A Hard Battle To Win

The trans woman who is suing Cabela’s for discrimination has also charged that the store violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),

First transgender discrimination case to challenge ADA’s constitutionality
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Saranac Hale Spencer / The Legal Intelligencer
January 27, 2015

In the summer of 1989, U.S. senators debating the Americans with Disabilities Act excluded behavior they deemed immoral from the ADA’s protections, including “transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders,” according to the text of the law.

That portion of the ADA hasn’t been challenged until now.

Kate Lynn Blatt, a transgender woman who was fired from her job at Cabela’s, filed a discrimination suit last summer making claims under both the ADA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which is more often used in cases like this one.

I think it is going to be very hard to win under the ADA because we had been purposely written out of the law by Congressman Jessie Helms. The article goes on to say,

In the summer of 1989, U.S. senators debating the Americans with Disabilities Act excluded behavior they deemed immoral from the ADA’s protections, including “transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders,” according to the text of the law.

That portion of the ADA hasn’t been challenged until now.

Kate Lynn Blatt, a transgender woman who was fired from her job at Cabela’s, filed a discrimination suit last summer making claims under both the ADA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which is more often used in cases like this one.

It is pushing the envelope and I think a bit of a stretch to overturn the ban on gender dysphoria because I think the justices will be afraid that the other exemptions could also be overturned.

So this is going to be an interesting case to follow.