Saks Fifth Avenue is catching heat this month, after it filed a federal motion requesting to have an ex-employee’s discrimination case dismissed. The company’s reasoning? Well, it believes it has every right to discriminate against workers who identify as trans, reports Bloomgberg.
After being terminated from her sales associate position at the Houston Galleria Saks, Leyth O. Jamal filed a lawsuit against the company claiming she was consistently harassed and ultimately fired for her orientation. She says her supervisors told her to "separate her home life from her work life” by dressing and acting like a man during her work shifts. When she refused, Jamal was let go.
The news is especially surprising considering Saks has been a longtime champion of transgender rights, even getting a score of 90 on the Corporate Equality Index by the Human Rights Campaign (a score that was recently suspended because of the lawsuit). But despite the backlash, Saks insists it is in the clear, claiming "transsexuals are not a protected class under” Title VII of 1964′s Civil Rights Act. However, the Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as several courts disagree. Furthermore, Saks’s motion came shortly after Attorney General Eric Holder announced it’s now DOJ policy that transgender people are protected under Title VII. So there’s that.
Needless to say, the situation isn’t going well for Saks. Once the news broke, leaders within the LGBT community called for a boycott of the luxury retailer, and as expected, social media echoed the sentiment.
[via Jezebel]
