Appeals court weighs in: Can religious employers fire workers for being trans?

After losing her job, becoming a public face of a national legal battle, and watching anti-trans politics proliferate across the United States, Ellenor Zinski says she made a decision she never imagined she would have to make. “I’ve actually left the U.S. just for my safety,” Zinski said in an interview with The Advocate, describing a “complete life-changing move” as she sought stability abroad.

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Now, from outside the country, she is at the center of a case that could help determine whether LGBTQ+ workers are protected under federal law when they work for religious employers, or whether those protections can be overridden by doctrine.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, confronted that question head-on. At issue is whether Liberty University, the conservative Christian school, can invoke its religious beliefs to fire a transgender employee whose job had no religious function and, if so, whether there is any limiting principle to that authority.

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The case, Zinski v. Liberty University, began as a straightforward Title VII claim. Zinski alleges she was fired in 2023 after informing human resources that she is a transgender woman and is undergoing medical transition. Before that disclosure, she said, she was thriving in her role as an IT help desk apprentice.

“I was a good employee. I made friends. I got along with the team,” she said.

She had deep roots in the community. She grew up in the region, attended a Liberty-affiliated school, and said the university’s religious culture was familiar to her. “By all means, I was one of them,” she said.

That sense of belonging, she said, makes Liberty’s portrayal of her as deceptive, as someone who “hoodwinked” the university, especially painful and, in her view, unfounded. She said she was already navigating her gender identity when she was hired and disclosed it to colleagues she trusted, all while continuing to perform her job.

“I fit in in every way besides my gender identity,” she said.

Her lawsuit argues that her termination violated Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination, relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that firing someone for being transgender or gay constitutes discrimination because of sex. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch extended workplace protections to LGBTQ+ employees nationwide, but left unresolved how those protections interact with claims of religious liberty.

That unresolved question now sits squarely before the Fourth Circuit.

Liberty University’s attorney, Mathew Staver, urged the court to view Zinski’s firing not as discrimination but as a protected act of religious self-governance. He described it as a “religious-based employment decision,” arguing that statutory exemptions in Title VII and the First Amendment’s church autonomy doctrine prevent courts from second-guessing such decisions.

Taken to its logical conclusion, that argument would place a wide swath of employment decisions by religious institutions beyond the reach of federal civil rights law, even for employees who are not ministers or engaged in religious teaching.

The three-judge panel — James Andrew Wynn Jr., appointed by President Barack Obama; A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr., appointed by President Donald Trump; and Henry F. Floyd, also an Obama appointee — appeared acutely aware of the stakes.

Again and again, the judges returned to a central concern: if Liberty’s theory prevails, what stops it from extending beyond this case? Wynn, in particular, pressed for a limiting principle, asking how courts could prevent religious employers from invoking doctrine to justify discrimination against other protected classes.

That question has been central to Zinski’s legal team as well. In an interview, Wyatt Rolla, the ACLU of Virginia’s senior transgender rights attorney representing her, said Liberty is seeking a dramatic expansion of religious exemptions.

“They want religious institutions to be insulated from all liability and accountability,” Rolla told The Advocate, warning that such a ruling could “leave a lot of vulnerable people without recourse.”

He said the judges appeared to recognize that risk, asking questions that highlighted how Liberty’s argument could apply not just to transgender workers but to other protected classes under federal law, including race and national origin.

Zinski’s experience, he emphasized, is not about theology but about employment law. The case, he said, turns on a straightforward principle: under Bostock, discrimination based on gender identity is discrimination based on sex, and that rule applies to religious employers, subject to narrow exceptions.

For Zinski, the legal arguments are inseparable from the personal toll. She described the moment of her firing as devastating, coming at a time when she was already vulnerable in her transition.

“It really… momentarily destroyed me,” she said.

She recalled the anxiety leading up to her termination and the aftermath, describing what it feels like to have one’s identity rejected in such absolute terms.

“To have who I am at my very core be rejected is debilitating,” she said.

That rejection, she added, stands in tension with the religious values Liberty claims to uphold. “If they are trying to be Christ-centered, Christ preached love,” she said.

Quattlebaum probed how Liberty’s theory aligns with the ministerial exception, which already grants religious institutions broad autonomy over employees who perform religious functions. If that doctrine exists, he asked, what additional work does a broader “church autonomy” theory perform?

Floyd emphasized the procedural posture of the case. It arrives at the appellate court before discovery, raising the question of whether it is appropriate to resolve sweeping constitutional issues without a fully developed factual record.

Zinski’s legal team urged the court to take a narrower path, maintaining that the ministerial exception provides a clear boundary: religious institutions retain autonomy over clergy and those who convey religious doctrine, but must comply with federal civil rights law when it comes to employees like Zinski, whose work was in information technology.

The stakes extend far beyond a single university. As Judge Wynn noted during the argument, courts have long struggled to reconcile expanding civil rights protections with religious exemptions, and the Supreme Court has yet to provide a definitive framework. The result may be a patchwork of rulings that ultimately forces the justices to intervene.

For now, the Fourth Circuit has not ruled, and a decision is expected in the coming months.

Zinski, who has rebuilt her life abroad while continuing to pursue the case, said she hopes the court sees what she believes is a simple truth: that her identity should not cost her the ability to work.

“I think the law is clear,” she said. “I should not be discriminated against for something that I can’t change about myself.”