The Civil Rights Act's unintended gift to transgender rights
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/transgender-rightscivilrightsactworkplacediscrimination.html July 11, 2014 6:00AM ET
by Mara Keisling
This month, the nation honors the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark legislation that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex and national origin. Transgender people are right there next to the racial and social justice movements celebrating the monumental bill's passage. Why? Because we have greatly benefited from the discrimination protections those movements helped win — even though we were never the intended beneficiaries.
In fact, what at the time of passage was seen as an attempt to kill the bill — the specific addition of sex discrimination protections — has today become an essential tool for enacting meaningful protections for transgender people. And each year, the interpretation of the law swings increasingly in our favor.
