Employment rights of LGBTQ persons in Georgia are anchored directly in the Labour Code: sexual orientation is expressly listed among the prohibited grounds of discrimination in the first part of Article 4, and this protection is not a judge-made doctrine of the kind developed in the United States under Title VII — it is written into the text of the norm by the 2020 amendments. This page examines LGBTQ protection specifically in the employment context: what is prohibited, how an employee proves discrimination, and what sanctions follow a violation under Articles 4, 2 and 78 of the Code. Reliance on foreign judicial doctrine is unnecessary in the Georgian system — the protection is carried directly by the Georgian Labour Code.
Sexual orientation as a protected ground
The first part of Article 4 of the Labour Code defines discrimination as the deliberate or negligent distinction, exclusion or preferential treatment of a person on any of the enumerated grounds — and in that list, alongside sex, sexual orientation is expressly named. Differential treatment based on orientation is therefore deemed to deny or infringe equal opportunity or equal treatment in employment and professional activity, where it pursues or causes that result. Direct discrimination is unequal treatment compared with another person in the same or a similar situation; indirect discrimination is the application of a neutral provision, criterion or practice that places a person at a particular disadvantage, unless it is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means employed are necessary and proportionate to that aim.
The scope of protection: from the vacancy announcement to the end of the relationship
The third part of Article 2 defines the prohibited sphere broadly: in labour and pre-contractual relations, including the publication of a vacancy announcement and the selection stage, any form of discrimination on the enumerated grounds — sexual orientation among them — is prohibited. In practical terms, protection begins the moment a person starts looking for work: an announcement that signals orientation expectations may become the subject of a claim, and throughout the entire employment period no condition — pay, promotion, training or career advancement — may be differentiated by discriminatory criteria.
The fifth part of the same Article 4 declares workplace harassment, including sexual harassment, to be a form of discrimination — any unwanted conduct conditioned on a protected ground that aims at or causes an infringement of dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment. The sixth part defines sexual harassment separately, and the seventh part prohibits the termination of the employment contract or any negative treatment of an employee because the employee applied or complained to the relevant body for protection against discrimination or cooperated with it. Disciplinary measures against the perpetrators of harassment do not release the employer from its own responsibility.