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Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)

Citation
Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Parent Document
Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Effective Date
2020-06-15
Original Source
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4760997/bostock-v-clayton-county/ ↗

Other Sections in This Document (1015)

Full Text

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One could also reasonably fear that objections about unexpected applications will not be deployed neutrally. Often lurking just behind such objections resides a cynicism that Congress could not possibly have meant to protect a disfavored group. Take this Court's encounter with the Americans with Disabilities Act's directive that no " 'public entity' " can discriminate against any " 'qualified individual with a disability.' " Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v. Yeskey , 524 U.S. 206, 208, 118 S.Ct. 1952, 141 L.Ed.2d 215 (1998). Congress, of course, didn't list every public entity the statute would apply to. And no one batted an eye at its application to, say, post offices. But when the statute was applied to prisons , curiously, some demanded a closer look: Pennsylvania argued that "Congress did not 'envisio[n] that the ADA would be applied to state prisoners.' " Id ., at 211-212, 118 S.Ct. 1952. This Court emphatically rejected that view, explaining that, "in the context of an unambiguous statutory text," whether a specific application was anticipated by Congress "is irrelevant." Id. , at 212, 118 S.Ct. 1952. As Yeskey and today's cases exemplify, applying protective laws to groups that were politically unpopular at the time of the law's passage-whether prisoners in the 1990s or homosexual and transgender employees in the 1960s-often may be seen as unexpected. But to refuse enforcement just because of that, because the parties before us happened to be unpopular at the time of the law's passage, would not only require us to abandon our role as interpreters of statutes; it would tilt the scales of justice in favor of the strong or popular and neglect the promise that all persons are entitled to the benefit of the law's terms. Cf. post , at 1769 - 1773 (ALITO, J., dissenting); post, at 1833 - 1834 (KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting).