Althouse: "The Trump administration on Friday filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that federal civil rights laws do not protect transgender workers."

August 17, 2019

"The Trump administration on Friday filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that federal civil rights laws do not protect transgender workers."

"The filing relates to the case of Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who was fired as the funeral director of R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. in Detroit after she told owner Thomas Rost that she planned to transition from male to female and would be representing herself as a woman while at work. In March 2018, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the funeral home had violated Title VII anti-discrimination laws in the decision, with the court ruling that 'discrimination on the basis of transgender and transitioning status is necessarily discrimination on the basis of sex' and therefore protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, in their court filing submitted Friday, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco and Department of Justice attorneys argued that the specific Civil Rights Act provision 'does not bar discrimination because of transgender status,' meaning the Michigan funeral home was within its right to fire Stephens. 'In 1964, the ordinary public meaning of ‘sex’ was biological sex. It did not encompass transgender status,' the brief reads."

The Hill reports.

69 comments:

rhhardin said...: The laws represent themselves as different now.; 8/17/19, 6:18 AM
Expat(ish) said...: Rule of law as written vs. feels?

In any case (dad joke) easy for congress to fix. Should take less than a day and cover one page. Then PDT can sign with a rainbow pen.

-XC; 8/17/19, 6:22 AM
rhhardin said...: 1.The true world - attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")

2. The true world - unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents"). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible - it becomes female.)

Nietzsche, the hisstory of an error. Happens to laws too.; 8/17/19, 6:25 AM
AllenS said...: Thank you, Trump Administration.; 8/17/19, 6:29 AM
MayBee said...: I do not know what to make of transgendered people. I wish we could do more to study what is going on, because this seems a little bit like medicine by PC to me. There are disorders like anorexia and Munchausen's where people do things to themselves or see themselves in ways other than what they are, so we can't pretend people won't just hurt themselves because of something their mind is telling them to do. We try to help them in ways other than just going along with it.; 8/17/19, 6:32 AM
MayBee said...: I do want to say-- some people who present themselves as the other gender do a very good job and some do not. It seems to me an employer should have a say as to whether they want this "new" person to work for them.; 8/17/19, 6:34 AM
n.n said...: The transgender spectrum, including individuals who exhibit transversal mental (e.g. sexual orientation) and/or physical (e.g. medical corruption) attributes, already has protected status under the established Twilight (penumbras and emanations) Amendment (i.e. Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic). It's just a matter of what the 1%, politicians, advocates, and activists, foreign and domestic, consider to be PC (e.g. leverage).; 8/17/19, 6:34 AM
Tina Trent said...: Because people mourning the death of their loved ones really need to be focusing on the ego demands of the guy in a dress.

Transgender politics is just curated victim status acquisition.; 8/17/19, 6:34 AM
Thuglawlibrarian said...: Well, that is correct.

Expat(ish) is correct in that this is an easy fix for Congress. They can amend the statute. Boom!; 8/17/19, 6:35 AM
Sydney said...: I think Maybee is correct. Here is Aimee.; 8/17/19, 7:02 AM
n.n said...: The guy in the dress is trans-social, which includes divergence from a construct established by society to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the male and female sex.; 8/17/19, 7:02 AM
traditionalguy said...: War on normal men and women as created by God. It seems to come with a war on the Jews. It appears that God has made many enemies by His eternal existence, the same yesterday, today, and forever.; 8/17/19, 7:13 AM
gilbar said...: let's say i run a funeral home
one of my workers announces that, from now on; he'll come into work with long hair and a kilt.
But he's still a he, so i can terminate; at will... After all, don't need freaks at the funeral home

Oh, BUT! if he Also announces that he's now to be addressed with pronoun ZYGOG, then i Can't fire him?
I need to make money, to pay for the embalming fluids, etc; but the fact that customers will flee is Too Bad?; 8/17/19, 7:21 AM
gilbar said...: Oh wait! IF the trannie decides that zhe needs to be escorted, at ALL times, by zhis service animal (a Shetland pony, that self identifies as a Clydesdale), then i'll have to let the pony follow zhim around?; 8/17/19, 7:25 AM
gilbar said...: zher service animal? follow zher around?; 8/17/19, 7:25 AM
Anonymous said...: MayBee:

I do want to say-- some people who present themselves as the other gender do a very good job and some do not.

I suspect that may be a decent first-pass filter for dividing the genuinely "my genitals don't match my nature" people from the fetishists riding the current extraordinary popular "transgender" hysteria.

It seems to me an employer should have a say as to whether they want this "new" person to work for them.

Sorry, only woke employers get the freedom to hire and fire whom they choose. Found out your employee thinks "gay marriage" is a dumb idea, or voted for Trump? Sack away. Perverted narcissist with a currently fashionable mental disorder who puts off customers and creates an unpleasant work environment for other employees? Well, good thing we have the gummint to step in and protect the latter from unenlightened, bigoted employers.; 8/17/19, 7:27 AM
Ralph L said...: The only makeup on a man at a funeral should be on the corpse.; 8/17/19, 7:44 AM
Ralph L said...: If this fails, will Federal and/or private employee health insurance have to pay for tranny surgeries and hormones, or will it just force the military to retain them?; 8/17/19, 7:48 AM
Howard said...: god made the trannies too; 8/17/19, 8:04 AM
tcrosse said...: god made the trannies too

He had help.; 8/17/19, 8:12 AM
Darrell said...: This is to stop them from becoming one of those "extra-special protected classes." They still have the usual protections.; 8/17/19, 8:17 AM
Lucid-Ideas said...: I agree with the amicus brief. They are not discriminating on the basis of sex. He has a job. He's A man. He will continue to be a man even if he transitions. If he changes into a woman, he is no longer the person they hired.; 8/17/19, 8:20 AM
Matt Sablan said...: "If he changes into a woman, he is no longer the person they hired."

-- How far do you take that? Is this like a divorce -- that you can just decide: "You're not the person I married!" I mean, I think in some cases: Yes. If a Catholic priest becomes agnostic or an atheist, I can't imagine anyone telling the diocese: "Sorry, Father Bob is a priest, and you still have to pay him." So, where do you draw the line?; 8/17/19, 8:26 AM
Matt Sablan said...: On the other hand, if nothing about the employee changed except maybe how they dressed and preferred name/pronoun, was that actually causing any disruption? I don't think it would, and if that's really all the employee was asking for, I wouldn't fire someone who asked for that.

I feel like we don't have all the information here.; 8/17/19, 8:29 AM
Lucid-Ideas said...: @Matt Seblan

I carry it to the same conclusion any employer would carry it under current provisions of law. The person that was hired has decided to become a disruption that will effect their employment. Not accomodating a pre-existing condition (like race)...decided. In the same sense that failure of performance on anyone's part could be construed as becoming a different person, not the one originally hired.

Performance of deliverables is attached to the person. Become a different person and either the parameters of the deliverables must change or a new person may be required.

I'm willing to compromise however. 'He' could be made to re-apply for his job (also very commonplace within corporate employment law). I also think that would be fair.; 8/17/19, 8:38 AM
Ken B said...: Again we see incoherence and prevarication around this issue.

The claim is made sex is not gender. If sex is not gender then transsexual is not transgender. So presentation of gender in this case, trans, is — under that inequality— not a matter of sex at all, and title ix does not apply.
It is about sex not gender.

If however gender is sex, what is all the fuss about? Why do all the activists deny it?; 8/17/19, 8:50 AM
William said...: Sales, particularly casket sales, is not a good fit for a transgendered person. Not everyone in the process of burying a loved one wants to examine and affirm the boundaries of their tolerance at that particular time. I think most transgendered people especially if they worked on a commission against the draw would also come to that conclusion. If, however, they're salaried this offers an excellent opportunity to reverse the many years of discrimination that cross dressers in the funeral industry have faced.....I'd like to see Hollywood step up and take the lead on this hot button issue. Peter Fonda could be buried in full drag as a gesture of support and solidarity with the cross dressing community. A chance for Jane to have another big moment.; 8/17/19, 8:51 AM
Mark said...: There's a misleading, slanted, and essentially dishonest headline. The argument is that a law prohibiting sex discrimination does not apply to claimed "transgender" cases -- which should be undeniable since even the transgender radicals tell us that sex and gender are different things. The argument is not that "federal civil rights laws" do not apply.; 8/17/19, 8:54 AM
rhhardin said...: Feminists, 1922
https://www.shorpy.com/node/24994?size=_original

Those are Thurber's women. He saw an underlying irony.

Now applied to laws.; 8/17/19, 8:56 AM
Lucid-Ideas said...: Scientific question regarding sex. If a mtf trans-whatever is buried today to be disinterred in 1000 years, what sex does a future-coroner place on a certificate all other non-biological information unavailable?

Hypothetically, if trans-whatevers were culturally and legally totally normalized, how would said future-coroner determine - all other information being unavailable - that the skeleton in question was trans?

What if it was lawfully required to label said skeleton as trans? Wouldn't it therefore be necessary theoretically to label all skeletons of undefined provenance as trans?

Taking it to a logical lysenkoistic wouldn't it therefore be possible for history to record that the vast majority of humans were trans. For all we know every male indian corpse in meso-America was wearing a dress and used coconuts for fake breasts.

Transgenderism was removed from the DSM-5 six years ago in a spate of significant controversy. Up until then it was considered a 'paraphilia' since time immemorial.; 8/17/19, 9:05 AM
Amadeus 48 said...: The brief filed by the US sounds about right.; 8/17/19, 9:27 AM
Tom T. said...: "disinterred in 1000 years"

This coroner probably would also be unable to tell whether the person had been white, black, or mixed-race, or whether the person had been born in the US or in Central America. That doesn't mean those classifications have no significance for us today.; 8/17/19, 9:32 AM
Birkel said...: Can we return to a state of property rights and freedom of association? Is that too much to ask?; 8/17/19, 9:34 AM
Birkel said...: Tom T.,
You are wrong about being able to tell those things.
Which reincarnation of which troll are you?; 8/17/19, 9:38 AM
Duke Dan said...: Square the logic of this case with this one https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/an-alaskan-womens-shelter-is-sued-for-turning-away-a-man-in-a-nightgown/; 8/17/19, 9:41 AM
Phil 314 said...: I'm still waiting for the hard break between the T's of LGBT and the L's and the B's.; 8/17/19, 9:45 AM
Michael K said...: It seems to me an employer should have a say as to whether they want this "new" person to work for them.

Yes. This is now a different person. Let it apply for the job again. If somebody is sitting in a cubicle writing code and the quality of work continues, who cares ? A bereaved daughter, choosing a casket for a deceased father would run screaming.; 8/17/19, 9:48 AM
Francisco D said...: I do not know what to make of transgendered people.

There is no scientific evidence to support transgenderism. It is a growing fad that cannot be explained by other than social influences. My wife teaches HS Art and has several kids who are "transitioning". This is a fad for psychologically disturbed kids

We should recall the words of Abraham Lincoln:

Q: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg?

A: Five

Lincoln: No. It is four. The fact that you called the tail a leg does not make it a leg.; 8/17/19, 10:34 AM
Megthered said...: You can put a pig in a dress and call it a girl, it's still a pig.; 8/17/19, 10:37 AM
n.n said...: T's of LGBT and the L's and the B's.

While there have been rumblings about color purity, the spectrum cannot be filtered and separated, lest they lose their claim to "=", albeit notably Pro-Choice.; 8/17/19, 10:50 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Who doesn't need a transsexual mortician?; 8/17/19, 11:19 AM
Sebastian said...: 'In 1964, the ordinary public meaning of ‘sex’ was biological sex. It did not encompass transgender status,' the brief reads."

That was then.; 8/17/19, 11:27 AM
James K said...: “god made the trannies too”

God made anorexics, pedophiles, murderers, rapists, etc. And no, I’m not suggesting those are all equally bad. But mental illness should not be treated with such indifference.; 8/17/19, 11:29 AM
Michael K said...: It is a growing fad that cannot be explained by other than social influences. My wife teaches HS Art and has several kids who are "transitioning". This is a fad for psychologically disturbed kids

One good reason why Johns Hopkins closed the first transgender clinic was the number of patients who returned and asked to be restored to their birth gender. Many of the current crop of nuts are at least smart enough to not have the surgery.; 8/17/19, 11:37 AM
Rosalyn C. said...: "We liked you better as a guy."; 8/17/19, 11:44 AM
Seeing Red said...: An Alaskan Women’s Shelter Is Sued for Turning Away a ‘Man in a Nightgown’

Via Insty.; 8/17/19, 11:44 AM
rcocean said...: According to the Politically Correct JCS, Transgenders are essential to the US Military. Who knew?; 8/17/19, 11:44 AM
Yancey Ward said...: The brief is logically and legally correct, but it won't matter. We have long lost the ability to actually go through the effort of passing a new law when it is easier to just get a court ruling rewriting an old one.; 8/17/19, 11:44 AM
Seeing Red said...: How much is this psychosis costing me the taxpayer?; 8/17/19, 11:48 AM
Seeing Red said...: If you don’t have the parts, stay out of the bathroom.; 8/17/19, 11:52 AM
Birches said...: Maybe, I agree with you.

I wonder if some of the problems with treatment is not just SJW indoctrination, but also how the medical field has changed. It's easy to prescribe pills to help people solve their problems. It's hard to recommend therapy. Therapy doesn't produce standard results and some therapists aren't good. But surgery? That's something a doctor can do. Probably also explains why opioids became an issue: the magic cure.; 8/17/19, 12:12 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “This coroner probably would also be unable to tell whether the person had been white, black, or mixed-race, or whether the person had been born in the US or in Central America. That doesn't mean those classifications have no significance for us today.”

Actually though, could very likely make a decent guess. Cheap home based DNA testing can come pretty close, if some viable DNA can be recovered (likely, since ancient DNA is now routinely decoded - which is how we know that Caucasians and Orientals interbred with Neanderthals, and Negroids did not). And there are apparently some race based skeletal differences that can be used if the person was not overly mixed racially. And, of course, there are significant skeletal differences between the sexes at least from puberty on. Doctors here could probably tell us if some of these predate puberty - for example, some brain differences develop in utero.; 8/17/19, 12:17 PM
Francisco D said...: How much is this psychosis costing me the taxpayer?

If Elizabeth Warren has her way, it will cost a lot to provide "transgender health services" to all.

This is another virtue signaling fad that mostly affects the psychologically disturbed as well as young minds.

Years ago, patients complained that their 15 year-olds said they were bi-sexual. In most cases, the kids were virgins or extremely inexperienced with sex, but being bi-sexual made them seem cool.

It was simpler in the 60's. We grew long hair and wore torn jeans and bell bottoms.; 8/17/19, 12:37 PM
Birkel said...: Francisco D,
That sounds like the best Fraud Creation Racket in the history of medicine.
Imagine how many people would be - on paper - transitioning under a Medicare-for-All scenario?
How many doctors would take those government funds for made-up patients?
How many patients would participate in the fraud for a cut?

My guess, if we get there, is that I could be convinced to hurry the bankruptcy of a corrupt system.
That's one of the lessons of the Solidarity Movement of Lech Walesa.; 8/17/19, 12:49 PM
Night Owl said...: Many of the current crop of nuts are at least smart enough to not have the surgery.

Is it fair to label these kids as "nuts"? Confused is a better word. Our culture has decided that being gay or bi is old-fashioned. Transgendered is the new cool. In the name of PC we tell youngsters that mutilating their sex organs is an acceptable choice. Kids are already struggling to make sense of the flood of emotions --both positive and negative-- they're experiencing about their developing bodies. I'm no psychiatrist, but I suspect that adding too many choices regarding their sexuality probably make things harder for developing adolescent brains.; 8/17/19, 1:00 PM
Michael K said...: Is it fair to label these kids as "nuts"? Confused is a better word.

How about confused nuts ? People can be confused without self mutilation. The pregnant "Man" is an example.

As to ancient DNA, we are daily exposed by the left to anti-scientific bullshit like no racial difference (news to Hawaii which is suing a drug company because it did not warn a racial group about drug differences.

DNA is now being recovered from 100,000 year old bones.; 8/17/19, 1:08 PM
ALP said...: "They're sick narcissistic attention hounds."

This. I am fortunate in that I haven't had to deal with any co-workers transitioning etc. as they appear to be the most self absorbed people ever to walk the earth! Even worse than a female co-worker planning a huge wedding that won't shut up about it.

I am glad I don't have to explain at work: "I have no issue with a person changing genders but for fuck's sake its not the most interesting thing about a person. People that only talk about one thing are boring and I can't be bothered."; 8/17/19, 1:11 PM
Night Owl said...: It was simpler in the 60's. We grew long hair and wore torn jeans and bell bottoms.

The 70s as well. Girls could dress as boys, boys could wear long hair, make-up and heels. We could "let it all hang out", w/o adults telling us we should consider mutilating our sex-organs.

As I said in an comment the other day, I have two nieces that were/are "transgendered" at age 13/14. One grew out of it, the other is 15 and I suspect she'll grow out of it as well. She's already making comments about cute guys. At her age I wanted to be a boy too. But back in the 70s being a tomboy was just a normal phase many girls went through.; 8/17/19, 1:26 PM
Rosalyn C. said...: I appreciate a doctor's point of view. Having a healthy body is one of the greatest gifts a person can have and yet some young people are convinced that subjecting themselves to a lifetime of requiring hormone treatments and surgeries, with no long term studies on the results of these experiments, is best for themselves. And of course saying that makes me transphobic.; 8/17/19, 1:30 PM
Matt said...: Good to see grown-ups in charge.

The Ls and Gs and Bs need to get a handle on the Ts or they're going to lose all the gains they've made. The hatred for the Ts is overwhelming though unspoken. A bunch of white guys larping as women and taking over their spaces and social benefits isnt a good look.

Even if many of the women hate men so much they side with the trannies.; 8/17/19, 1:32 PM
RigelDog said...: It's clear that the 1964 law doesn't address transgender individuals. That said, I have no problem with legislation that would protect people from being fired for presenting themselves as a certain gender. Then again, I would like one's political beliefs to be likewise protected except in the case where it is shown that the job obviously requires a certain political perspective; ie, heading up the DNC.; 8/17/19, 1:59 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Ordinary woman: "Hello? Police? A naked man broke into my house and raped me!"
Woke cop: "How do you know that your rapist was a man?"; 8/17/19, 3:33 PM
eric said...: Blogger Matt Sablan said...
"If he changes into a woman, he is no longer the person they hired."

-- How far do you take that? Is this like a divorce -- that you can just decide: "You're not the person I married!" I mean, I think in some cases: Yes. If a Catholic priest becomes agnostic or an atheist, I can't imagine anyone telling the diocese: "Sorry, Father Bob is a priest, and you still have to pay him." So, where do you draw the line?

8/17/19, 8:26 AM

We let each individual employer decide.

Instead of imposing our ignorant ideas upon them.; 8/17/19, 4:12 PM
gilbar said...: rcocean said...
According to the Politically Correct JCS, Transgenders are essential to the US Military. Who knew?

Trannies are essential; unlike fat people, middle aged people, people without highschool diplomas, people with disabilities, including guys less than 60 inches or more than 80 (or women less than 58)

So, question: If you're a guy, that's 4'11" (59inches)... And you self identify as
a) someone 5 foot tale?
or
b) a woman?

which one makes you essential? Remember! women and men do exactly the same jobs, it's just that women don't have to do as much; 8/17/19, 4:41 PM
Mark said...: “god made the trannies too”

God made anorexics, pedophiles, murderers, rapists, etc.

No -- God made/makes human persons, male and female, as objectively revealed in their bodies.

It is human beings who, by their will, make trannies, anorexics, pedophiles, murderers, rapists, etc.; 8/17/19, 4:54 PM
Mark said...: "They're sick narcissistic attention hounds."

More often than not, they are confused persons who are grossly abused and enabled by those who cater to the whole trans ideology.; 8/17/19, 5:00 PM
Mark said...: Meanwhile, it IS a violation of sex discrimination laws -- as the Trump Administration is now rightly enforcing -- for schools, etc. to allow persons who are objectively male, but assert they are female, to compete in girl's/women's athletics.; 8/17/19, 5:06 PM
Mark Jones said...: Birkel asked, "Can we return to a state of property rights and freedom of association? Is that too much to ask?"

Yes. You know the answer. It *is* too much to ask, even though it would solve all these currently-insoluble problems. My property, my rules. Your property, your rules. We can each hire and fire according to our own values, regardless of the race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, etc of the applicants. Short actual quid pro quo demands (I'll hire you if you sleep with me, not fire you if you sleep with me, etc) nobody but the two of us have any say in who I hire. If want an all transgender staff, yay! I can do it. Straight while males need not apply. If I want all conservative white Baptists, I get what I want. You, as the customer, get to decide whether you wish to patronize my business. And vice versa. If you demand that I bake a cake for your gay wedding, I can tell you to get the hell out of my store, and you have no basis for a lawsuit.

But, yes, that is too much to ask.; 8/17/19, 10:11 PM
bagoh20 said...: If through using your freedom (your choice) you cannot find an employer who respects and values what and who you are, that's not fault of everyone else. Maybe if you really value your personal choice and it is a good one, then you wouldn't need to force others to validate it for you.; 8/17/19, 11:01 PM