Oh When Will They Ever Learn

You would think that businesses would have learned by now that they cannot discriminate against trans people.

U.S. transgender woman's journey turns into constitutional fight
Reuters
By Daniel Trotta
June 17, 2016

Kate Lynn Blatt once lived as a woman at home but went to work in a battery factory as a man, a painful phase in her gender transition that would later propel her to the forefront of a constitutional battle for transgender rights in America.

She decided to start over, interviewing as a woman for a new job with the outdoor equipment and apparel retail chain Cabela's Inc (CAB.N), landing it, and finally leaving her life as a male behind. A 6-year transition, starting from when she graduated high school, was finally over.
[…]
Blatt, now 35, is suing Cabela's for sex discrimination, saying she was subjected to all manner of humiliation by superiors and co-workers during the six months she worked as a seasonal stocker in 2006 and 2007.

I don’t know if her lawsuit is winnable because of the grounds she is suing on, I don’t know why her lawyer picked the ADA.

The lawsuit, brought by Blatt in 2014, also challenges a little-known clause in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) as discriminatory because it specifically excludes transgender people from protection.
[…]
Blatt's lawyers, Neelima Vanguri and Brian Farrell of Philadelphia-based Sidney L. Gold & Associates, are asking the judge to rule that the clause of the ADA violates the U.S. Constitution because it denies equal protection for all under the law.

That  is going to be hard to prove, I hope that she is also suing under Title VII that she was discriminated against because of her sex.

I know that many trans people do not like the fact that in several states the courts have ruled that we are protected under the state’s ADA laws, but I look at it as “any port in the storm,” that we should use whatever is available. However, the federal ADA law specifically excludes us and that is what she saying violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. They first will have to prove that the law discriminates violates the clause and then they will have to prove that the store was in violation of the ADA law.

Also against her is the fact that DSM V changed Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria and it could be argued that it is no longer a disability but rather an uncomfortable feeling.

Her lawyers have their work cut out for them by taken the road less taken.