Anti-Gay Justice To Georgia: ‘You Can’t Discriminate’ Against A Transgender Person

Bill Pryor, the notoriously anti-gay justice currently sitting on the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, may be re-thinking his long-held prejudices against the LGBT community, Project Q’s Matt Hennie reports. While hearing a case of a transgender woman alleging that the state of Georgia violated the Constitution by firing “her when he announced her transition from transition from male to female following a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder,” Pryor told lawyers for the state on Thursday, “We have direct evidence of intentional discrimination, it seems to me.” “You can’t discriminate against someone because they don’t behave the way you expect them to behave because of their sex,” he added. Pryor also agreed that if the woman were to win this case, “transgender people would become a ‘protected class.’” In July 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Story found that the firing was illegal and that the state “violated the Constitution and discriminated against her for failing to conform to sex stereotypes.” Georgia is appealing the ruling before Pryor’s court.