Dallas Employment Lawyer Blog
Dallas Employment Trial Lawyer Riley Carter
Summary: This blog explains why federal law still protects gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees from workplace discrimination under Bostock v. Clayton County, even as the current administration and EEOC leadership work to narrow those protections, and what Texas workers can do if they have been targeted.
If you have been following the news this year, you could be forgiven for thinking your rights at work are disappearing. Federal guidance has been pulled, agency leadership has changed, and the headlines keep coming. So let me say this as plainly as I can: the law that protects you from being fired for who you are or who you love is still the law. A federal agency can change its website. It cannot overrule the Supreme Court.
How We Got Here
For decades, whether you could be fired for being gay depended on where you lived. Here in Texas, the answer was yes. In 1979, the Fifth Circuit decided Blum v. Gulf Oil Corp., holding that Title VII did not protect workers from sexual orientation discrimination. That decision shaped the law in Texas and across the Deep South for nearly forty years.
Then advocates refused to accept it. Lambda Legal spent more than fifteen years building the argument that discrimination because of sexual orientation is discrimination because of sex. In 2017, Lambda Legal won Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, making the Seventh Circuit the first federal appeals court to agree. In 2018, after hearing argument from Lambda Legal, the full Second Circuit ruled 10–3 in favor of the estate of Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor fired days after mentioning he was gay. Lambda Legal’s website lays out that history in detail at lambdalegal.org.
On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court settled the question in Bostock v. Clayton County. Gerald Bostock was a child welfare advocate in Georgia who had worked for his county for a decade. Shortly after he joined a gay recreational softball league, he was fired for “conduct unbecoming” a county employee. In a 6–3 opinion written by Justice Gorsuch, the Court held that firing someone for being gay or transgender violates Title VII. As the Court put it, “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” In 2022, Mr. Bostock’s former employer agreed to pay him $825,000.
What the Current Administration Is Doing
In May 2025, a federal court in the Northern District of Texas vacated the portions of the EEOC’s 2024 harassment guidance that addressed sexual orientation and gender identity. Then, on January 22, 2026, the EEOC voted 2–1 to rescind the entire guidance document. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has made clear she reads Bostock narrowly, and much of the administration’s focus has been on issues like pronouns and restroom access for transgender workers.
That is a real shift in how the agency talks about your rights, and it is fair to be frustrated by it. But here is what has not changed. Guidance is not law. It never was. The rescission does not change a single word of Title VII, and it does not change a single word of Bostock. Even Chair Lucas has acknowledged that Bostock remains good law when it comes to hiring, firing, and promotion decisions, and the EEOC’s own press release stated that rescinding the guidance “does not give employers license to engage in unlawful harassment.”
If your employer fires you, refuses to hire you, demotes you, cuts your pay, or passes you over because you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, that is still illegal under federal law. Full stop.
What Bostock Protects Today
Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees, and it covers the terms, conditions, and privileges of your job, not just the final firing decision. That includes hiring, promotions, discipline, pay, and assignments. The Court’s reasoning also reaches situations where the employer acts because of who you are married to or dating. If a male employee would be left alone for having a wife but a female employee is punished for having one, sex is doing the work, and the law notices.
Title VII also protects you from retaliation. If you report discrimination to HR, complain to a supervisor, file a charge, or support a coworker who does, your employer cannot punish you for it. Retaliation claims are often the strongest claims we see, because employers who discriminate rarely react well to being called out.
Courts are still working through the outer edges of Bostock, and some questions, like how it applies to benefit plan design, are being litigated right now. But the core promise is settled: you cannot be fired for being gay.
What To Do If It Happens to You
In Texas, you generally have 300 days from the discriminatory act to file a charge with the EEOC under Title VII. Some state-law claims filed with the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division have a shorter 180-day deadline, and federal employees have just 45 days to contact an EEO counselor, so act quickly. Do not let the EEOC’s current posture discourage you from filing. The charge process is how you preserve your right to go to court, and once the charge has been pending for 180 days, you can request a right to sue letter and put your case in front of a judge and jury. The agency’s opinion of Bostock does not decide your case. The courts do.
You Are Not Alone
Every protection LGBTQ workers have today was won by people who refused to accept that being fired for who they are was just the way things were. Gerald Bostock, Kim Hively, and Donald Zarda’s family pushed back, and the law changed for millions of workers across the country. Organizations like Lambda Legal are still fighting, and their online Help Desk remains a great resource for LGBTQ+ workers with questions about their rights. Your rights did not disappear with a 2–1 vote in Washington, and you do not have to wait for permission to use them.
Were you fired, passed over, or harassed at work because you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, or because your employer assumed you were? Contact me in Dallas or one of my talented colleagues in Houston or Austin today.