The U.S. Supreme Court Building stands in Washington, D.C. (Bloomberg file photo) Almost two dozen states, including Minnesota, are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to extend a decades-old workplace discrimination law to cover gay and transgender employees, who can be fired for no reason in many parts of the country. A ban on sex-based discrimination enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should also apply to cases involving sexual orientation and gender identity, New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday in a statement. James and her Illinois counterpart, Kwame Raoul, are leading a coalition of 22 states in filing a so-called friend-of-the-court brief with the high court in Washington, according to the statement. In February, the Supreme Court decided to consider three employment cases that could let the court’s new conservative majority put its imprint on the American workplace. On Tuesday, a group of about 200 companies filed a similar brief in support of LGBTQ workers, arguing that protecting them from discrimination nationwide is better for productivity. “No one should be singled out or discriminated against in this country — not for their race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other reason — which is […]

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