Amicus Brief: EEOC and Aimee Stephens v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes

April 24, 2017

Aimee Stephens was fired from a Michigan funeral home after she told her employer she is a transgender woman and would be coming to work as herself. The EEOC sued under Title VII, and the district court held that the funeral home could raise the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as a defense. LRRP—then operating as the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at Columbia Law School—filed an amicus brief in the Sixth Circuit in support of the EEOC and Stephens, with Willkie Farr & Gallagher as co-counsel.

Our brief argued that RFRA does not, and constitutionally could not, privilege the free exercise of religion over other fundamental rights. Congress wrote RFRA to restore the compelling interest test, not to unsettle the balance between religious liberty and equality. Allowing an employer to claim a religious exemption from Title VII shifts a significant and concrete burden onto employees, which the Establishment Clause forbids; and treating RFRA as a defense to a sex discrimination claim would hollow out the government’s compelling interest in ending discrimination while implicating the government itself in private discrimination.

The Sixth Circuit ruled for Stephens in 2018. The case was consolidated with two others and decided by the Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination covers discrimination against transgender and gay employees. Aimee Stephens died in May 2020, a month before the decision.

For more on how anti-discrimination law and religious liberty interact, see our Q&A on Free Speech, Religious Liberty, and Discrimination.