A Longmont LGBTQ activist hailed Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling aimed at protecting gay and trangender employees from workplace discrimination as groundbreaking.
“This is truly monumental,” Ann Noonan said. “It was surprising and a little bit shocking but it confirms what we have been fighting for all these years.”
Along with Noonan, the 6-3 decision from a court with a conservative majority, stunned other LGBTQ community members, said Mardi Moore, executive director of OUT Boulder County.
OUT Boulder County educates, advocates and provides services for the county’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgrender and queer communities.
The ruling also came on the heels of a decision by the Trump Administration on Friday to rollback health care protections for transgender patients.
“I am so pleasantly shocked,” Moore said Monday. “I can barely believe it. This is just historic and this decision just never crossed my mind.”
The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018 also erased a strong voice for LGBTQ individuals, Moore said. Kennedy wrote the 2015 majority decision that legalized same-sex marriage.
“This was the first decision on this issue since Kennedy left the court so we anticipated the worst,” Moore said.
Noonan said it was especially gratifying that Neal Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion.
“I guess a little bit of Colorado rubbed off on him,” she said. Gorsuch was born and spent his early life in Denver.
The justices ruled that gay and transgender people are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex as well as race, color, national origin and religion.
Workplace bias against gay and transgender employees had remained legal in 28 states, according to Reuters. The ruling was based on two gay rights cases from Georgia and New York and a transgender rights case from Michigan.
The court agreed with the plaintiffs in the three cases that discrimination against gay and transgender workers was inherently based on their sex and consequently was illegal.
Moore said for decades LGBTQ members had lived and worked under a system that penalized them for being themselves.
“It was the old saying: ‘Get married on Saturday, get fired on Monday,’” Moore said.
Boulder County commissioners in a joint statement said they were grateful for “a long overdue decision from the United States Supreme Court to afford that the 964 Civil Rights Act does indeed protect the LGBTQ+ community.”
“Our wish for society, and for Boulder County in particular, is to nurture a community where everyone is welcomed, valued and protected equally,” the commissioners said in the statement.
Monday’s decision is part of a change in how people view LGBTQ individuals both locally and nationally, Noonan said.
That includes acceptance of LGBTQ members in the military, support for same-sex marriage and even poll numbers that suggest a majority of Americans are siding with gay and lesbian rights, she said.
The rise of the LGBTQ community also is allied with other rising movements fighting for rights and recognition, including Black Lives Matter, she said.
“We’ve seen a lot of progress over the past 10 years but there is still a lot of work to do,” said Noonan, who moved to Longmont in the mid-1990s after living in Boulder for several years.
“I had my reservations about living in Longmont but I found the community accepting and it is becoming even more progressive,” Noonan said. “It’s all part of the change we are seeing everywhere.”
