EEOC Protecting Transgender from Discrimination

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, known as the EEOC, has ruled that bias made against employees and potential employees is equivalent to sexual discrimination with the existing law that is already in place.

The EEOC determined this ruling after a case was filed for Mia Macy with the assistance of the Transgender Law Center. Mia Macy is transgender and believed she was denied employment as a ballistics technician in the Walnut Creek, California area, once she decided to transition herself from the man she used to be to the woman she had wanted to be come. The commission voted, a 5-0 vote, and made it public earlier this week. The EEOC stated that any employer who intentionally discriminated against an employee due to them being transgender would be participating in sexual discrimination and would therefore be violating the Title VII.

The EEOO works on all types of non-discrimination laws, ensuring that employees are treated fairly in their place of work. And, the decision they have made about transgender employees and sexual discrimination will not only apply to public employers, it will also apply to private employers as well, all of which are located in the United States.

The Title VII is a section in the Civil Rights Act from 1964, in which it states that discrimination of an employee due to their race, religion, sex, or color is prohibited. Many already believed that under this chapter, transgender individuals were, in fact, protected. However, now that the EEOC has announced the decision, employers no longer need to wonder and will know that the transgender workers are protected by this law that is in place.

An executive director for the Transgender Law Center, Masen Davis, said that it is important for a law like this to be in place for transgender people. Davis says that they are already facing discrimination and that with the decision the EEOC made, they will be able to keep their employment, their benefits, and the insurance that they work hard for and deserve, without being discriminated on because of their gender.

Macy was a veteran and once worked as a police detective and while she was still presented as a male in January of 2011, she was told that she would be receiving the position she had hoped for in the crime laboratory of Walnut Creek. An investigator was even supposed to be going through with a background check so that she could receive the job at the time. However, once telling her contractor that she would be transitioning from male to female, which she informed the contract of in March of 2011, she received an e-mail, which stated that the position had been cut yet months later, found out that someone else received the position.