My Courtroom Experience: Challenging My Timidity - Essay Sample

Introduction

In my entire life, I have been timid regarding attending court proceedings. I believed that the court was a place for criminals, witnesses, judges, and prosecutors. I never knew that civilians were allowed to follow proceedings in the court. On 8th October 2019, I challenged myself to attend a court proceeding in the US Supreme Court in Washington, that was intended to make a ruling on the workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. This was my out of comfort zone experience since I dreaded the court. I choose this experience because it has since changed my perception regarding the court and the LGBT community. I was nervous about the topic of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) since I believed that a group of people was immoral. I am a staunch Christian and believe in the instructions laid down in the Bible. The Bible, in the book of Leviticus 18:22, warns on having a same-sex marriage.

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LGBT has been a heated topic in the public domain, with many people perceiving LGBT practices as immoral. The practice of LGBT is still not entirely acceptable across the United States and the rest of the world. People who belong to the LGBT community are still widely rejected and discriminated against even in their workplaces (Steinmetz, 2019). Among the LGBT community, the lesbian, gay and bisexual groups have gained some acceptance compared to the transgender group. In the United States, for example, there have been reported murder cases of transgender individuals totaling close to 21 cases, with the murder of Booker Muhlayasia being the most recent.

My thoughts about the court were that the judge could not be challenged. I also thought that lawyers were the kind of people who speak complex English and with very clear articulations. I believed that judges would just follow through the arguments of the prosecution, defendants, and respondents, and make a ruling straight-away without referring to other cases. Throughout the proceedings, I felt that the court was the most chaotic place, only that the judge moderated the arguments. Initially, I believed that the LGBT community consisted of a very small group of people. My experience in the court that Tuesday informed me that the LGBT community has a considerably large population. I also learned that they have some rights in the constitution, but some of the rights are not clearly defined. Some of the Clauses in the Constitution that were not clear are the protection of the LGBT community from discrimination at workplaces. I believed, from the cases I had heard that the employer had the sole authority to decide what type of workers would be absorbed in the company. I supposed that there was no way a strong Christian employer, endowed with Christian values, would accept employees other than those who practice heterosexual relationships.

Most of the arguments in the court revolved around the provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which protected employees from being discriminated against on the basis of race, country of origin, gender, religion and sexual orientation. Title VII provided the Equal Protection Clause, where its violation led to strict scrutiny. Most emphases regarding the court proceedings were on protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation. The juries in the court that day seemed divided for the most part of the argument ideologically. Among the jurors, Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared sober on ideological factors and asked reasonable queries. Neil seemed a textualist who trusted much of what was passed by Congress and gave little attention to what was drawn from other sources. Justice Neil believed that Title VII protected people from being discriminated against from employment based on sexual orientation. He believed that discrimination based on gayism was inclined on sex issues and therefore sex discrimination. I felt that Justice Neil was overthinking about the statute since what I believe about sex discrimination was favoring an individual for being male or female. I believed that anything that touched on sex-differentiated people as men and women.

On that day the court was scheduled to listen to two cases that included two gay men who had been laid off for their sexual identity, and a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who had been dismissed for embracing her gender identity at work. In the case of the two gay men, Justice Samuel Alito asked Pamela Karlan, a lawyer to the two gay men, queries that depicted skepticism. Justice Alito supposed that it would be ludicrous to think that Congress passed Title VII to safeguard gay people (Scotusblog, 2018a). Justice Alito told Karlan that she was trying to alter what Congress meant by sex from what everyone comprehended. While saying this, I felt that Justice Alito had read my mind since he had said exactly what was going through my mind.

In defense, Ms. Karlan said that sexual orientation discrimination was a type of sex discrimination. Ms. Karlan believed that firing male workers for being gay and retaining males who are heterosexuals disobeys Title VII. Justice Elana Kagan, on the other hand, argued that behavior fulfilled the laws excessively simple test. Justice Kagan believed that dismissing an employee for being gay was sex discrimination since the man is dismissed for dating another man. Justice Kagan then said that the way she had interpreted the statute was the best way of looking at laws and not basing on desires, wishes or predictions (Franicevic and Min Ko, 2019). Justice Alito reacted by saying that the common people would have difficulty accepting a Supreme Court judgment that interprets Title VII to include other types of discrimination, and that they would be acting like lawmakers (Liptak and Peters, 2019). At this time I had liked Justice Alito since we were in the same line of thoughts. I thought that the court was only meant to implement what the Congress had enacted, rather than overthinking and trying to change clauses and terms to suit what they want.

Conversely, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. argued that ruling in favor of the litigants failed to sufficiently safeguard employers who have a religious opposition to homosexual relationships and transgender status. Justice Stephen G. Breyer stated that dismissing someone for being gay was equated to religious discrimination. Nonetheless, representing the Trump administration, Solicitor General Noel Francisco reminded the court that it was the sole responsibility of Congress to amend the law and not them (Liptak and Peters, 2019). Noel argued that the issue was not whether Congress could prevent sexual discrimination based on sexual orientation, but rather if it did so when hampering discrimination due to gender. Jeffrey Haris, who represented employers in sexual orientation cases, said that if Congress wished to include the LGBT community in their provision, the need for addressing the query of their laws would not be there. Jeffrey argued that there was a clear distinction between sex and sexual orientation, something I had been thinking about.

About the transgender case, experts believed that it would be easier to rule since discrimination against transgender people appeared to be a form of sex discrimination. At the same time, it was believed that ruling in favor of transgender would trigger new wars concerning culture (Scotusblog, 2018b). Justice Sonia Sotomayor urged the court not to downplay the effect of its ruling on which bathroom one was to use (Liptak and Peters, 2019). Justice Sonia asked for clarification in the case that a transgender male who identifies as a woman uses females bathrooms, but other females are uncomfortable about the same and feel like its intrusion. American Civil Liberties Union's lawyer, David Cole, responded that since the question had not been brought before the court, the court would react to it if it was raised in future cases. Mr. Cole also put off an issue raised by Justice Alito of whether a transgender male could be allowed in a female team in college. I believed that these questions were important and had to be considered.

Justice Gorsuch brought up an issue of whether the ruling in favor of transgender could alter sex-specific dress code. Mr. Cole responds by saying that the ruling does not affect the dressing code and the public lavatory. He says that the court had transgender males who dressed as men and went to male lavatories, thus the ruling had no effect on that. The lawyer for the funeral home that dismissed Ms. Stephens, John Bursch, argues that favoring Ms. Stephens had enormous repercussions. Mr. Bursch says that the ruling would imply that a female's overnight refuge employs a male who identifies as a female to counsel females with rape, trafficking, and abuse cases, as well as share bathrooms, lavatories, and locker room items with women. Justice Sotomayor intrudes and urges the court that time was ripe to safeguard the historically marginalized groups, who were intimidated just because of a being a suspect group to some people (R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, n.d.). Justice Sotomayor said that despite the marginalized group being able to perform their duties, they are merely discriminated against because of belonging to a certain group.

The court experience talks to me that the court was the best platform to learn about several issues that ail the nation. I learned that the LGBT practice was real and people were fighting for its public acceptance (Singh, 2017). I was also informed that employees had rights and could challenge their dismissal in court. I was also enlightened that a court ruling could take quite a long time before the final ruling is made.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I rate this experience as out of my comfort zone since it involved two topics I had little information about, which are the court and LGBT practice. I feared to associate with the court since I believed it belonged to lawbreakers. The experience revealed to me that attending court proceedings was open to interested parties. The experience also nullified my earlier thoughts that LGBT people hide themselves and fear being known in the public for their sexual identity. I found out that they are confident being who they are, and are even fighting for equal rights.

References

Franicevic, Z. & Min Ko, S. (2019). Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/17-1618

Liptak, J. & Peters, W. J. (2019). Supreme Court considers whether the Civil Rights Act protects L.G.B.T. workers. www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/politics/supreme-court-gay-transgender.amp.html

R.G. & G.R. (n.d). Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Oyez. Retrieved April 1, 2020, from https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/18-107

Scotusblog. (2018a). Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/bostock-v-clayton-county-georgia/

Scotusblog. (2018b). R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/r-g-g-r-harris-funeral-homes-inc-v-equal-opportunity-employment-commission/

Singh, S & Durso, L. E. (2017). Widespread discrimination continues to shape LGBT people's lives in both subtle and significant ways. www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbtq-rights/news/2017/05/02/429529/widespread-discrimination-continues-shape-lgbt-peoples-lives-subtle-significant-ways/

Steinmetz, K., 2019. Why federal laws don't explicitly ban discrimination against LGBT Americans. www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5554531/equality-act-lgbt-rights-trump/%3famp=true