Discrimination protections will be extended to millions of workers nationwide.

In an official ruling passed down by the United States Supreme Court, it was declared that gay, lesbian and transgender workers are all entitled to protection against workplace discrimination by federal law. The ruling runs counter to claims recently made by the Trump Administration that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act only affords protection against discrimination based on sex, and that gender identity and sexual orientation do not play a factor.

The ruling was passed 6-3 in favor of extending protections to LGBTQ+ workers. According to Justice Neil Gorsuch, “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.”

The court’s decisions come on the heels of several discrimination cases around the country. This includes the cases of Gerald Bostock, a Georgia worker who was fired for joining a gay softball team, relatives of Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who was fired after commenting about his sexual orientation to a client, and Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job at a Michigan funeral home after outing herself as transgender to her boss.

LGBTQ+ rights groups consider this ruling a momentous victory for their cause, holding it in even higher esteem than legalizing same-sex marriage since not all adults want to get married, but all adults do need jobs. Nearly half of the United States already had anti-discrimination laws in place for LGBTQ+ workers, but with this ruling, the same protections will now be enforced across the entire country by federal law.