Update: On October 30, 2024, NWLC, together with the ACLU and Pride at Work, submitted a motion for leave to file an amicus brief to the en banc Eleventh Circuit in Lange v. Houston County. Our brief explains that, under the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, the “sex change surgery” exclusion violates Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination because it uses an employee’s sex assigned at birth to decide whether a person gets an employer-provided benefit. It also explains why the County’s and the panel dissent’s arguments to the contrary fail because they are just reformulations of the Supreme Court’s faulty reasoning in General Electric v. Gilbert—a decision Congress overturned by enacting the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.

Update: Following the panel decision affirming the district court’s holding that the County’s policy violated Title VII, the Eleventh Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc.

Update: On May 13, 2024, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision affirming the district court’s determination that Houston County and its sheriff’s office violated Title VII by denying a transgender employee coverage for gender-affirming care, as well as the court’s decision to enter a permanent injunction in the case.

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On March 22, 2023, NWLC joined an amicus brief to the Eleventh Circuit led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Lange v. Houston County, Ga. The case was brought by Sgt. Anna Lange, a sheriff’s deputy in Perry, Georgia, against the county where she works for refusing to allow her employer-sponsored health insurance plan to cover her gender-affirmation surgery. Our amicus brief in support of Ms. Lange explained to the court that when an employer uses a facially discriminatory policy, like the exclusion on coverage of gender-affirming care here, there is no additional burden on a plaintiff to prove that the employer acted with discriminatory intent. We further detailed that creating additional hurdles to workplace civil rights protections would harm women, immigrants, people of color, and workers at the intersections of those identities.