club.
If we can't discriminate based on the how someone chooses to present themselves to the world, then why not cut through all the complication, streamline the process and say you can't consider the "ick factor" when hiring? You can't pass over an otherwise qualified candidate just because you don't want to work with them and think they will cause disharmony in the office?
Great. Now when someone poops in the hall everyone will blame the transgender guy.
I am Laslo.
How nice of the federal bureaucracy to decide what the legislative authors of Title VII really meant, 50 years after the fact.
No need for any congressional debate or amendment.
In the spirit of Beria's quote, this group is surely, show me the word, we'll tell you what it means.
For the last thirty years I have been claiming to be a lesbian trapped in a man's body.
It used to be funny.
It won't be long before your insistence that only non-robots can comment will be consigned to the ash heap of history!
You will be assimilated!
Gahrie wins.
It's nice to know that all of our other problems have been solved so the government has time (and money) to devote to issues like this.
I think that this means that, if you are a guy, you can wear a ladies wig and makeup to work on random days and no one can say anything about it to you. Except maybe "you look nice today. Very office appropriate".
"The Justice Department makes a big movie on transgender rights."
(Things misread)
Mental illness is now given the "color" of law.
So what standards has the Justice Department established for determining if a person is transgendered?
Certification by an official or expert, such as a therapist or psychiatrist?
Use of hormones?
Genital surgery?
Or, if I wake up in the morning feeling sort of feminine, is it okay for me to use the ladies room at work?
In the absence of such standards, Holder's edict seems sort of pointless.
Umm...does this mean that if you get hired as a man, but show up one day in makeup, a dress, and a wig, demanding that everyone start calling you "Lisa", the rest of the office just has to deal with it? Including your visiting the women's bathroom?
What if you switch back the following year?
If you want more of something, subsidize it. This is a de facto subsidy. I can't wait until one of my wife's employees demands gender reassignment.
It means that you are whatever you say you are and you can fuck with anyone who doesn't kowtow to you.
The point, of course, is to move the ratchet one more notch in the direction of making the law into whatever people like Holder say the law is so that they can fuck with anyone and everyone.
There's payback coming if the long descent into hell on earth is to be interrupted. Neither case will be something you should wish to be on hand to experience, I think.
My guess is that this will discourage the hiring of transgender people. The class of transgender people is so tiny that it will not look suspicious for a company to not have any such people. Companies will avoid the risk of getting hit with lawsuits over terminations by not hiring transgender people in the first place.
The real point of this is simple - the continued destabilization of society via the destruction of norms.
We're a nation of Klingers.
Just what we need – another group anointed by our elite – for our own good of course – because it's the "right thing to do." We should be grateful. Another affirmative action group to obsess over. To apply quotas. To bring lawsuits.
If there is a Hell will those of the medical profession that have participated in the transgender crap all have their penises removed? Or their female crotches fitted with ersatz penises that must be inflated with a pump? Please, Hell – be real and be just.
Selective exclusion is progressive.
Yesterday, I read that 2.3% of the population self identify as gay, bi, or lesbian. The proportion of the population that identify as transgender cannot be more than .1 or so. So, this nonsense means that we should overturn all our normal gender rules for this tiny number of people. Now, how many women will object and consider it a hostile workplace if people who are physically men are allowed into the women's rest rooms?
Eric Holder is an idiot and needs to be treated as such. You know where this is going. Holder intends to use the power and resources of the DoJ to attack some company or person to actually implement his new version
of the civil rights laws.
Terry said...
I think that this means that, if you are a guy, you can wear a ladies wig and makeup to work on random days and no one can say anything about it to you. Except maybe "you look nice today. Very office appropriate".
Except if somebody else at the firm was there first with a wig and falsies... If so, you and your firm are looking at a sexual harassment lawsuit...
This theory has lost in court. So it's just another symbolic sop to the base.
If Obama were a serious politician, and he has never been one, he would push Congress to amend Title VII to protect transgendered workers.
But it's much easier to issue press releases and go golfing. Having principles and working your hardest to try and see them implemented is tough to do. People who do that are called leaders.
Obama is a joke. Always has been. Always will be.
I am glad they are addressing this important issue which is likely about #99 on most American's list of stuff we should fix.
Is this consistent with the INTENT of the authors of "Bill Of Rights" and the 14th Amendment???
The principled move would recognize gender fluidity. Holder's principles are pro-choice or selective. He follows the prevailing winds of his special interests.
Actually, with the progress of womb banks and sperm depositors, the value of the genetic identity is degraded. The principled move would treat all human life as semi-stable clumps of cells. That would also be in harmony with pro-choice policy.
As it is, Holder can be expected to create moral hazards through selective exclusion, which will contribute to progressive corruption. Progressive morality and pro-choice principles have consequences.
"Except maybe "you look nice today. Very office appropriate"."
Only while speaking in a completely neutral and non-sarcastic tone of voice. And, of course, under the supervision of an HR zampolit fully briefed in this week's interpretation of Title VII. Ignorance of the Memo is no excuse.
What hiring manager in his right mind would knowingly hire a transgender now?
Jason:
Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde.
James Pawlak,
Generally no. Title VII applies to all employers, public and private. Congress prohibition against discrimination in private employment was based on Congress power to regulate interstate commerce and pass laws necessary and proper in carrying out its power to regulate interstate power.
Congress prohibition against discrimination against state employers was based on Congress commerce and necesary and proper powers (if a law is generally applicable to state and private employers then Congress has power to regulate under Article 1 powers because it is not regulating the state as a state) and a Congress power under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment (enforcing guarantee of equal protection).
The importance of the sec 5 power is that it can abrogate the state's sovereign immunity from suit under the 11th Amendment.
But that doesn't really matter with respect to the justice department. The Justice Department only enforces title VII in suits against state or local government. And 11th Amendment immunity doesn't apply to suits brought by the federal government.
However, if a private litigant brought a suit against a state under Title VII, a sovereign immunity defense arguing that Congress didnt and couldn't abrogate state sovreign immunity for transgender discrimination is a decent argument and looking at the original understanding of the 14th Amendment would be relevant.
Of course the Justice department would argue that it's only enforcing the ban against sex discrimination. This is weak argument. An employer that discriminates equally against transgender men and transgender women isn't discriminating based on sex anymore that an employer that won't hire anyone (man or woman) under the age of 25 is discriminating on the basis of sex.
I am a white, completely Anglo-Saxon-descended (really -- completely) male, non-Catholic, Christian, rich dude.
I am a Colonial-American. I claim minority status and require specific class protection under Article VII.
I am a rich man in a poor mans body.
I can't get to true fulfillment as a human being without posessing great wealth. Lacking great wealth, I suffer from anxiety and depression.
Can we get the government to mandate treatment covered by medical insurance to solve my problem?
I'm sure I am not the only person who suffers from this dreadful yet unpublicized scourge. I suspect we number in the many millions, yet there is no relief, in spite of the cure being a simple matter well within our technical capabilities. All that's needed is to give me a large sum of money, surely a simpler matter than to try reverse someone's biological nature.
What's so special about sex anyway?
The point, of course, is to move the ratchet one more notch in the direction of making the law into whatever people like Holder say the law is so that they can fuck with anyone and everyone.
Time for Ms. Rand again:
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against...
We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens?
What's there in that for anyone?
But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”
The military is going to get even more fun. Because there aren't enough issues with s*xual harassment - now guys can put on some false eyelashes and head for the ladies shower.
There was a long interview segment on NPR last week with a transgender person, and in one section she started to say something like "it's not like we wake up in the morning and just decide we want to be a different gender" and then had to quickly backtrack to include "gender fluid" people who do in fact do just that. The acceptance/redefinition treadmill can get a bittough to keep up with even for dedicated Progressives, I guess.
Aw crap. I think I might be a trans-mechanical robot!
If States can ignore Marijuana laws, then they should ignore this crap too.
People shouldn't discriminate against transgendered people in employment.
Regardless of whether it's right or wrong to discriminate on this basis, I'd be willing to bet that there is no legislative history that the Congress in 1964 thought of "sex" on any basis other than chromosome combination.
I look forward to the next attempt to Balkanize the US citizenry for political purposes, and expect the whole thing will end only when an explicit protection is claimed for Democrats against all laws that shall affect Republicans only.
Cripes, whatever happened to the concept of equal before the law?
I think this is a big step forward. And just as gender is fluid, so too is race. I mean, some days I feel a lot more black than other days. And it's up to me to get in touch with my feeling that you're not respecting my blackness and stuff.
You'll know you got it wrong when you open the letter from my lawyer.
As others have noted, the point is to make more stuff criminal. And contrary to the perfectly logical objections of some (e.g. Freeman Hunt @ 9:37) that this is a trivially small class and therefore employers won't find compliance bothersome, I think the fewer there are in the protected class, the greater the burden. Employers and others subject to Holder's expanded edict will now have to set up the same kind of compliance apparatus (policy, legal advice, training, documentation, reporting, yada yada) as they have for "real" categories such as race. The HR Department will need more staff, more budget. The HR presence in the Boardrooom just got bigger.
I have no doubt that Holder will return, very soon, to the practice of "law," which will include advising corporate clients on how to comply with exactly this kind of junk. He's just sent himself a whole lot of new business.
We're a nation of Klingers.
Yeah, really bitter ones.
“This will help to foster fair and consistent treatment for all claimants. And it reaffirms the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting the civil rights of all Americans.”
What bilge. This will ensure that no one hires any transvestites if they can possibly avoid it. Of course, that will mean that the DOJ and the EEOC can shake down more businesses.
A multi-billion dollar American corporation, operating in every state of the union, was just coerced into withdrawing a movie from circulation by a naked threat of terrorist attacks. And the DOJ is concerned about securing the right to dress funny. Which Amendment is that in?
Jupiter,
There's a difference between transgender and transvestites.
I think a good compromise for Republicans would be to agree to add sexual orientation and transgender to Title VII protection in exchange for raising the minimum employee for all Title VII from 15 to 100, and pre-empting any state or local government regulation applying employment discrimination law to employers with fewer than 100 employees.
This would help small business.
discrimination against trannies isn't based on sex. It's because they're fucking lunatics.
There is a fundamental absurdity in this claptrap, in that the right to dress as a man, or a woman, assumes that men and women dress differently. So, it amounts to asserting the right to make a pitiful spectacle of oneself by obviously violating fundamental social norms. But no smoking.
I first noticed this peculiarity of equality-think when Steinem and co named their magazine Ms. Now, if what they really wanted was equal treatment with men, they would have named it Mr.
But of course, equal treatment was not what they wanted. What they wanted was special treatment -- to be treated differently, on their own terms. Which is to say, to have their cake, and eat it too.
So, we have Title IX, which says that the way women are treated equally in college sports is by having their own teams. Separate, but equal. Because everyone can clearly see that women are very different than men, and cannot be expected to compete with them.
But the way women are treated equally in employment is to demand that they be paid the same and hired as often. Because everyone can clearly see that women are functionally identical to men, and any difference in pay or hiring must be the result of bias based upon stereotypes known to be false.
2 + 2 = 5. To say otherwise is crimespeak.
mccullough said...
"There's a difference between transgender and transvestites."
Well, of course there is. But you are supposed to pretend that you are not aware of it. Aren't you?
But the way women are treated equally in employment is to demand that they be paid the same and hired as often. Because everyone can clearly see that women are functionally identical to men, and any difference in pay or hiring must be the result of bias based upon stereotypes known to be false.
1. Of course if women were in fact equal to men and interchangeable and produced the same quality product, and
2. a Firm could get the equivalent women for 77 cents on the dollar, then
3. all those evil businesses would only hire women and triple their profits.
since they don't, what does it tell you about the truth of the matter?
Given that no one actually knows the numbers of "transgendered" people in the US--one recent study claims 700,000, of whom half have done something surgical about it (0.1% of the US population)--given further the even smaller number of actual discrimination cases filed under any legal theory proving discrimination based upon one's "transgendered" identity, one can't help but conclude this much ado about nothing is actually just another step towards the soft fascist utopia so desired by the clerisy of the Church of the All Powerful State.
Marty,
Why did you put "transgendered" in quotes?
And if it's much ado about nothing, why do you care?
And if it's much ado about nothing, why do you care??
I care because it is yet another power grab by Leftwing "victims".
(and I put victims in quotes because I don't really think they are victims)
Can we still call them "Trannies" ? I understand that might be "micro aggression."
Blogger mccullough said...
Marty,
"Why did you put "transgendered" in quotes?"
I can't speak for Marty, but "transgendered", like "homophobia" is a prepackaged lie looking for a sentence to insert itself into. No one is "transgendered", any more than anyone is trans-specied". If you have a Y chromosome, you are male. Otherwise female. And men who arrange to have their dicks cut off are insane. Just like people who blind themselves. And doctors who cut men's dicks off for them are evil quacks who belong in prison.
Now, does that help you to understand why some people might think "transgender" is not a word that should be used as if it referred to something entirely obvious that we all take for granted?
transgender is not a real gender. People who are women who think they are men should not be discriminated against as women. But they shouldn't have rights as men since they are not in fact men. But women. Society can't discriminate based on gender, not transgenders. That's bordering on farce
I put "transgendered" in quotes because it is a politically correct word for a wide variety of human experience (although among a very tiny portion of the population), reduced for purposes of political manipulation by folks who give less of a shit about such people and their very real and disturbing experiences than they do about atomizing human society. Terms like these originate in the victim studies cesspool of academia whence the entire Western tradition, which alone created the conditions by which such cesspools can come into being in the first place, is mindlessly trashed. Reducing people to labels is a major step in desensitizing the population to the steady decline of our civilization. Euphemising the language is another. I for one disagree and therefore am part of the Resistance.
Jupiter,
Are you familiar withe the neurological research in this area? It's quite extensive. This isn't a new phenomenon.
Also, hermaphrodites chromosomes are neither XY nor XX.
Biological sex is determined at birth by factors. Chromosomes are one factor. You've already misstated that factor.
Does the existence of hermaphrodites or transgendered persons threaten your belief system?
The tone of your post displays a lot of hostility, as well as ignorance. You should probably not weigh in.
Marty,
Thank you for sharing your view. I agree that gender studies is not a rigorous discipline and that social justice activists abound in that field.
That said, the scientific research on transgendered (or transsexual) individuals is rigorous and compelling.
Their brains are different in some important ways.
Sex reassignment surgery has been around quite awhile, as well. So it's not like the phenomenon doesn't predate gender studies by a long time.
Michael K,
Calling them trannies is considered offensive. It would be like calling your daughter cunt or calling her boyfriend nigger.
I
Wouldn't making transgender a protected class be the end of women's sports?
Freeman,
Rene Richards played in pro tennis events as a transgendered woman in the late 1970s.
Also,
Some international sports organizations ban women whose testosterone levels are too high from competition.
I like the concept of fluid gender and race (thanks, Owen). How about at the next census we all decide that, for that day at least, we are all female African-Americans. Almost the entire range of sexual and racial discrimination issues gone in a flash.
Here's a good article on the subject
I like the concept of fluid gender and race (thanks, Owen). How about at the next census we all decide that, for that day at least, we are all female African-Americans.
Handicapped female illegal immigrant Muslim African Americans who are on welfare would work better.
Do to the lack of interest on the part of the administration, when ISIS takes over, this issue will disappear. Literally!
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