In decisions in two separate cases, the court finally added LGBTQ people as a "protected class" under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The justices conceded that sexual orientation may not have been on the minds of anyone in Congress when the civil rights law was passed back in the wake of President John F Kennedy's assassination. But the judges ruled that firing a male employee for dating men, but not a female employee for dating men, would represent illegal discrimination.

The ruling in the first case was a victory for Gerald Bostock, who was fired from a county job in Georgia after he joined a gay softball team, and the relatives of Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who was fired after he told a female client not to worry about being strapped tightly to him during a jump because he was "100% gay". Zarda died before SCOTUS decided to accept the case.