Going For Two Out Of Two?

Guest what is back in the news again?

Guest who they refused to serve this time?

Colorado baker back in court after turning away transgender woman
Jack Phillips is suing the state of Colorado in a case involving another discrimination allegation — this one by a transgender woman.
NBC News
By Brooke Sopelsa
August 15, 2018

The Christian baker whose refusal to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court is suing Colorado after the state ruled that he had discriminated against another customer, this time a transgender woman.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, attorneys for the baker, Jack Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop, claim that Colorado is on a "crusade to crush" him because of his religious beliefs.

“After Phillips defended himself all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won, he thought Colorado’s hostility toward his faith was over,” the lawsuit states. "He was wrong."

“Colorado has renewed its war against him by embarking on another attempt to prosecute him, in direct conflict with the Supreme Court’s ruling in his favor. This lawsuit is necessary to stop Colorado’s continuing persecution of Phillips,” the suit continues.

He should have read the decision; he didn’t win on a knockout but on a TKO (Technical knockout).

The Supreme Court sided with Phillips in June in a 7-2 decision, saying legal proceedings in Colorado had shown a hostility toward the baker’s religious views. However, the opinion was a narrow one, applying to the specific facts of that case only. The court did not rule on whether business owners can invoke religious objections to refuse service to LGBTQ people.

So here we go again.

But this time I shudder with dread… Kennedy is gone!

Instead we will have a zealot on the bench who believes in the Bible over the Constitution and a devote anti-LGBT judge on the Supreme Court.

Op-ed: Where does Kavanaugh stand on LGBT issues?
Kavanaugh’s paper trail says little about his attitudes toward legal issues affecting LGBT people.
Indy Star
By Steve Sanders Published
August 15, 2018

Kimberly Hively was a part-time instructor at Ivy Tech’s South Bend campus. Seeking to advance professionally, she applied but was denied interviews for six different full-time positions. In 2014 she was fired.

Hively sued in federal court, alleging she had been discriminated against because she’s a lesbian. Ivy Tech’s only defense was an argument that federal law did not prevent someone from being fired because they’re gay or lesbian.

Last year, a federal court of appeals rejected Ivy Tech’s argument and ruled that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination “because of … sex,” protects gays and lesbians.  Actions “taken on the basis of sexual orientation,” the court explained, “are a subset of actions taken on the basis of sex.” Hively wouldn’t have been fired if she sought romantic relationships with men rather than women. Thus, her case was one of “paradigmatic sex discrimination.”

Judge Kavanaugh ignored the Supreme Court the ruling in the 1989 Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins and the 1998 Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services cases that sex discrimination also includes discrimination based on stereotypes and he also ignored the Glenn v. Brumby case where the appeals court judges said, “

…that the defendant discriminated against the plaintiff based on her sex by terminating her because she was transitioning from male to female. The court stated that a person is considered transgender "precisely because of the perception that his or her behavior transgresses gender stereotypes." As a result, there is "congruence" between discriminating against transgender individuals and discrimination on the basis of "gender-based behavioral norms." Because everyone is protected against discrimination based on sex stereotypes, such protections cannot be denied to transgender individuals. "The nature of the discrimination is the same; it may differ in degree but not in kind." The court further concluded that discrimination based on sex stereotypes is subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, and government termination of a transgender person for his or her gender nonconformity is unconstitutional sex discrimination.

In addition in the 2008  Schroer v. Billington the judge said,

The court analogized the plaintiff's claim to one in which an employee is fired because she converted from Christianity to Judaism, even though the employer does not discriminate against Christians or Jews generally but only "converts." Since such an action would be a clear case of discrimination "because of religion," Title VII's prohibition of discrimination "because of sex" must correspondingly encompass discrimination because of a change of sex. The court concluded that decisions rejecting claims by transgender individuals "represent an elevation of 'judge-supposed legislative intent over clear statutory text,'" which is "no longer a tenable approach to statutory construction."

Judge Kavanaugh ignored all these precedents and went with the archaic definition of “sex” and he will be sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court next session.

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Today is a travel day; I am heading home for a two o’clock meeting so this post has been pre-written on Wednesday night.