City Joins Brief Urging Supreme Court To Protect LGBTQ Workers From Discrimination
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Pittsburgh is joining nearly 100 mayors and cities across the country in their effort to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in favor of protecting LGBTQ workers from discrimination.
The city has signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief in three cases in which the court will consider whether a federal law that bans employment discrimination based on sex also extends to sexual orientation and gender identity.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, has interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include such protections.
The brief that Pittsburgh has signed onto is encouraging the court to do the same.
In two of the cases, Bostock v. Clayton and Altitude v. Zarda, the plaintiffs claim they were fired from their jobs for being gay.
In the third, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC, plaintiff Aimee Stephens says she was let go from her job at a Michigan funeral home after revealing to her employer that she is a transgender woman.
"Our LGBT neighbors and community members make important contributions to our community, and they just want the same thing as every other resident: to raise a family, to make a decent living, and to feel accepted in the city they call home," Mayor Bill Peduto said in the release.
"No form of discrimination has any place in the City of Pittsburgh, nor in the United States."
The court's next term begins in October.
