Federal judge rules that a funeral home can't fire one of its funeral directors for cross-dressing

If you're like most Americans, and get all your "newz" from the mainstream media, you never hear about the endless number of court RULINGS by leftist judges that have turned this nation upside-down.  It's been overrun by leftists at every level of government, the courts and the media. And here's example #459,089:

Below is the soothing, anodyne version approved by your rulers at AI:

Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC was a landmark legal battle in the United States, primarily concerning the issue of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued a Michigan funeral home for firing an employee, Stephens, after she came out as transgender and stated [his] intention to begin dressing and presenting as a woman at work. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in favor of the EEOC, holding that Title VII's prohibition against sex discrimination also applied to "gender identity."

Here's what really happened:

In the Peoples' Republic of Michigan a 250-pound male employed as a "funeral director" by a funeral home started dressing as a woman, including at work. The owner of the funeral home--having years of experience with the stress family members are under when a family member dies--felt that his clients being confronted with a cross-dressing employee would very likely hurt his business. 

Accordingly, he told the employee to dress as a man when at work.  The employee refused, and was fired. 

The employee immediately complained to the federal "Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." Congress had passed a law--"Title VII"--saying it was now illegal to fire an employee "on the basis of sex." And that if an employer fired an employee "on the basis of sex," the employee didn't have to worry about suing, cuz duh gummint would sue the employer--at taxpayer expense.

The issue here was whether an employer--in this case the owner of a funeral home--had the right to make a business decision that an employee dress in attire appropriate to a funeral director.  And if the employee refused, demanding to be a drag queen at work, could the employer fire that employee without being sued into poverty?

The district court said the Religious Freedom Restoration Act allowed the owner to run his business in accordance with his sincerely-held religious convictions..  The EEOC--working with unlimited taxpayer dollars, thanks to congress--appealed.

You need to know that the EEOC is a cesspool of leftist gay fanatics, whose rulings routinely ruin small-business owners who don't toe the Democrat/liberal/left line.  The EEOC charged the funeral home with violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by (1) firing the plaintiff on the basis of gender and (2) for "administering a discriminatory dress code policy."

The Sixth Circuit unanimously ruled that the employee's cross-dressing did NOT impose a burden on the religious beliefs of the funeral home’s operator, and thus the firing was NOT protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

 

The appellate court decision barred business owners from firing a cross-dressing employee even when the employee's appearance would arguably harm the business.  Just one tiny problem: the actual, y'know, LAW said "sex," NOT "gender."  

But don't worry, citizen: laws don't actually mean what they say.  Dat jus' silly right-wing-extremist talk!  Laws can mean something totally different from their actual, y'know, language--as long as some judge says so. 

The owners of the funeral home appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted cert for the limited question of whether Title VII prohibits discrimination against transgender people based on (1) their status as transgender or (2) sex stereotyping.   That rigged the outcome from the start.

The court ruled against the employer and for the EEOC and their tranny plaintiff.  Here are the main findings, from one of the hundreds of legal-expert and pro-tranny websites that slobbered over the case.

1. In a 6-3 decision the Supreme Court affirmed the Sixth Circuit's ruling, holding that Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity. 

Of course the actual law says nothing about "gender identity."  The court ruled that by using the word "sex," congress intended to include transgenders.

2. The court reasoned that firing someone for being transgender is inherently a form of sex discrimination because it is based on a person's failure to conform to traditional sex stereotypes.

The ruling significantly broadened the scope of Title VII's protections, making it clear that transgender individuals are protected from employment discrimination

Ahhh, "the ruling significantly broadened the scope of Title VII's protections," y'say.  No shit: the court re-wrote the law.  For young Americans: it had long been settled that the Constitution does NOT give even the f'n Supreme Court the power to write laws.  The court can rule a law unconstitutional, but has never had the power to re-write laws.  But such is the hold the tranny mafia has over all courts that they did re-write this law-- and got clean away with it

. 

The owners of the funeral home were ordered to pay $250,000 to the plaintiff

The core issue is whether congress intended the law to include trannies.  In their liberal/Dem obsession to make trannies even more of a "specially-protected class," the court didn't even debate this, and no arguments to this point were allowed.  Instead, even though the law passed by congress plainly said discrimination on the basis of "sex" was illegal, the court simply decreed that what congress actually meant was "gender."

Except that as noted above, congress didn't say that, nor did they mean it.  But here's Gorsuch:

An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.

Stephens was NOT fired for being tranny, but because the business owner knew he'd be damaged by having as a funeral director someone who looked like a cross-dresser.  Of course most liberal/Dem outlets immediately spun this to "fired for looking insufficiently masculine."

Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. ...

The tranny mafia endlessly screams that SEX and "gender" are NOT the same.  But to reach the decision the court wanted, it had to reject that assertion--but quietly, of course, without announcing it explicitly.  Instead it decreed the opposite: that when congress wrote "sex" in the bill, lawmakers intended that to include "gender."

But if that were true, why didn't congress write "or gender" into the law, eh?

Because not only did congress never intend that result, they never even considered it. 

Now the topper: Gorsuch decreed that if an employer fires an employee for cause, but the employee is a member of a "specially-protected class," the employer is automatically guilty even if the employee's "gender" wasn't the reason for the firing.  Normally the parties would present evidence in court as to why the person was fired, but recall that cert was granted for the very limited purpose of determining if Title VII meant "gender" when it said "sex."  Gorsuch decreed that since the plaintiff was a member of this new, specially-protectedclass--ignoring the fact that "sex" is not "gender"--that was enough to violate Title VII.

When it comes to Title VII...a defendant cannot avoid liability just by citing some other factor that contributed to its challenged employment decision. So long as the plaintiff ’s sex was one but-for cause of that decision, that is enough to trigger [a violation of] the law.

Again, "sex" is not "gender," and was not envisioned by congress when it wrote the law. 

Gorsuch admitted that "Congress in 1964 likely did not have the LGBTQ community in mind when it banned discrimination based on sex. but still said "the words of the statute are clear."  Yes, certainly:, the words are quite clear.  And the actual words of the "law" clearly do NOT say "or gender."

The decision should have gone 5-4 for the funeral home, but Gorsuch and the goofy John Roberts joined the four liberals on the court to swing the decision.  (Roberts is the guy who notoriously rejected the claim of the Obozo regime that the "individual mandate" that was key to Obamacare was NOT at tax.  Obozo's minions were instructed to take that position for political purposes, not realizing that the only way Obozocare would be Constitutional was if it WAS a tax, since the Constitution gives congress the power to impose ANY kind of tax.  The court re-wrote Obozocare in other ways too, to cure defects.  Not legal, but...if you're the highest court in the land, who can overrule ya, eh?)

In a free country a business owner should be able to employ whomever he chooses, instead of being forced by an agenda-driven, social-outcome-driven legal system to continue to employ people who refuse to help put the best face on his business.

Thanks to decades of liberal infestation, the U.S. is clearly no longer a free country.  The Sixth Circuit decision has moved the ratchet one more notch in the direction of tyranny, depravity, and insanity.

As an aside: EVERY summary of this case calls the plaintiff "Aimee Stephens" and uses female pronouns.  Here's the former employee.

There's a really illuminating side-note to this:  The Democrat party has a leftist propaganda organ called "Media Matters for America," which posted a screechy piece on how duh NY Times and a dozen other outlets engaged in "deadnaming." 

Deadnaming is the act of referring to a trans person by “the name they used before they transitioned” rather than their affirming name. Like misgendering, it is a form of harassment that can feel invalidating to a trans person’s identity. 

It can also be “completely draining to a trans person’s mental health and can trigger anxiety, depression and gender dysphoria.”  In 2018, [pre-Musk]Twitter banned the practice...to protect users from harassment.  Right-wing media and anti-LGBTQ groups regularly deadname trans people in an effort to demean and delegitimize their identity.

Hours after publishing its initial reporting, The New York Times removed Stephens’ deadname.”

Aimee Stephens was born with a different first name.  He never had a court-ordered name change, so using his given name was proper.  But good Democrat propaganda rags are forbidden to do that by the tranny mafia.  And of course they're totally eager to go along with the farce.

I checked 100 reports on the SC decision.  After the Times was screamed at--and instantly deleted the original name and fawningly apologized for the offense--I could only find one outlet out of 100 that  published Stephens' real name.  That's how much power the Media has handed to the tranny mafia.