The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a pivotal case in just a few weeks. In R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the court will determine whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against transgender people based on their transgender status or sex stereotyping — essentially, can government redefine “sex” to mean “gender identity” in federal law? There are several interesting aspects to this case, but one is the argument that has already highlighted how women’s rights are not the same as transgender rights. In fact, ensuring transgender people receive protected status could hurt women.
Several women’s groups have filed amicus briefs in the case in an effort to explain how the “LGBTQ lobby” is trying to upend their rights and how harmful this will be.
In an amicus brief, the Women’s Liberation Front argued, “If, as a matter of law, anyone can be a woman, then no one is a woman, and sex-based protections in the law have no meaning whatsoever. The ruling below [at the lower court] effectively repeals the sex-based protections in Title VII—a ruling that Congress surely did not intend.”
In a brief compiling statements and views of more than 1,000 female athletes and their parents, one portion read, “In the short term, a ruling in favor of [those trying to redefine federal law without Congress] will reduce the number of athletic opportunities for biological women and girls. In the long run, it will undermine the legal justification for maintaining any sex-specific athletic teams and may result in the elimination of women’s sports altogether.”
In a brief from Military Spouses United, the informal group raises five specific concerns affecting the military community including the risk of “female erasure” and how “granting biological males legal access to protected female private spaces creates uncertainty and a natural fear in females.”
A group of women CEOs and businesss owners filed an amicus brief, arguing, among other salient points, that “rewriting Title VII to encompass transgender status will harm women” and that “interpreting ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identification’ and to encompass transsexual status is unnecessary to preserve discrimination claims based on evidence of sex stereotyping.”
One of the most fascinating things to observe in light of the transgender movement’s climb toward entitlement has been to watch women of all walks of life defend themselves, their gender, and their status in society. It’s clearly a side affect the transgender movement did not anticipate and cannot deflect.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
