A long time resident of Chicago, Bruce lived in Washington DC following World War II. He was a government employee, and in 1956 lost his job at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington D.C. for merely being suspected of being homosexual. He was forced to resign, but his case did not involve security issues.

In 1961 he became one of the founding members of the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW), the first D.C. gay activist group. In the early 1960s, he reapplied to the federal government. His application was denied because he was a homosexual. Bruce sued.

Bruce, who had been both Vice-President and Secretary of Mattachine in Washington, initially won the case, "Scott vs. Macy", in 1965 when the Federal Court of Appeals found that a suspicion or vague charge of being a homsexuality didn't give grounds for denying employment.

The government's appeal, presenting more specific charges, lost again in 1968. Seven years later the Civil Service Commission ended its exclusion of homosexuals from government employment.

Bruce wrote a vital chapter in the campaign to overturn the entrenched practice of homphobic discrimination in the US civil service. Unable to work in federal employment in Washington, DC during the legal proceedings, Bruce Scott returned to Chicago where he worked for the State of Illinois. He was also a member of Mattachine Midwest.

In 1993, Bruce was inducted into the City of Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. He died in Chicago of Parkinson's disease,