"Trump Administration Says Bias Rules Don't Cover Gay Workers"

bloomberg.com

"The U.S. law that has protected workers from gender and racial bias for more than half a century should not be extended to cover gay and lesbian employees because that isn’t what Congress envisioned when it passed the bill, Trump administration lawyers told a federal appeals court. 

Judges must interpret laws based on lawmakers’ intent, and Congress didn’t have the LGBT community in mind when it crafted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Justice Department attorney Hashim Mooppan argued on Tuesday in Manhattan. The agency made its case in defense of a New York skydiving company accused of firing a worker for being gay. 

'Every circuit court for 50 years has said this isn’t covered,' Mooppan said at the hearing in Manhattan, referring to sexual orientation. He then compared the situation to an employer firing a worker for having an affair or being promiscuous, scenarios that he said have both been deemed legal. 

The argument, before a rare full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, comes in one of a handful of employment-discrimination cases that may eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Twenty states protect gay and lesbian workers from bias, and a ruling favorable to the plaintiffs in that court could extend such protections nationwide."