During pride month and on the four-year anniversary of Pulse nightclub massacre on Friday, the Trump administration announced a ruling on healthcare protections, potentially cutting out  Transgender people and making them targets for discrimination.

In a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release, the administration said it would revert back to a previous understanding of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which deals with discrimination of healthcare services.  

“The 2016 Rule declined to recognize sexual orientation as a protected category under the ACA, and HHS will leave that judgment undisturbed,” it read. 

It also only covered discrimination if a person is a male or female, and not on what the person identifies as gender.

Following the disheartening announcement however, the Supreme Court announced this morning that Title VII in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from being fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

This is against the Trump administration's argument saying Title VII should not cover these types of cases.

This is not only an enormous victory for the LGBTQ community since 2015’s legalization of same sex marriage, but a surprise as the Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority’s opinion, joining the liberal bench’s wing in the ruling.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” he wrote in the court’s opinion.

The landmark civil rights law, Title VII, states that it protects people from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. 

Up until now, every state had their own legislation protecting  employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, but under this new federal law, it will provide LGBTQ employees protection nationwide. 

In a matter of days, two contradictory rulings on separate LGBTQ issues have risen from the Trump administration and the Supreme Court. 

One, being a victory, and the other, an insult to a community that has always been oppressed while fighting for equality during a time where it feels that multiple communities are seeking the same justices they have long been denied. 

With today’s ruling on federal law though, it is with hope that the regression in healthcare protections is also addressed in the near future.