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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these submissions did not sway the Court. That an em-
ployer discriminates intentionally against an individual
only in part because of sex supplies no defense to Title VII.
Nor does the fact an employer may happen to favor women
as a class.
  In Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power v. Manhart, 435
U. S. 702 (1978), an employer required women to make
larger pension fund contributions than men. The employer
sought to justify its disparate treatment on the ground that
women tend to live longer than men, and thus are likely to
receive more from the pension fund over time. By every-
one’s admission, the employer was not guilty of animosity
against women or a “purely habitual assumptio[n] about a
woman’s inability to perform certain kinds of work”; in-
stead, it relied on what appeared to be a statistically accu-
rate statement about life expectancy. Id., at 707–708. Even
so, the Court recognized, a rule that appears evenhanded at
the group level can prove discriminatory at the level of in-
dividuals. True, women as a class may live longer than men
as a class. But “[t]he statute’s focus on the individual is
unambiguous,” and any individual woman might make the
larger pension contributions and still die as early as a man.
Id., at 708. Likewise, the Court dismissed as irrelevant the
employer’s insistence that its actions were motivated by a
wish to achieve classwide equality between the sexes: An
employer’s intentional discrimination on the basis of sex is
no more permissible when it is prompted by some further
intention (or motivation), even one as prosaic as seeking to
account for actuarial tables. Ibid. The employer violated
Title VII because, when its policy worked exactly as
planned, it could not “pass the simple test” asking whether
an individual female employee would have been treated the
same regardless of her sex. Id., at 711.
  In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S.
75 (1998), a male plaintiff alleged that he was singled out
by his male co-workers for sexual harassment. The Court
14              BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY Opinion of the Court

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