The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Monday that a federal law banning workplace discrimination based on sex extends to sexual orientation.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [text, PDF] bars workplace discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) [official website] had argued on behalf of the plaintiff in the case that Title VII also protects gay employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In a 10-3 decision, Chief Judge Robert Katzmann [official profile] wrote that, “Sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination … making it impossible for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without taking sex into account.”

This ruling goes against a 2017 amicus curiae brief [text, PDF] filed by the Department of Justice [official website] saying that Title VII was not intended to provide protections [JURIST report] to gay workers.

This ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by a Long Island skydiving instructor that claims he was fired after he revealed he was gay to a customer. Even though the petitioner died shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the EEOC and other advocacy groups have continued to argue that sexual orientation is encompassed in an individual’s gender.

The Justice Department and the instructor’s employer, Altitude Express, could seek appeal of the decision to the US Supreme Court, but neither has immediately commented on the ruling.