On Monday, April 22, 2019, the United States Supreme Court granted petitions for certiorari for three cases that center on the question of whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) protects LGBT rights. Two of the cases, Altitude Express v. Zarda and Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, concern whether, under Title VII, sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of an emplo
yee’s sexual orientation. The third case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, poses the question of whether the Title VII prohibition against sex discrimination prohibits gender identity discrimination. Due to the similarity of the issues, the Supreme Court has consolidated the Altitude Express and Bostock matters for briefing and oral argument. The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision in each of these three matters is significant because it will settle current Circuit splits, as well as disagreement among Agencies in the Federal government, on the scope of Title VII.
As discussed in a prior blog post, in Altitude Express, the Second Circuit joined the Seventh Circuit in finding that Title VII does protect employees from being discriminated against based on sexual orientation. Specifically, the Second Circuit held that the text of Title VII necessarily includes sexual orientation as “…the most natural reading of [Title VII]’s prohibition on discrimination ‘because of…sex’ is that it extends to sexual orientation discrimination because sex is necessarily a factor in sexual orientation.” The Seventh Circuit in Hively v. Tech Community College, similarly determined that a reading of Title VII in the current cultural and legal context includes sexual orientation in the scope of Title VII. Continue reading
In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Auer v. Robbins, establishing the standard for what has become known as Auer deference (or Seminole Rock Deference from Bowles v. Seminole Rock and Sand Co. (1945)). This decision and the standard it set is significant for employers because it gives substantial latitude to federal agencies, like the Department of Labor, to interpret their own ambiguous standards. Specifically, in Auer, the Supreme Court held that an Agency’s, in this case the Department of Labor, interpretation of its own standards is “controlling unless ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.’” In other words, if it’s not clear what is required by the plain language of the standard, the Court will generally defer to the Agency’s own reasonable interpretations of its regulations.