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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more important factor in the adverse employment outcome.
So, too, it has no significance here if another factor—such
as the sex the plaintiff is attracted to or presents as—might
also be at work, or even play a more important role in the
employer’s decision.
  Finally, an employer cannot escape liability by demon-
strating that it treats males and females comparably as
groups. As Manhart teaches, an employer is liable for in-
tentionally requiring an individual female employee to pay
more into a pension plan than a male counterpart even if
the scheme promotes equality at the group level. Likewise,
an employer who intentionally fires an individual homosex-
ual or transgender employee in part because of that indi-
vidual’s sex violates the law even if the employer is willing
to subject all male and female homosexual or transgender
employees to the same rule.
                              III
  What do the employers have to say in reply? For present
purposes, they do not dispute that they fired the plaintiffs
for being homosexual or transgender. Sorting out the true
reasons for an adverse employment decision is often a hard
business, but none of that is at issue here. Rather, the em-
ployers submit that even intentional discrimination against
employees based on their homosexuality or transgender
status supplies no basis for liability under Title VII.
  The employers’ argument proceeds in two stages. Seek-
ing footing in the statutory text, they begin by advancing a
number of reasons why discrimination on the basis of ho-
mosexuality or transgender status doesn’t involve discrim-
ination because of sex. But each of these arguments turns
out only to repackage errors we’ve already seen and this
Court’s precedents have already rejected. In the end, the
employers are left to retreat beyond the statute’s text,
where they fault us for ignoring the legislature’s purposes
16             BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY Opinion of the Court

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