Liberty University faces civil rights lawsuit after firing trans-identified employee
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the legal group Butler Curwood have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Liberty University on behalf of a trans-identified former employee fired after telling his employer he identified as a woman.
Filed Monday, the lawsuit claims that the Evangelical institution founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
The Christian Post reached out to Liberty University for comment. A response is pending.
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The complaint alleges that Liberty hired 30-year-old Jonathan Zinski to work as a full-time information services apprentice at its IT Helpdesk in February 2023 and that a supervisor at one point told him he was on the “path to success.”
On July 5, 2023, Zinski emailed Liberty’s human resources department about his ongoing hormone replacement and his intent to legally change his name from Jonathan to Ellenor.
On July 8, Zinski was told via email that the human resources department would eventually respond to the email. After waiting for a response for over a month, Zinski followed up on Aug. 8, and a meeting with the human resources department was scheduled for later that day.
The legal filing states that Zinski’s employment was terminated effective immediately at the meeting in which two Liberty executives were present.
“No one should be fired because of who they are — but Liberty University made it clear that’s exactly why it fired Ellenor,” said ACLU of Virginia Senior Transgender Rights Attorney Wyatt Rolla in a statement.
The ACLU reports that during the meeting, officials read a termination notice to Zinski stating that denial of “biological and chromosomal sex assigned at birth” is in conflict with the university’s doctrinal statement listed in the employee handbook of personnel policies and procedures.
The doctrinal statement lists “denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender” among many other acts and behaviors that are “sinful” and “prohibited by God.”
The plaintiff is seeking damages of $300,000 in addition to back-pay with interest and attorneys fees.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title VII employment law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, ruling that a Michigan-based Christian-owned funeral home was wrong to fire a male employee after he transitioned to female.
The opinion applied to three cases Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Aimee Stephens & EEOC.
The progressives and the Biden administration have relied on the Bostock ruling to bolster their arguments that federal civil rights protections for sex extend to gender identity and sexual orientation.
The majority opinion, delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, held that while federal law doesn’t specifically mention gender identity or sexual orientation, LGBT identity is still linked to sex. Gorsuch was joined on the majority by five of his colleagues.
“The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions,” the majority opinion stated. “That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”
However, the majority held that claims made by religious employers under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act “might supersede Title VII’s commands in appropriate cases.”
“But how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too,” Gorsuch stated, ruling that the funeral home “did unsuccessfully pursue a RFRA-based defense in the proceedings below.”
“So while other employers in other cases may raise free exercise arguments that merit careful consideration, none of the employers before us today represent in this Court that compliance with Title VII will infringe their own religious liberties in any way.”
