U.S. Supreme Court Forcing Christians To Hire Transgenders?
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – The U.S. Supreme Court will effectively decide whether Christian and conservative employers can be forced to hire transgender people and gays. Its case centers around a late funeral director who, in 2013, lost her job after telling her boss she would transition from male to female.
Last month, the top court granted permission to widow Donna Stephens to be substituted in as the plaintiff after her wife Aimee Stephens, 59, died May 12 due to kidney disease.
Aimee Stephens worked for six years as a funeral director and embalmer at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes while presenting as a man. In 2013, she gave her boss, Thomas Rost, a letter explaining she was transgender and would begin following the home’s dress code for women. Rost fired Stephens two weeks later, offering a severance.
He told the court he dismissed Stephens because “she was no longer going to represent himself as a man” and “wanted to dress as a woman.” Violating the dress code is a fireable offense, especially towards grieving people, his attorneys argue.
Stephens disagreed. “I was fired for being transgender. The Supreme Court should make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Stephens, who worked for decades as a funeral director, was reportedly raised in a conservative Southern Baptist family.
However, The Washington Post newspaper quoted Stephens as saying that she “struggled to understand the gender dysphoria” that “she experienced for so many years.” After seeing a therapist “and coming out to her wife” in 2009, Stephens “realized there were others like her,” the paper claimed.
Trial observers say that any court ruling is due to increase partisan tensions. If the court does not extend protections, it will anger gay and transgender activists. If it rules for them, the outcry is expected from religious groups worried that their ability to hire people who align with their beliefs will be restricted.
The plaintiffs demand that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is also protecting gay and transgender people from employment discrimination.
Chief Justice John Roberts has, however, reflected concerns within the court about a reinterpretation of the legislation. Roberts said it could strip protections from “religious people” with objections to hiring gay and “transgender people for jobs that their faiths prohibit such people from performing.
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