Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit in 2021 on behalf of Christian-owned Braidwood Management Inc. and Bear Creek Bible Church against the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) for issuing “guidance documents” on interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and “gender identity.” An excerpt:
AFL sued to stop the EEOC from requiring Christian employers, including churches, to “allow employees into restrooms that correspond to the employees’ gender identity, no matter the individual’s biological sex, whether the individual has had a sex-change operation, or whether other employees have raised objections or privacy concerns.”
AFL’s clients won at the district court level in 2021. The EEOC appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the plaintiffs won again.
The Fifth Circuit held that AFL’s clients have “pre-enforcement standing to sue and that Religious Freedom Restoration Act prevents the EEOC from enforcing its so-called guidance documents against Christian employers.”
The EEOC cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to support its redefinition of the word sex in Title VII. The law bars discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, but Congress has never amended the law to redefine sex to include sexual orientation and “gender identity.”
The problem with Bostock, the Fifth Circuit pointed out, is the high court “punted on how religious liberties would be affected by its ruling and on the practical scope of the Title VII protections afforded by Bostock.”
What leftists (and our “conservative” Supreme Court) forget is that religious freedom must factor into these rulings and policies. The founders explicitly included religious freedom as a fundamental right in America’s founding documents. Nowhere do the founders state or imply that certain sexual behaviors, normal or deviant, trigger a right or that any such right trumps religious freedom.
The Fifth Circuit’s ruling means that AFL’s clients have pre-enforcement standing to challenge the EEOC’s executive action and that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects Christian employers.
“The Biden Administration wrongly tried to keep our clients out of court, arguing that they had to wait for the EEOC to subject them to costly administrative litigation and an intrusive process before their claims against the EEOC’s radical transgender guidance could be heard,” said Gene Hamilton, AFL Vice President and General Counsel. “While we are thrilled that the Fifth Circuit agreed with our position and further affirmed their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, we will continue to fight for the rights of Americans everywhere to be free from radical administrative transgender edicts.”
Photo credit: By Bobak Ha’Eri – Own work, CC BY 3.0, link
