Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex.”

Today the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, ruled that even if Congress may not have had discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status in mind when it enacted the landmark law over a half century ago, Title VII’s ban on discrimination protects gay, lesbian and transgender employees. Because fewer than half of the 50 states currently ban employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, today’s decision is a major victory for LGBT employees.

The question came to the court in three different cases, all argued on the same day last October. Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, and Gerald Bostock, a child-welfare-services coordinator for Clayton County, Georgia, filed lawsuits in federal court alleging that they were fired because they were gay, which violated Title VII. In Zarda’s case, which was continued by his estate after he died in a base-jumping accident in 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit agreed with Zarda that Title VII bars discrimination based on sexual orientation. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit came to the opposite conclusion in Bostock’s case.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the third lawsuit, involving the rights of transgender employees, in federal district court in Michigan against R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes after the funeral home fired Aimee Stephens, a funeral director and embalmer who announced that she would begin living as a woman. Read more via SCOTUS Blog