The Open and Affirming Coalition of the United Church of Christ celebrates with LGBTQ Americans throughout the country today’s victory in the Supreme Court.

In the past three and a half years, the Trump Administration has sought to erase every freedom the LGBTQ community has earned in decades of struggle. But today’s decision confirms that federal civil rights law protects LGBTQ people from job discrimination in every state. Trump’s attempt to deprive LGBTQ Americans of that protection has failed.

This is especially a victory for the transgender and nonbinary community: the Court ruled that federal protections are not limited to sexual orientation, but cover gender identity as well.

This is a day of celebration, and a victory even more important for the cause of equality than the marriage ruling of 2015. Thanks to this decision, LGBTQ communities can now breathe the air of freedom in 25 states where there was no statewide legal protection against job discrimination.

Our joy, however, is tempered by the grief we feel over the events of the past several weeks, which have reminded us of the persistence of racial injustice in our country–injustice that threatens LGBTQ people of color as well. Nor can we forget for a moment the deaths of transgender women of color on the streets of our cities, or that transgender Americans cannot serve openly in the armed forces, or that discrimination in housing and public accommodations is still legal in many states. So our work continues. But the Supreme Court’s action renews our hope that, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”