{"id":10886,"date":"2018-03-02T12:54:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T17:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=10886"},"modified":"2025-08-14T12:58:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T16:58:58","slug":"over-50-years-later-the-civil-rights-act-evolves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/over-50-years-later-the-civil-rights-act-evolves\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 50 Years Later, the Civil Rights Act Evolves"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a win for LGBTQ rights, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided <\/span>Zarda v. Altitude Express<\/span><\/i>, Inc. on February 26, ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation<\/a>. This decision is the latest contributor to a split amongst the federal appellate courts, with two Circuits handing down opposing rulings in 2017. If the majority that upheld marriage equality in the Supreme Court agrees with the Second Circuit here, this widening rift presents an opportunity to secure LGBTQ rights that have been in the making for over 20 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Title VII was at the center of similar litigation in 1998, when the petitioner in <\/span>Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.<\/span><\/i> asked the Court to decide whether same-sex harassment constitutes \u201cdiscrimination because of sex<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0In a unanimous decision written by Justice Scalia, the Court found that sexual harassment between men and women may have been the \u201cprincipal evil\u201d addressed by Civil Rights Act, but not the exclusive one. <\/span><\/p>\n

Even though \u201ccomparable evils\u201d like same-sex harassment were probably not the focus of Title VII\u2019s authors, the Court held that the complete meaning of the statute\u2019s provisions take preference over its \u201cprincipal concerns<\/a>\u201d alone. In <\/span>Oncale<\/span><\/i>\u00a0the overarching issue was whether harassment creates \u201can environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive<\/a>,\u201d meaning that all sexual harassment, regardless of the sex of the parties, was prohibited by Title VII.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Second Circuit employed this sort of reasoning in the <\/span>Zarda<\/span><\/i> decision this week, drawing on cases where courts extended Title VII protection to characteristics that are a \u201cfunction of sex, such as life expectancy and non\u2010conformity with gender norms<\/a>.\u201d With this precedent as support, the circuit court held that Title VII\u2019s protections against workplace sex discrimination include sexual orientation as a function of sex, as orientation is often described in relation to sex (<\/span>Zarda<\/span><\/i> would be discriminated against as a <\/span>man<\/span><\/i> who is attracted to other men).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Seventh and Eleventh Circuits explored this question last year, with the Seventh Circuit making a similar ruling to the one in <\/span>Zarda<\/span><\/i>. Noting that the effort to separate sex from sexual orientation is often convoluted and \u201chas led to confusing and contradictory results<\/a>,\u201d the Seventh Circuit argued that an employee in a same-sex relationship is identified, in part, by their sex and the sex of their partner. With this in mind, the Seventh Circuit prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation because the contrary position would seemingly allow sex discrimination, but only towards people who aren\u2019t heterosexual.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Eleventh Circuit\u2019s divergence from the Second and Seventh Circuits is rooted in Fifth Circuit precedent (which was decided before the eastern half of the Fifth Circuit became the Eleventh Circuit in 1981). The controlling Fifth Circuit case <\/span>Blum v. Gulf Oil Corporation<\/span><\/i> (1979) states simply: \u201cDischarge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII<\/a>,\u201d and the Eleventh Circuit today has refused to overturn that determination without direction from the Supreme Court. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court declined to review the Eleventh Circuit’s position late last year, allowing that appellate court\u2019s Title VII stance to remain for now, but the <\/span>Zarda<\/span><\/i> decision could very well put the issue back in play. With circuit splits being the Supreme Court’s “most potent case-selection tool<\/a>,” the growing rift in the federal appellate courts increases the need for consistency that only their final decision can provide.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a win for LGBTQ rights, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc. on February 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