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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In other words, this Court’s precedents and longstanding
principles of statutory interpretation teach a clear lesson:
Do not simply split statutory phrases into their component
words, look up each in a dictionary, and then mechanically
put them together again, as the majority opinion today mis-
takenly does. See ante, at 5–9. To reiterate Justice Scalia’s
caution, that approach misses the forest for the trees.
   A literalist approach to interpreting phrases disrespects
ordinary meaning and deprives the citizenry of fair notice
of what the law is. It destabilizes the rule of law and
thwarts democratic accountability. For phrases as well as
terms, the “linchpin of statutory interpretation is ordinary
meaning, for that is going to be most accessible to the citi-
zenry desirous of following the law and to the legislators
and their staffs drafting the legal terms of the plans
launched by statutes and to the administrators and judges
implementing the statutory plan.” Eskridge, Interpreting
Law, at 81; see Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation, at 17.
   Bottom line: Statutory Interpretation 101 instructs
courts to follow ordinary meaning, not literal meaning, and
to adhere to the ordinary meaning of phrases, not just the
meaning of the words in a phrase.
   Second, in light of the bedrock principle that we must ad-
here to the ordinary meaning of a phrase, the question in
this case boils down to the ordinary meaning of the phrase
“discriminate because of sex.” Does the ordinary meaning
of that phrase encompass discrimination because of sexual
orientation? The answer is plainly no.

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