SAN ANTONIO — A legal battle spanning several years came to an end Monday morning with the Supreme Court of the United States holding that it is a violation of the Civil Rights Act to fire a person "merely for being gay or transgender."
The ruling covers approximately 1 million workers who identify as transgender and 7.1 million employees who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to data from UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute.
The lawsuit featured plaintiffs who alleged they were fired for being homosexual or transgender. The Supreme Court decided on the issue in a 6-3 opinion.
"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says in Title VII that people can't be fired because of their sex," attorney T.J. Mayes explained. "At the time, that sort of was thought to mean a woman couldn't be fired for being a woman or a man couldn't be fired for being a man. But the Supreme Court today said that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 means that people cannot be fired because they're gay or transgender."
Mayes, who has taught classes on civil rights, campaign and election laws, immigration laws, public laws and more at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the decision was several years in the making.
"They have to go through several procedural roadblocks," Mayes said. "They have to go through lower courts -- a trial court, appellate courts, then the Supreme Court has to decide whether they want to hear the case, which usually takes a long time. And then oral arguments and their decisions take a long time."
Ricardo Martinez, the CEO of Equality Texas, said the decision affirmed what he said the majority of the U.S. has known all along: "that discrimination based on someone's identity is not just and it's not legal." Equality Texas is the largest organization in the state championing equality for the LGBTQ+ community in Texas.
"We have to defend our humanity all the time and it's exhausting," Martinez said. "Although this gets us closer to not being discriminated against in various facets of our life. This is just a small piece."
Martinez said the goal in the upcoming legislative session is to push for a nondiscrimination law which addresses housing, public accommodations and more.
"The idea that someone could be fired from their job for simply being who they are bothers me," said state representative Diego Bernal. "Or the idea that they can be kept from getting an apartment or a house or they could be kept from practicing a certain profession. It just strikes me as wildly un-American."
Bernal, a former city councilman, has championed causes that would give the LGBTQ+ community equal protections in a number of areas. He said the decision came as a welcomed surprise.
"What they could have done is not taken the case, and that would have been a way to punt," Bernal said. "But they took it. And when they took it, some people saw it as them teeing up a way to smack it down. Other people saw it as a way to tee up, memorializing something that was already, to some degree, in the law with the marriage equality case. I hoped it was the second and it turned out to be."
Bernal said the landmark ruling makes away for even further protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
"I think it's important we recognize that this is a victory, not the victory," Bernal said. "We have to keep pushing until all people are treated fairly and equally, regardless of who they are, and that's a conversation we're having across the country right now. We have to take what we can get. Take the win, but then keep going. The moment we take the foot off the gas is the moment that we fall backward. So upward and onward."