Essay Example on Gerald Boston: A Gay Man's Ten-Year Journey of Discrimination

Introduction: Gerald Boston's Discrimination Case

Clayton County employed Gerald Boston, a gay man, to work as a coordinator for child welfare services in 2003. Boston received constant evaluation over his ten-year career, showing a positive result. Issues began when Gerald Bostock started getting involved in a gay recreational softball league in 2013. Shortly after joining these activities, he began to receive criticism for his identity generally, his involvement in the league, and his sexual orientation. At this point, he received a notification of intent to conduct an internal audit of the funds he was in charge of. Later, his contract was terminated based on the alleged conduct, which was unbecoming of the county employees (Franicevic, 2020).

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Gerald Boston's Experience and Legal Action

Gerald filed a complaint against discrimination a few months later at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He then went forward in 2016 to file a pro se lawsuit based on a violation of the Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964 anti-discrimination based on sexual orientation rules. It was the finding of the district court that he failed to state a claim and thus dismissed his suit (Franicevic, 2020). The court further argued that Bostock relied on an interpretation of the statute, as mentioned earlier, that had been overruled in a decision in Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital, 850 F. 3d 1248(11th Cir. 2017) (Villages, 2017). The court of appeal in the 11th Circuit upheld the finding of the lower court. The court of appeal also found procedural anomalies in the way he filed his petition and deficiencies thereof but also posited that it is unable to overrule a holding of a prior panel without the intervention of the Supreme Court or the 11th Circuit en banc decision.

Interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act

The plaintiff argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, by its prohibition of discrimination based on sex, included sexual orientation elicited discrimination since both were mutually exclusive. He was of a further contention that the plain language used in the statute, coupled with judicial and statutory history and other provisions of the law, all support a prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation. On the one hand, the defendant was of the argument that the plain meaning interpretation of the Act should be adopted, showing that the law only prohibits discrimination based on sex and not sexual orientation.

Whether sex is entangled with the concept of sexual orientation when considering questions of discrimination is the legal question discussed in this case in light of the provisions Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

In the lower courts, the decision in the issue above was a no whereby the courts held to the plain interpretation of the statute to exclude sexual orientation from the meaning of Title VII Act. The case was consolidated with the Zarda V. Altitude Express, Inc., which is a similar case in which there was an affirmation that sexual orientation falls within the meaning of the Title VII anti-discrimination provisions, thus giving positive sense to the arguments of the plaintiff.

The Role of Congress in Expanding the Scope of Title VII

In making its decision, the court relied on the understanding that the thinking of Congress had changed over time since 1978 when it passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, after which it amended Title VII in 1991 to reflect the Supreme Courts' broader interpretation of the relevant language. The court also contended that the string of cases before the 1991 enactment broadened the scope of the discrimination based on sex to include more than the plain language in the statute.

The Oncale v Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc, case the contemplation of Congress in the matter was entirely broader than the language of the law (McKinnon, 1997). Sex elicited discrimination was viewed by the court to include all bad deeds that could be found as being reasonably related. The Oncale decision can also contend as the Supreme Court's trend towards a broad interpretation of Congress's understanding of statutes from the time of enactment to the time in which issues arise (McKinnon, 1997).

Lower Courts' Interpretation vs. Broadening the Scope of Title VII

The lower courts previously denied the application in the suits on the basis that the Title VII provisions should be interpreted to give the plain meaning. The argument was that the interpretation to be given to the Act was one that is consistent with the original purpose of sex that was applicable across the public domain. The courts were also of the interpretation that the cases brought forth to support the applicant's arguments were more stressful of instances of unequal treatment as opposed to incidents of sexual orientation discrimination.

The winning argument was that an interpretation that was not broad enough to cover sexual orientation would have the effect of introducing a conflict in Title VII provisions against discrimination based on legitimate and illegitimate considerations such as sex, religion, national origin, and color. Also, an interpretation to that end would be a violation based on an employee's sex and therefore ending up being a discriminative law. The more considerable contention is whether the provisions that proscribe decisions motivated by sex and not how sexual discrimination is to be interpreted. The regulations do not define what part of sex-based discrimination is but instead put up a causation standard with regards to the motives that qualify as impermissible sex discrimination.

References

Franicevic, Z., 2020. Bostock V. Clayton County, Georgia. [online] LII / Legal Information Institute. Available at: <https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/17-1618> [Accessed 18 April 2020].

MacKinnon, Catharine A. "Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 96-568, Amici Curiae Brief in Support of Petitioner." UCLA Women's Law Journal 8.1 (1997). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/content/qt8dd3d6hm/qt8dd3d6hm.pdf

Villages, Against Gay Potemkin. "Texas Law Review Online." (2017).