From today’s Vice Media:
At this point, many Americans are familiar with what happened to Aimee Stephens: For years, she was a valued employee at a funeral home. Then, in 2013, she came out as trans and began presenting as a woman for the first time. That’s when she was fired.
Stephens decided to sue her former employer, Michigan’s R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, for discrimination. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear her case—creating the first opportunity for the justices to directly consider the rights of transgender people.
Those rights have only recently become a mainstream political issue, so many people are unaware that there are now decades of U.S. case law underpinning most of the policies that politicians are currently debating. When SCOTUS hears Stephens’ case in October, all of those lower-court decisions affirming the right of trans people to be included in sex-based nondiscrimination law will be under threat.
At the heart of the fight is a 1989 SCOTUS precedent, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, a caseinvolving a butch woman who was denied promotions when she failed to conform to feminine beauty and personality stereotypes. Ultimately, the court ruled that employment decisions cannot be based on sex stereotypes. It’s been a key ruling not only for cisgender women throughout the U.S., but also for those of us in the trans community.
After successfully arguing Stephens’ case in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, John Knight of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project will present her argument to the highest court in the nation this fall. Over the years, he has been central to arguing key trans-related cases all over the midwest.
We asked Knight why this case is so important for not only transgender people, but everyone, and what to look out for this October.
Read the complete interview here.