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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Sometimes small gestures can have unexpected conse-
quences. Major initiatives practically guarantee them. In
our time, few pieces of federal legislation rank in signifi-
cance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There, in Title VII,
Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the
basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today,
we must decide whether an employer can fire someone
simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer
is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being ho-
mosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or ac-
tions it would not have questioned in members of a different
sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the
decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.
   Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have
anticipated their work would lead to this particular result.
Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s con-
sequences that have become apparent over the years, in-
cluding its prohibition against discrimination on the basis
of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male
employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination sup-
ply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the ex-
press terms of a statute give us one answer and extratex-
tual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only
the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to
its benefit.
                            I
  Few facts are needed to appreciate the legal question we
face. Each of the three cases before us started the same
way: An employer fired a long-time employee shortly after
the employee revealed that he or she is homosexual or
transgender—and allegedly for no reason other than the
employee’s homosexuality or transgender status.
  Gerald Bostock worked for Clayton County, Georgia, as a
child welfare advocate. Under his leadership, the county
won national awards for its work. After a decade with the
                   Cite as: 590 U. S. ____ (2020)              3 Opinion of the Court

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