Vandy Beth Glenn was a legislative editor at the Georgia State House, and a transgender woman. Now, I am sure she was a talented editor, but when she came out in the office place, her supervisors forgot whatever good she did for the workplace and fired her. Now, one would think that somebody who gets discriminated against because of gender identity would have no legal recourse in a state as conservative as Georgia, however, Ms. Glenn fought back...and won.

From TIME magazine:

Since there is no federal or Georgia state statute that protects transgender people from job discrimination, Glenn went a different route. She sued under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, claiming that she was a victim of sex discrimination, since she had been fired for failing to conform to the sex that her boss assumed her to be. It was a creative strategy, but there was legal precedent: in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that it is sex discrimination to turn down a woman for partner in an accounting firm for coming off as too “macho.” Invoking this theory, Glenn argued that she had been fired for “gender non-conformity.”

A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed. Discrimination of the kind Glenn was subjected to, the court said, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. At least three other federal appeals courts have reached similar conclusions, but this is the first appeals court in the Deep South to do so. The ruling is also notable because of one of the judges who signed on: William Pryor, a former Alabama Attorney General who was appointed to the court by George W. Bush. When Judge Pryor was nominated, gay-rights groups opposed him, in part because he had argued in 2003 that the Supreme Court should uphold state sodomy laws. Perhaps even more so than the opinion itself, the fact that judge Pryor agreed with it is an indication of how far transgender legal rights have come.

Then her troubles began. A mere two months after Jennifer began her transition, Credit Nation fired her — for a minor work rules violation. According to Credit Nation, Jennifer was “dozing off on the job.” Rather than requesting her to get more sleep, or to seek medical help for sleep problems, the company showed her the door. That didn’t surprise Jennifer. She says that once she began her journey from male to female, her company wanted her gone. Work was not a collegial place any longer, and for Jennifer, work was a difficult place to be. “Due to the hostile work environment that had been created by management and a meeting between myself and the owner,” Jennifer says, “I understood that they would be looking for any reason to terminate me. Other than work issues, all employees were afraid to speak to me. All communication stopped, the tension in the shop was palatable.”

Then the firm began to lay a paperwork trail leading to what Jennifer feared. “I had already been written up for a minor offense with another employee and no action was taken against that employee even though the verbal altercation was his doing,” she relates. “This all took place within the two months since my notice of transition and I had no issues with the company prior to my disclosure.” In a nutshell, she had gone from being an employee that her company was apparently satisfied with, to one they didn’t want to keep. The only difference, by any estimation? Jennifer had transitioned from a male presentation to a female one.

Then Credit Nation made their move. She was called into an office and let go. The reason? Credit Nation said it was due to “sleeping on the job.” “There were 4 or 5 managers in the room I was called into when they notified me of my termination,” says Jennifer. “I had no idea it was coming as I had no idea that my dozing off was an issue. On top of that, the day of the issue taking place, it was an ice day and no one but myself and two other persons even hazarded the trip into work. We had nothing to do since nothing was moving, I had been standing around for an hour and a half and they were keeping the shop cold — probably more of the hostile environment — when I sat in the back of a car to try and keep warm.”