11th Ciruit decision could negate the need for ENDA…

Today I'm not in a great mood, but instead of dumping that here or the next post. I'm going to do a couple short posts and then ramble, to keep my words in separate piles. So first, I want to highlight this decision by the 11th Circuit Court that found that gender discrimination counts as sex discrimination. This case is noteworthy because all three justices concurred on this point, including William H. Pryor. Quoting the article:

Pryor's nomination to the bench was opposed by LGBT groups, who noted that he had filed an amicus brief supporting sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. He also cast the deciding vote to oppose hearing a challenge to Florida's law that banned gay people from adopting.

So this is someone who is very conservative finding that indeed, the existing laws on sex discrimination should already protect us, but has not because companies claimed it's not the same thing to discriminate against trans workers as it is to discriminate a cisgendered employee. Well the judges don't agree, even the judge who doesn't like us. So that's a victory with huge impact all over the country already.

At this point, however, there is a high chance that this will go to the last appeal, the Supreme Court. But, based on Pryor's decision to concur, I feel optimistic that current sex discrimination laws could be found adequate gender protection. So we can use that federal precedent to start knocking some kuckleheads into complying with the law. With a legal precedent like this, the need for ENDA would be made obsolete.

This is another wait and see case, much like the Mayo patent suit I reported on a few posts back, but as the rest of my news today is grim, I want to bring this to your attention first and say "But it's not all bad."