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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ordinary meaning facilitates the democratic accountability
of America’s elected representatives for the laws they enact.
Citizens and legislators must be able to ascertain the law
by reading the words of the statute. Both the rule of law
and democratic accountability badly suffer when a court
adopts a hidden or obscure interpretation of the law, and
not its ordinary meaning.
   Consider a simple example of how ordinary meaning dif-
fers from literal meaning. A statutory ban on “vehicles in
the park” would literally encompass a baby stroller. But no
good judge would interpret the statute that way because the
word “vehicle,” in its ordinary meaning, does not encompass
baby strollers.
   The ordinary meaning principle is longstanding and well
settled. Time and again, this Court has rejected literalism
in favor of ordinary meaning. Take a few examples:
   The Court recognized that beans may be seeds “in the
    language of botany or natural history,” but concluded
    that beans are not seeds “in commerce” or “in common
    parlance.” Robertson v. Salomon, 130 U. S. 412, 414
    (1889).
   The Court explained that tomatoes are literally “the
    fruit of a vine,” but “in the common language of the
    people,” tomatoes are vegetables. Nix v. Hedden, 149
    U. S. 304, 307 (1893).
   The Court stated that the statutory term “vehicle” does
    not cover an aircraft: “No doubt etymologically it is
    possible to use the word to signify a conveyance work-
    ing on land, water or air . . . . But in everyday speech
    ‘vehicle’ calls up the picture of a thing moving on land.”
    McBoyle v. United States, 283 U. S. 25, 26 (1931).
   The Court pointed out that “this Court’s interpretation
    of the three-judge-court statutes has frequently devi-
    ated from the path of literalism.” Gonzalez v. Auto-
    matic Employees Credit Union, 419 U. S. 90, 96 (1974).
8                 BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

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