Kramer Levin Files Supreme Court Brief For Religious Organizations Supporting Application of Title VII to Bar Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

Kramer Levin has filed an amicus brief on behalf of numerous major religious organizations and over 700 individual faith leaders – including the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, among others – in the consolidated cases now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court addressing whether Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex bars employers from making hiring and firing decisions based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The brief, filed in Bostock v. Clayton County (consolidated with Altitude Express v. Zarda and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), to be argued on October 8, documents the growing support among mainstream U.S. religions for fair and equal treatment under the law for LGBTQ individuals based on the common belief, shared across many faiths and equally rooted in Supreme Court civil rights jurisprudence, in the fundamental dignity and worth of each individual person. 

The brief opposes arguments raised in amicus briefs supporting the employers in these cases suggesting that barring employment discrimination against LGBTQ individuals threatens religious liberty.  Contrary to the suggestion that such enforcement necessarily conflicts with religious belief and practice, the Kramer Levin brief demonstrates that a growing number of mainstream faiths embrace equality for all individuals regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.  The brief argues that evenhanded enforcement of neutral civil rights laws does not threaten religious liberty and that, to the contrary, permitting broad religious exemptions from such enforcement would improperly favor one set of religious views over others and threaten to widely undermine civil rights enforcement.

Read the complete brief here.