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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occurred both because the defendant ran a red light and be-
cause the plaintiff failed to signal his turn at the intersec-
tion, we might call each a but-for cause of the collision. Cf.
Burrage v. United States, 571 U. S. 204, 211–212 (2014).
When it comes to Title VII, the adoption of the traditional
but-for causation standard means a defendant cannot avoid
liability just by citing some other factor that contributed to
its challenged employment decision. So long as the plain-
tiff ’s sex was one but-for cause of that decision, that is
enough to trigger the law. See ibid.; Nassar, 570 U. S., at
350.
   No doubt, Congress could have taken a more parsimoni-
ous approach. As it has in other statutes, it could have
added “solely” to indicate that actions taken “because of ”
the confluence of multiple factors do not violate the law. Cf.
11 U. S. C. §525; 16 U. S. C. §511. Or it could have written
“primarily because of ” to indicate that the prohibited factor
had to be the main cause of the defendant’s challenged em-
ployment decision. Cf. 22 U. S. C. §2688. But none of this
is the law we have. If anything, Congress has moved in the
opposite direction, supplementing Title VII in 1991 to allow
a plaintiff to prevail merely by showing that a protected
trait like sex was a “motivating factor” in a defendant’s
challenged employment practice. Civil Rights Act of 1991,
§107, 105 Stat. 1075, codified at 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(m).
Under this more forgiving standard, liability can sometimes
follow even if sex wasn’t a but-for cause of the employer’s
challenged decision. Still, because nothing in our analysis
depends on the motivating factor test, we focus on the more
traditional but-for causation standard that continues to af-
ford a viable, if no longer exclusive, path to relief under Ti-
tle VII. §2000e–2(a)(1).
   As sweeping as even the but-for causation standard can
be, Title VII does not concern itself with everything that
happens “because of ” sex. The statute imposes liability on
                  Cite as: 590 U. S. ____ (2020)             7 Opinion of the Court

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