Dilemma of employment discrimination against American LGBT employees and its judicial response from the perspective of China

Abstract

ABSTRACT The United States is an unavoidable setting for Chinese academics researching China’s employment anti-discrimination laws. In the U.S. the LGBT employee population has experienced significant employment discrimination and persistent obstacles in pursuing equal employment opportunity rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has broadened the definition of sex discrimination in three recent consolidated cases based on the opinion that discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity is essentially sex discrimination, granting LGBT employees equal employment opportunity rights under groundbreaking case law. This is in line with the rationale of the employment anti-discrimination laws, which forbid employers from discriminating against employees based on their immutable and uncontrollable characteristics, and offers extraterritorial experience to improve employment anti-discrimination laws in other countries, such as China.