Funeral home to settle high court transgender bias case

The Detroit funeral home that lost its case against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with its firing of a transgender employee has agreed to settle the case for $250,000, the EEOC said Tuesday.

The case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was one of three in which the high court held in June that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 an employer cannot fire someone “simply for being homosexual or transgender.” 

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia upheld a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit in Cincinnati in favor of the late Aimee Stephens, a transgender worker who was fired when she told her funeral home employer she was undergoing a gender transition from male to female.

Under terms of a consent decree ending the litigation, Harris will pay $130,000 in back pay and compensatory damages to Ms. Stephen’s estate, and $120,000 in attorney fees to her attorneys.

The company will also pay $3,705 in clothing benefits for the period of September 2012 to the present, to be divided among about 17 “female front-facing” employees, according to the EEOC’s statement. 

Harris will provide antidiscrimination training, revise its antidiscrimination policy and implement new procedures for handling discrimination complaints as well, the EEOC said.

EEOC trial attorney Dale Price said in a statement, “The law is now clear that discrimination against an employee because of his or her transgender status is sex discrimination.

“Employers also cannot discriminate on the basis of sex with regard to providing employees with clothing benefits.”

Harris’ attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.