Anti-LGBTQ+ lawyers and their clients are arguing that antidiscrimination protections under the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling don’t apply to bisexuals, who according to polls make up the largest proportion of the LGBTQ+ community.Attorneys Jonathan Mitchell and Gene Hamilton are representing Braidwood Management, which is owned by anti-LGBTQ+ activist Steven Hotze, and Bear Creek Bible Church, both located in Texas, in a case seeking exemptions from nondiscrimination law for employers with religious objections.They filed suit against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in federal court in 2018 and updated the complaint last year in light of the Bostock v.
Clayton County ruling, in which the Supreme Court held in 2020 that Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, in outlawing sex discrimination, bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general, is well known for filing anti-LGBTQ+ cases and for crafting Texas’s anti-abortion law.
He recently brought a case on behalf of Braidwood Management arguing that paying for insurance covering PrEP drugs violates the employer’s religious beliefs because it facilitates “homosexual behavior.”In the PrEP case, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor sided with Mitchell and Braidwood, saying that the federal government hadn’t shown a compelling interest in requiring employer insurance plans to cover PrEP drugs, which prevent HIV transmission.In a ruling last year, O’Connor also largely agreed with Braidwood and Bear Creek in their suit against the EEOC, but “sided with the federal government on two issues — so-called bisexual conduct and certain transgender health care procedures,” The Dallas Morning News
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Law
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Dallas Morning News
Reed Oconnor