In what's being called a huge win for the transgender community, last month the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found gender dysphoria is protected by federal antidiscrimination laws, a first for a circuit court.

"Given Congress' express instruction that courts construe the [Americans with Disabilities Act] in favor of maximum protection for those with disabilities, we could not adopt an unnecessarily restrictive reading of the ADA," wrote Circuit Judge Diana Gribbon Motz in a majority opinion Tuesday.

Motz, a Bill Clinton appointee to the bench, said excluding gender dysphoria, the medical condition associated with being transgender, would require the court to "rewrite the statute in two impermissible ways: by penciling a new condition into the list of exclusions, and by erasing Congress' command to construe the ADA as broadly as the text permits."