Photo of the official seal of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) taken on December 2007.
Employers who discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) workers are violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act, stated the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Thursday, July 16. The decision was made in the case of “Complainant v. Anthony Foxx.” The Act protects LGBT workers under Title VII, which condemns discrimination “based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”
“Sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination because it necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee’s sex,” stated the EEOC in a 17-page decision. “That is, an employee alleging discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is alleging that his or her employer took his or her sex into account by treating him/her differently for associating with a person of the same sex.”
The EEOC is a federal agency that enforces civil rights laws in the workplace, investigates discrimination charges, and settles discrimination suits. The agency came to a 3-2 decision in a case that began in Dec. 2012. The plaintiff was a homosexual male supervisory air traffic control specialist at Air Traffic Control Tower/International Airport in Miami, Florida. He filed a claim against the Department of Transportation Agency (Federal Aviation Administration).
“In a decision dated Thursday, the EEOC said that employers who discriminate against LGBT workers are violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination “based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin,” reported Time on Friday. “In the past, courts have ruled that Title VII does not cover discrimination based on sexual orientation because it’s not explicitly mentioned in the law, but the EEOC’s ruling disputes that reasoning.”
The claim was filed when the plaintiff was not chosen for an open front line manager position. He cited that the reason he was not chosen was due to his sexual orientation. There are many claims in existence like his. In the first three months of 2015, LGBT workers filed 603 discrimination charges against employers. The EEOC reports that 765 charges were filed in 2013 and 1,093 charges were filed in 2014.
