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There was a poetic bit of symmetry in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in which the court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that bans employment discrimination on the basis of sex, also prohibits employers from firing an employee simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The high court’s first ever ruling on gay rights came in 1986, in a case that also began in Georgia but produced a very different result, as the justices upheld a state law criminalizing sodomy. That ruling was overturned in 2003, and in 2015 the court held that same-sex couples had a fundamental right to marry. The Bostock ruling seemingly brings the court’s LGBTQ rights jurisprudence full-circle.
It’s a historic decision, but especially so in South Carolina, which doesn’t have any state laws that protect LGBTQ employees from discrimination. Some federal circuit courts of appeals had already held that Title VII protected LGBTQ employees, but the 4th Circuit, which includes South Carolina, had not.
“This is a big deal. It’s a very significant decision,” said Reggie Belcher, a certified employment and labor law specialist with Turner Padget in Columbia. “This is the first time we’ve had a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s 6-3 majority, acknowledged that Title VII’s authors certainly hadn’t intended to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ employees. Nevertheless, an employer who fires someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity discriminates against them based on traits or actions it wouldn’t have questioned in...