A Catholic hospital in Maryland is being sued by a transgender man who claims he was discriminated against, and the lawsuit comes in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision broadening civil rights based not on gender but sexual orientation.
The Daily Wire reported on the development:
“In a landmark 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court decided Monday that Title VII, which protects workers from employment discrimination on the basis of gender, can be interpreted to include discrimination based on sexual orientation, extending the protections of federal employment law to LGBT individuals,” The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported at the time.
As noted by Catholic News Agency, the suit claims discrimination after the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, a Catholic-founded hospital now in the University of Maryland Medical System, refused to remove the uterus of 33-year-old Jesse Hammons of Baltimore, a physically healthy transgender individual.
The lawsuit claims that the hospital refused to remove the woman’s uterus because the hospital does not embrace gender dysphoria as a legitimate reason for the surgery.
“Because the hospital performs hysterectomies for other diagnosed conditions, it treated Hammons unfairly,” the lawsuit said. “Hammons said the surgery would help eliminate the production of estrogen and drastically improve mental health.”
The Daily Wire reported how Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with liberal judges in the decision.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Gorsuch wrote in his opinion. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, writing that “sex” does not include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”
“The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous,” Alito wrote. “Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity.’”
Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh also dissented in the case.
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