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DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT FINAL

Section 7

Citation
Section 7
Parent Document
Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Effective Date
2020-06-15

Other Sections in This Document (1015)

Full Text

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If the usual evidence indicates that a statutory phrase bears an ordinary meaning different from the literal strung-together definitions of the individual words in the phrase, we may not ignore or gloss over that discrepancy. "Legislation cannot sensibly be interpreted by stringing together dictionary synonyms of each word and proclaiming that, if the right example of the meaning of each is selected, the 'plain meaning' of the statute leads to a particular result. No theory of interpretation, including textualism itself, is premised on such an approach." 883 F.3d 100, 144, n. 7 (CA2 2018) (Lynch, J., dissenting).4