Section 7

Citation: Section 7
Parent Document: Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 2020-06-15
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4760997/bostock-v-clayton-county/ ↗

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An amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs suggests that the plaintiffs' interpretive approach is supported by the interpretive approach employed by the Court in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education , 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954). See Brief for Anti-Discrimination Scholars as Amici Curiae 4. That suggestion is incorrect. Brown is a correct decision as a matter of original public meaning. There were two analytical components of Brown . One issue was the meaning of "equal protection." The Court determined that black Americans-like all Americans-have an individual equal protection right against state discrimination on the basis of race. (That point is also directly made in Bolling v. Sharpe , 347 U.S. 497, 499-500, 74 S.Ct. 693, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954).) Separate but equal is not equal. The other issue was whether that racial nondiscrimination principle applied to public schools, even though public schools did not exist in any comparable form in 1868. The answer was yes. The Court applied the equal protection principle to public schools in the same way that the Court applies, for example, the First Amendment to the Internet and the Fourth Amendment to cars.

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