Far-right-wing federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk last week got on the GOP’s anti-LGBTQ bandwagon with a ruling that that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ people from workplace discrimination, according to numerous reports, including this onefrom Erin Reed’s Erin In The Morning.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling directly contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act does, indeed, protect LGBTQ people from employment discrimination. The Bostock ruling consolidated three cases before the court, including R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC and Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, involving a discrimination lawsuit originally filed by former Dallasite Daniel Zarda against his former employer, Altitude Express.
Kacsmaryk — nominated for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas by Donald Trump during his first term in the White House to give Texas’ right-wing lawmakers a friendly court in which to challenge civil rights protections they don’t like — issued his ruling in a lawsuit in which the state of Texas and the Heritage Foundation challenged a workplace harassment guidance issued by the EEOC, specifically, guidance on harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity, notes Ogletree.com, the website for Ogletree Deakins, multinational law firm specializing in labor and employment law.
Ogletree Deakins notes that Kacsmaryk’s ruling vacates “portions of the EEOC’s enforcement guidance because the EEOC allegedly ‘exceeded its statutory authority by issuing’ it and by ‘requiring bathroom, dress, and pronoun accommodations inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.’”
Again, Kacsmaryk’s ruling blatantly ignores the “Supreme Court precedent” set in the 2020 Bostock ruling and the fact that the EEOC’s guidance “flowed from” that ruling, Ogletree.com adds.
Reed notes that Kacsmaryk “reached a verdict that Title VII only protects ‘firing someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,’ but that it does not protect transgender or gay people from ‘harassment.’”
Reed says Kacsmaryk is “the go-to jurist for plaintiffs looking to turn extremist ideology into binding precedent,” pointing that he has previously tried to revoke FDA approval of mifepristone, ruled against LGBTQ protections in the Affordable Care Act and “even tried to force Planned Parenthood to pay $2 billion to Texas and Louisiana — a ruling so outrageous that even the deeply conservative Fifth Circuit tossed it.”
— Tammye Nash