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Monday, June 15, 2020

Businesses can no longer discriminate against LGBTQ people but our publicly funded private schools can

In a landmark ruling the supreme court said it was no longer legal to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, the same however cannot be said about Florida's PUBLICLY FUNDED private schools who are allowed to discriminate against whoever they want and often do.

From Reuters, 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a watershed victory for LGBT rights and a defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration by ruling that a longstanding federal law barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees. 

The landmark 6-3 ruling represented the biggest moment for LGBT rights in the United States since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. Two conservative justices joined the court’s four liberals in the decision: Neil Gorsuch, a 2017 Trump appointee who wrote the ruling, and Chief Justice John Roberts. 

The justices decided that gay and transgender people are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex as well as race, color, national origin and religion.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-lgbt/in-landmark-ruling-supreme-court-bars-discrimination-against-lgbt-workers-

This is long overdue. Inexplicable however Florida's publicly funded private schools that take vouchers are allowed to discriminate against whoever and they often do against disabled and LGBTQ kids. 

From the Orlando Sentinel,

Lawmakers sometimes are savvy enough to stop juuuust short of telling an outright lie. 

Not Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, who during a House debate Monday on expanding a private-school voucher program, told this whopper about an Orlando Sentinel investigation into voucher schools with anti-LGBTQ policies: “They decided to go school by school and fabricate this picture that there are hundreds of students who are being discriminated (against) ... no newspaper should co-opt this program and try to single-handedly dismantle it.” 

If Sullivan, a Mount Dora Republican, had read the story, which we doubt, she would know the Sentinel fabricated nothing. 

Two reporters did, in fact, painstakingly go through hundreds of policies of private schools in Florida that accept voucher students. It took months, and they found more than 150 schools with policies that expressed anti-gay sentiment. More than 80 of those explicitly stated gay students weren’t welcome. In some cases the policies threatened expulsion if a gay student’s sexual orientation was discovered.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/editorials/os-op-anti-lgbtq-discrimination-florida-vouchers-20200310-itbauntjsfburmxaycjxrwry34-story.html

Sullivan was in charge of the house education committee by the way.

We not only allow discrimination in our voucher schools, but the public pays for it!!!!!

How is that right or decent? The answer is it isn't.

Hopefully this ruling will trickle down to Florida and we finally do the right thing by some of our most vulnerable students.

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