We're gonna be talking about two things that have happened in the last week. On June 15th, the Supreme Court issued some landmark federal civil rights laws, rulings that have affected Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibited discrimination based on sex. But they have now determined that that includes gay and transgender employees. So we're gonna talk about how that affects things. However, on June 12th, the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a final rule implementing Section 1557. That's a civil rights provision of the Affordable Care Act that's related to nondiscrimination in all federally funded health care. 

So what are these things do? Alright. Section 1557 on the ACA limited the ways you discriminate internally with benefits. So benefits can't unduly benefit men over women, different races, those sorts of things. In the original language, it also included gender identity and termination of pregnancy as being included in sex discrimination. And it had a requirement that health programs and activities distribute nondiscrimination notices in at least 15 languages to all patients and customers. So there's a lot of different pieces to this. That rule has now been issued, but it removed gender identity and termination of pregnancy from being included as sex discrimination. 

So Section 1557 specifically has come out. Been put into place. A couple of things are, that it will be effective on August 18, 2020. But it no longer includes gender identity and termination of pregnancy as things that are limiting for healthcare providers under Section 1557. You can discriminate based on those things. But then three days later, on June 15th, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on sex, that you cannot discriminate against gay or transgender employees without discriminating based on sex for activities that are done by a man makes him gay. 

Previously we said, "Alright, being gay is not a protected class necessarily." But now they're saying, "Hey, because to be gay, you have to be a man, or to be a lesbian you have to be a woman, some activities are done by a specific gender. Therefore, it is a sex-based discriminatory item." They did the same for transgender issues. So this is a big surprise. It was kind of, I mean, I'm not gonna go into the politics of it, but it was 6-3 included Neil Gorsuch and Justice John Roberts, which were both conservative appointees, but 6-3 ruling, that is now the law of the land came out three days after Section 1557. 

So what Section 1557 has to do with anything we don't know, right? Because three days after it was out, they said no one can discriminate based on gender identity. So that's going to be revised. So for those of you in the medical profession, you probably saw a lot about Section 1557 last week, but of course, now, that's all changed. So we're going to see how that plays out. 

What you need to know internally as a small business owner, just like discrimination based on race, or gender or age is a protected class. This means, for example, you can't do things that are going to unduly screw up the employment of people based on those classes. You can no longer do that either based on sexual orientation, or transgender orientation. So both gender and sexual orientation are now a protected class. 

So this is important. This is based around a case in which I may go into more depth. If y'all care about me going into the actual cap, I've read the entire Supreme Court Justice ruling. It's both the majority opinions, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions. And it's fascinating to me, but I think it's a bit beyond the scope of an HR podcast. But there's a couple of cases that were combined, but one of these, for example, was a funeral parlor, where one of their frontline employees who interacts with clients. I guess the client is the family of the deceased, so not