"Sexual Orientation Discrimination is Sex Discrimination"

That's the position the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) took in urging a federal court to rule in favor of a lesbian in her lawsuit against her former employer (emphasis mine):

In yet another step toward protecting LGBT people against job discrimination, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is urging a federal appeals court to rule in favor of a lesbian who claims she was fired by a Florida college because she married a woman.

Seal of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The EEOC filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief Wednesday in the case of Barbara Burrows (right), whose lawsuit against the College of Central Florida was dismissed by a trial court judge in 2014. In its brief at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the EEOC argues that even though neither Florida nor federal law explicitly prohibits anti-LGBT employment discrimination, Burrows is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Title VII prohibits discrimination based on sex, and the EEOC wrote that “sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination, and such sex discrimination violates Title VII,” according to BuzzFeed News. 

“The district court’s treatment of sexual orientation discrimination as distinct from sex discrimination is untenable and based on a fundamentally flawed premise,” the EEOC wrote. “Thus, the district court erred in peremptorily concluding that any claim relating to sexual orientation must fall outside the protection of Title VII.”

From Towleroad.