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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they may manifest themselves or whatever other labels
might attach to them.
   The employers try the same point another way. Since
1964, they observe, Congress has considered several pro-
posals to add sexual orientation to Title VII’s list of pro-
tected characteristics, but no such amendment has become
law. Meanwhile, Congress has enacted other statutes ad-
dressing other topics that do discuss sexual orientation.
This postenactment legislative history, they urge, should
tell us something. Cf. post, at 2, 42–43 (ALITO, J., dissent-
ing); post, at 4, 15–16 (KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting).
   But what? There’s no authoritative evidence explaining
why later Congresses adopted other laws referencing sex-
ual orientation but didn’t amend this one. Maybe some in
the later legislatures understood the impact Title VII’s
broad language already promised for cases like ours and
didn’t think a revision needed. Maybe others knew about
its impact but hoped no one else would notice. Maybe still
others, occupied by other concerns, didn’t consider the issue
at all. All we can know for certain is that speculation about
why a later Congress declined to adopt new legislation of-
fers a “particularly dangerous” basis on which to rest an in-
terpretation of an existing law a different and earlier Con-
gress did adopt. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation v.
LTV Corp., 496 U. S. 633, 650 (1990); see also United States
v. Wells, 519 U. S. 482, 496 (1997); Sullivan v. Finkelstein,
496 U. S. 617, 632 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring) (“Argu-
ments based on subsequent legislative history . . . should
not be taken seriously, not even in a footnote”).
   That leaves the employers to seek a different sort of ex-
ception. Maybe the traditional and simple but-for causa-
tion test should apply in all other Title VII cases, but it just
doesn’t work when it comes to cases involving homosexual
and transgender employees. The test is too blunt to capture
the nuances here. The employers illustrate their concern
with an example. When we apply the simple test to Mr.
                  Cite as: 590 U. S. ____ (2020)           21 Opinion of the Court

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