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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not limited to employers who, through the sum of all of their
employment actions, treat the class of men differently than
the class of women. Instead, the law makes each instance
of discriminating against an individual employee because
of that individual’s sex an independent violation of Title
VII. So just as an employer who fires both Hannah and Bob
for failing to fulfill traditional sex stereotypes doubles ra-
ther than eliminates Title VII liability, an employer who
fires both Hannah and Bob for being gay or transgender
does the same.
   At bottom, these cases involve no more than the straight-
forward application of legal terms with plain and settled
meanings. For an employer to discriminate against em-
ployees for being homosexual or transgender, the employer
must intentionally discriminate against individual men
and women in part because of sex. That has always been
prohibited by Title VII’s plain terms—and that “should be
the end of the analysis.” 883 F. 3d, at 135 (Cabranes, J.,
concurring in judgment).
                               C
  If more support for our conclusion were required, there’s
no need to look far. All that the statute’s plain terms sug-
gest, this Court’s cases have already confirmed. Consider
three of our leading precedents.
  In Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp., 400 U. S. 542 (1971)
(per curiam), a company allegedly refused to hire women
with young children, but did hire men with children the
same age. Because its discrimination depended not only on
the employee’s sex as a female but also on the presence of
another criterion—namely, being a parent of young chil-
dren—the company contended it hadn’t engaged in discrim-
ination “because of ” sex. The company maintained, too,
that it hadn’t violated the law because, as a whole, it tended
to favor hiring women over men. Unsurprisingly by now,
                 Cite as: 590 U. S. ____ (2020)           13 Opinion of the Court

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