In 2013, Aimee Stephens was working for R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Home in Detroit, Michigan when she decided to write a letter. She had worked at the funeral home for nearly six years, and she wanted to tell her boss that she had decided to transition from male to female. She would still be the same person, the same employee, but was going to make the difficult journey to become the person she believed she was inside.
Two weeks later, that same boss responded by firing Aimee. He informed her “what she was ‘proposing to do’ was unacceptable.” Aimee didn’t let that stop her, though. She landed a new job, faced back surgery and dialysis for kidney failure, and decided to fight back. She contacted the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and, for the first time in the agency’s history, the EEOC filed a lawsuit in 2014 against a private employer on behalf of a transgender individual.
District Court
The case started off in U.S. District Court in Detroit. In 2016, two years after initially filing the case, the judge granted summary judgment in favor of the funeral home. The court ruled: “The Funeral Home has met in its initial burden of showing that [employing Aimee] would impose a substantial burden on its ability to conduct business in accordance with its sincerely-held religious beliefs.”
Appeal of the Ruling
Aimee knew almost immediately after hearing of the District Court’s decision that she intended to appeal. In 2017, the ACLU filed a motion to take over as Aimee’s representation due to her concerns that the EEOC would not adequately represent her because it now fell under the authority of the Trump Administration. That motion was granted, and the ACLU officially took over the case.
In March of 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the lower court’s ruling, stating: “Discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transition status, is illegal…”
Highest Court in the Land
Nebraska Attorney General Douglas Peterson, along with representatives from 15 other states, has filed a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to overturn the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Republican officials from Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maine, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Wyoming have joined the fight.
Currently, 20 states and the District of Columbia have laws in place prohibiting employers from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Interestingly, Maine and Utah are 2 of those 20 states, but Republican representatives from those states have joined Peterson in asking the Supreme Court to hear and reverse the case.
While it is not yet certain whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case, as the makeup of the Supreme Court becomes more conservative – as it likely will if Brett Kananaugh’s nomination is confirmed by the Senate, it becomes more likely that the Supreme Court would overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision.
