Supreme Court’s discrimination ruling an important step for people like me
Something pretty significant happened last week, but because we’re living an episode of the Twilight Zone, it faded from the news fairly quickly. The U.S. Supreme Court historically afforded non-discrimination protection for LGBTQ employees. It caught many, me included, by surprise. I anticipated the Court would narrowly rule that Title VII protections don’t apply to sexual orientation and gender identification. There wasn’t much reason to expect otherwise, given the supposed precision Donald Trump exercised packing the court with conservative robots. Fortunately for our nation, he screwed that up, too.
Dissenting justices Alito, Thomas and Cavanaugh did their best Sergeant Schultz impressions by continuing to argue that a statute’s words can only mean what they meant to those who wrote them, when they were written. That’s befuddling, because every time our founders wrote things like “all men are created equal” and “justice for all,” I’m pretty sure they didn’t have women in mind. And they sure weren’t talking about blacks.
As a small business owner, I’ve been open about my struggle with government regulations. It’s not that I’m opposed to basic ground rules surrounding safety and decency. It’s just most regulations start as a well-intentioned fix and end up being volumes of legalese requiring an attorney to decipher. And then there are the regulations that appear to fix nothing, or those which can be violated without doing anyone injury. Operating a business begins to resemble playing a game without having a clue about the rules.
Most small businesses can’t afford and therefore don’t have human resource departments. I’ve owned my small shop for 25 years, so I am Human Resources at my company. And while I should have fired myself years ago, it wasn’t because of who I love. I’ve never had a problem with non-discrimination laws, even though they didn’t include gay folks like me. Not discriminating based upon race, religion, sex, national origin, disability and age would seem to be simple notions of respect and decency, not to mention common sense. The need for non-discrimination laws suggests otherwise. How sad is that?
For those who still believe in discrimination with all your hearts, don’t fret. Despite the court’s ruling, you can still harass and mistreat LGBTQ people in our daily lives, and it’s all perfectly legal. There are still critical gaps in our national and state non-discrimination laws. Essential areas such as fair housing, public accommodations, federal programs and healthcare are still largely unaddressed. And then of course good old HB 142 is still on the books in North Carolina. That’s the “compromise” that replaced HB 2, which was supposed to prevent gay-sex Tupperware parties and protect us from transgender toilet monsters.
Many of the intellectually lazy legislators who brought us that mess are still there. I’m sure they’d relish another fight about it. They love it when voters focus on who we are versus what we believe. It’s easier for them to talk about intramural cultural issues than to discuss more complicated policy that actually improves people’s lives.
There are literally signs everywhere we’re at a crossroads in our nation’s history. The choices are to support the notion of equality, liberty and justice for all, or not to. The court has taken us one important step farther in the right direction.
For those of you upset about the government now having more power to tell you what you can and can’t do as individuals, I recommend finding a mentor with experience on how to cope. Just ask anyone who is LGBTQ, non-Caucasian, or has a uterus. We have more than a century of experience and we’ll be glad to walk you through this.