Subscribe to Our Mailing List > In Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission , the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that religious employers may be exempt from Title VII requirements concerning sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination if those requirements are found to substantially burden the employer’s religious beliefs. A matter of first impression, this is the first appellate case that attempts to reconcile federal religious liberty protections with Bostock —the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case which interpreted Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination “on the basis of sex” to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In Braidwood , the Fifth Circuit sided with the religious employer, reasoning that “a generalized interest in prohibiting all forms of sex discrimination in every potential case” is not a sufficiently compelling interest that justifies substantially burdening an employer’s religious exercise. In Braidwood , the plaintiff, a Christian-owned management company, filed a class action lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The company sought a declaratory judgment that Title VII’s prohibitions against sex discrimination, as applied to sexual orientation and gender identity, violated the First Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom […]
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