Supreme Court affirms protections for LGBTQ workers

Monday’s Supreme Court ruling protects LGBTQ people from employment discrimination caused a mixture of disbelief and relief among the community’s advocates and allies in Spokane.

Maj. Margaret Witt found out during an ecstatic call with her longtime American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.

The decision was made based on the cases of three people who lost their jobs due to sexual orientation and gender identification, according to the Associated Press. Witt knows what it’s like to be the person behind a decision like this – she was a decorated flight nurse who was outed and fired, and her lawsuit pushed Congress and the Obama administration to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“I can tell you from from the moment that they are affected by someone else’s poor decision that it’s devastating and it’s painful,” Witt said. “You can’t comprehend that yesterday you were fine and today you’re not fit to serve. That was was how I felt, and I know that they felt the same way, and it breaks my heart.”

Stacey Sampson, FatGirl Yoga owner, said when she heard the news Monday morning her first reaction was relief.

“It’s a mixed bag of emotions,” Sampson said. “Part of me finds it a little bit preposterous that we’re even having to have this discussion, that it’s even up for debate anymore. That being said, I’m also a realist, and it was a huge sigh of relief to know that the decision was made in our favor.”

Sampson said that when she created FatGirl Yoga, she wanted to create an open space “because that’s who I am. I just wouldn’t see it any other way, and the fact that there are people in businesses out there that do see another way is just astonishing to me.”

Jaina Bledsoe, a transgender woman who lives in Republic, raised the transgender flag outside the Ferry County Courthouse Monday morning. She had emailed Ferry County Sheriff Ray Maycumber about her intent to do so beforehand.

“I was a little disappointed because the sheriff, I invited him to show up, he didn’t show up,” Bledsoe said.

Bledsoe, a veteran, had originally planned raising the blue, pink and white flag as a protest to the Trump administration’s decision to overturn Obama-era protections for transgender people against sex discrimination in health care. When she heard the news of the ruling, it became both a protest and a celebration.

“And it’s Pride Month,” Bledsoe said. “Ferry County doesn’t celebrate Pride.”

The flag was flown for a couple hours before it was removed.

Ferry County Commissioner Nathan Davis said the transgender flag had to be removed because Bledsoe had removed the American flag. When informed that photos of the flagpole showed the American flag was still at the top, he said he must have been misinformed and declined to comment.

Janice Miller Krummel, Inland Northwest Business Alliance executive director, said in an email that Monday’s decision will have an effect on Spokane because the “LGBTQ+ community and specifically our transgender population, do not feel welcome and do not feel safe in our community.”

“This decision is the check the Trump Administration has desperately been needing,” Miller Krummel said. “I hate that it took this long to get here, that it was a question that even needed to be answered, that we are still fighting whether or not it is okay to discriminate on the basis of a person’s humanity, and I’m so glad that it came when it did.”

Lance Kissler, Spokane Human Rights Commission chair, said the Supreme Court decision was important to the area even though Washington already had these protections in law.

“I think for many of us who may have friends, family, coworkers who live in North Idaho or live here in Spokane and work over in Idaho, that state does not have those protections,” Kissler said. “I know a lot of my friends and colleagues in the area are concerned and have been, because there just hasn’t been a definite ruling. It’s been mostly an interpretation, right until today.”

Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln, Add the Words Idaho chair, said she was initially in disbelief when she heard the news. Add the Words Idaho is a volunteer-led nonprofit (originally set up as a political action committee) that was created “with the intent of trying to convince the Idaho Legislature to update the Idaho Human Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity, which would extend protections from discrimination and housing, employment and public accommodation,” Gaona-Lincoln said.

Today’s court ruling covered the employment, but Idaho still has work to do with housing and public accommodation, she said. Gaona-Lincoln, who lives in Caldwell with her wife and toddler, said she personally feels safe and supported, and if she were in a position where she was being discriminated against, she would pursue a case.

But she knows that her position is privileged.

“Folks who are living either without a support system, who are living paycheck to paycheck or who are under the leadership of an employer who may not necessarily agree with their lifestyle, I think it certainly creates an additional risk for them,” Gaona-Lincoln said. “That has to heavily be taken into consideration before they were to try to move forward on such a case.”

The Supreme Court decision ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected LGBTQ people from employment discrimination was 6-3. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority opinion.

He wrote, “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”