U.S. court rules 1964 civil rights law
protects LGBT workers from bias
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[April 05, 2017]
(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court,
for the first time ever, on Tuesday ruled that federal civil rights law
protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees from
discrimination in the workplace.
The ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago
represents a major legal victory for the gay rights movement.
In its 8-3 decision, the court bucked decades of rulings that gay people
are not protected by the milestone civil rights law, because they are
not specifically mentioned in it.
"For many years, the courts of appeals of this country understood the
prohibition against sex discrimination to exclude discrimination on the
basis of a person's sexual orientation," Chief Judge Diane Wood wrote
for the majority. "We conclude today that discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination."
The ruling also allows a lawsuit to go forward in Indiana, where
plaintiff Kimberly Hively said she lost her community college teaching
job because she is lesbian.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Apr/05/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png)
"I have been saying all this time that what happened to me wasn't right
and was illegal," Hively said in a statement released by the gay rights
legal organization Lambda Legal, which represents her.
In its decision to reinstate Hively's 2014 lawsuit, which was thrown out
at the local level in Indiana, the Court of Appeals ruled that
protections against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 protect people from job discrimination based on their sexual
orientation.
In so doing, the full appeals court overruled a decision by a smaller
panel of its judges to uphold the district court's decision in the
college's favor.
To reach its conclusion, the court examined 20 years of rulings by the
U.S. Supreme Court on issues related to gay rights, including the high
court's 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry, Wood
wrote.
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the question of whether the Civil
Rights Act protects gays and lesbians, she wrote.
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![](../images/040517pics/news_a3.jpg)
The actual Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 document and
pen is on display in the East Room of the White House in Washington,
DC, U.S. on July 1, 2004. REUTERS/Mannie Garcia/File Photo
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The three dissenting judges said the majority had inappropriately
used its own power to change the civil rights law, which does not
explicitly protect people on the basis of sexual orientation, and
which for decades has been interpreted as excluding that protection.
"Today the court jettisons the prevailing interpretation and
installs the polar opposite," Judge Diane Sykes wrote in dissent.
In her lawsuit, Hively said that Ivy Tech Community College in South
Bend passed her over for a permanent position and refused to renew
her contract as an adjunct professor after school administrators
learned she is a lesbian.
On Tuesday, Ivy Tech spokesman Jeff Fanter said the college had not
done that.
"Ivy Tech Community College rejects discrimination of all types,"
Fanter said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "Sexual orientation
discrimination is specifically barred by our policies."
The college would not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the
decision, Fanter said, but instead would argue in District Court
that it had not discriminated against Hively as the lawsuit goes
forward.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Aug/26/images/ads/current/directory_buttons.png)
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in
Sacramento, California; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by G
Crosse and Leslie Adler)
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