In their amicus brief to the Supreme Court, the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, writes, “Simply, Aimee Stephens is a man. And joining the Trump administration and conservatives in the fight over sex-based discrimination and stereotypes are several somewhat unexpected allies: so-called “radical feminist” groups with long records of opposing the rights of transgender people. Now that precedent is being put to the test. The court sided with Hopkins, establishing a legal standard for sex stereotyping that has fundamentally transformed the workplace for women for the past 30 years. Her bosses instructed her to wear more makeup and skirts to work in order to get the promotion. In that case, Ann Hopkins was denied promotions and a partnership because she didn’t look, dress, or behave in a stereotypically feminine enough manner. The ACLU attorneys representing Stephens, in turn, argued that their client was fired because Stephens failed to perform the sex role her employer expected of her, violating the legal precedent established in 1989 in Price Waterhouse v. Charles William Kelly/ACLUĮven President Trump’s Department of Justice filed a brief in August arguing in part that Stephens was fired by Harris Funeral Homes not for her gender identity but because she refused to follow her employer’s dress code, which requires men - and by “men,” the DOJ means men of “biological sex” - to wear a suit with pants and women to wear a dress or a skirt. Now the Supreme Court will hear her sex discrimination case. Aimee Stephens sued her employer, Harris Funeral Homes, for firing her for being transgender. Meanwhile, a slew of conservative and religious groups have claimed the right to fire anyone for being trans. Major medical organizations, advocacy groups, and legal experts have weighed in mostly in favor of allowing trans people to be free of discrimination at work. In recent weeks, a flurry of amicus briefs have been filed in the case R.G. How anti-trans “radical feminist” groups could affect the outcome of a civil rights discrimination case Harris Funeral Homes appealed to the Supreme Court, which took up the case and will hear oral arguments on October 8. “An employer cannot discriminate on the basis of transgender status without imposing its stereotypical notions of how sexual organs and gender identity ought to align.” “It is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex,” the court said in its decision. Last March, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in her favor. According to court documents, Rost testified that he fired Stephens because “ was no longer going to represent as a man. Stephens sued, claiming her dismissal was discrimination on the basis of her sex, setting off a flurry of legal activity. Rost told her that it was “not going to work out.” “As distressing as this is sure to be to my friends and some of my family, I need to do this for myself and for my own peace of mind, and to end the agony in my soul.”Īfter he read the note, Rost simply said, “Okay.” Stephens was fired two weeks later. In truth, I have had to live with it every day of my life and even I do not fully understand it myself,” she wrote. “I realize that some of you may have trouble understanding this. In 2013, she gave the funeral home’s owner, Thomas Rost, a note that she also shared with friends and colleagues. Though she loved her job at Harris, where she had worked her way up from apprentice to funeral director, she felt she had to hide who she was there. She had known since she was 5 years old that she was a girl and had been living as a woman outside of work for some time. Aimee Stephens had been working in funeral services for 20 years, nearly six of which were at Harris Funeral Homes, when she came out to her boss as transgender.
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