The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc in Detroit unlawfully discriminated against Aimee Stephens, formerly known as Anthony Stephens, based on her sex.
Stephens claimed she was fired after she told her boss she planned to transition from male to female.
The Court of Appeals ruled the firing was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Every federal appeals court to consider the issue has said that discriminating against transgender workers is a form of unlawful sex bias. But the 6th Circuit was the first to consider a religious defense in such a case.
Funeral Home owner Thomas Rost claimed that his work was "a religious service for grieving families" and that employing a transgender woman would be a distraction to customers.
Rost said he could not be held liable for discriminating against Stephens under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars the government from burdening an individual’s religious practice.
But Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore, writing for the court on Wednesday, said Rost could not use his customers’ “presumed biases” as an excuse for firing Stephens.
Tolerating Stephens’s understanding of her sex and gender identity is not tantamount to supporting it.
--Moore
The decision reversed a 2016 ruling by a federal judge in Detroit who had said that Rost was shielded from the lawsuit because he operated his business “as a ministry.”
The case began when the EEOC filed on behalf of Stephens in 2014. Stephens is represented by the ACLU.
Rost also said that because his company pays for employees’ work clothes, he would be forced to violate his religious beliefs by paying for Stephens to wear women’s clothing. But the court said he was not legally required to pay for the clothes, so it would not burden his religious practice.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Stephens in conjunction with The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, praised the court’s decision as “an exciting and important victory for transgender people and allied communities across the country.”