The Supreme Court has rejected a lesbian who says she was forced out of her job for being gay
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a lesbian who said she was forced to leave her job because of her sexuality.
Jameka Evans has said that she was harassed, physically assaulted and denied equal pay at her job as a security guard at Georgia Regional Hospital.
This, she said, was because of her sexuality and her nonconformity with gender norms.
The harassment was such, Evans has said, that she remembers “on breaks just going into work closets and crying because I was so stressed out.
“I took the stress home with me every day. I didn’t sleep well. And I dreaded going to work.”
In March, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her, finding that workplace discrimination based on sexuality was not included under Title VII of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act.
And just months later, President Donald Trump’s administration argued exactly the same in a New York federal appeals court.
Evans was refused a federal hearing then, and has now been left further in limbo after taking her case to the highest court in the land, only to be turned away.
If the Supreme Court had heard Evans’ appeal and found in her favour, it would have been a big step towards ensuring that LGB people are protected from workplace discrimination.
Greg Nevins, employment fairness project director for Lambda Legal, which has taken Evans’ case, accused the US’s highest court of standing in the way of progress.
“By declining to hear this case, the Supreme Court is delaying the inevitable and leaving a split in the circuits that will cause confusion across the country,” he said.
The fight, however, was far from over, Nevins added.
“But this was not a ‘no’ but a ‘not yet,’ and rest assured that Lambda Legal will continue the fight, circuit by circuit as necessary, to establish that the Civil Rights Act prohibits sexual orientation discrimination.
“The vast majority of Americans believe that LGBT people should be treated equally in the workplace.
“The public is on the right side of history; it’s unfortunate that the Supreme Court has refused to join us today, but we will continue to invite them to do the right thing and end this hurtful balkanisation of the right of LGBT people to be out at work.”
This year marked the first time a US federal court decided that Title VII banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found in favour of Kimberly Hively, a community college instructor who was fired for being a lesbian.
