Michigan funeral home to pay $250K in settlement over transgender discrimination case

A Michigan funeral home will settle a discrimination lawsuit for $250,000 with the estate of a transgender woman it fired, NBC News reported Wednesday.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the estate of the late Aimee Stephens filed a joint consent decree with RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes ending the 2014 lawsuit, according to the network.

Stephens died in May weeks ahead of a Supreme Court decision finding that it was a form of unlawful discrimination to deny employment on the basis of either sexual orientation or gender identity.

The funeral home fired Stephens after she informed the company president of her intent to transition. A federal judge in 2016 dismissed the case, saying the president’s religious beliefs were a valid rationale to fire Stephens.

An appeals court revived the case two years later, siding with Stephens’s claim that her firing violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Stephens’s case was eventually consolidated with two other discrimination cases, which involved fired gay workers. The Supreme Court upheld the appeals court’s ruling in June.

Under the terms of the settlement, Harris must pay Stephens’s estate $130,000 in back pay and damages and $120,000 in attorneys’ fees. The company will also pay $3,700 in a separate claim, this one alleging sex discrimination due to its practice of providing suits for male workers but instructing women to buy their own work clothes.

“The law is now clear that discrimination against an employee because of his or her transgender status is sex discrimination,” EEOC trial attorney Dale Price said in a statement. “Employers also cannot discriminate on the basis of sex with regard to providing employees with clothing benefits.”

“Today marks a closing chapter in Aimee Stephens’s remarkable fight for justice,” Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project told the Washington Blade. “We are sad that Aimee is not here to experience this moment with her wife Donna and grateful for all that Aimee, Donna and the many trans fighters for justice and their families have done to bring us to this place.

“As Aimee always said, this fight is about more than just her and it will stretch far beyond this case.”