Laravel 5.2 comparing greater then or equal to not working?

protected function appendCurrentLeased()
{
    $this->fields['current_leased'] = (!empty($this->data['lease_end'])
        && $this->data['lease_end'] != '0000-00-00')
        && ($this->data['lease_end']->gte(Carbon::today()->toDateString()))
            ? 1
            : 0;
}

With this function it isn't working, is there an alternative to gte that I could use?

via Chebli Mohamed