A lawyer for Trump‘s Department of Justice argued this week that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect LGBTQ Americans from being fired because of their sexual orientation—a complete reversal of the government’s position on such matters under previous presidents.
The Justice Department argument, before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, came in the case of Donald Zarda who claims he was fired by his company, Altitude Express, for being gay, reports Newsweek newsweek.com.
The agency inserted itself, even though the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had already sided with Zarda, arguing that LGBTQ employees are protected by Title VII of the landmark Civil Rights law.
That made the hearing odd, to say the least.
Newsweek reports:
“It’s a little bit awkward for us to have the federal government on both sides of the case,” observed Judge Rosemary Pooler at one point in the oral arguments.
But Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan pressed on anyway, opposing the EEOC, which was still run by an Obama administration holdover when the case first reached the court.
“Employers under Title VII are permitted to consider employees’ out-of-work sexual conduct,” Mooppan told the judges. “There is a common sense, intuitive difference between sex and sexual orientation.”
The lawyer for Zarda’s side disagreed in the most basic terms.
“(It’s) as conservative as it could possibly get: if having sex with a man is okay for a woman, it has to be okay for a man as well,” Greg Nevins of Lambda Legal, tells Newsweek. “You cannot apply a different rule based on gender, according to the law. Apparently, that wasn’t conservative enough for the DOJ.”
The Department of Justice has repeatedly railed against LGBTQ protections in multiple high-profile cases under Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Read more on this issue at:
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-doj-fired-being-gay-lgbt-issues-jeff-sessions-673398.
