Zarda died before the case was argued and his challenge was pursued by his family. Only Bostock lived to see the cases decided. The workers who brought the cases are Bostock Donald Zarda, who was fired from his job as a skydiving instructor after revealing his sexual orientation to a female client and Aimee Stephens, a transgender funeral director who was fired after announcing her intention to present as a woman. "As written, Title VII does not prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation," he added, noting in a footnote that the legal analysis would apply in a similar way to discrimination on the basis of gender identity. "But we are judges, not Members of Congress," he wrote. Kavanaugh wrote that the policy arguments for amending Title VII were "very weighty." "Title VII prohibits discrimination because of sex itself , not everything that is related to, based on, or defined with reference to, 'sex,'" he added. "If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee's sex when deciding to discharge the employee-put differently, if changing the employee's sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer-a statutory violation has occurred," he wrote.Īlito, in a dissent joined by Thomas, wrote that there was "only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation." And it doesn't matter if the employer treated women as a group the same when compared to men as a group," Gorsuch wrote. "It doesn't matter if other factors besides the plaintiff 's sex contributed to the decision. Gorsuch wrote that discriminating against an employee because they are gay or transgender is by definition discrimination on the basis of sex. The court's opinion, which was released only online as a precaution against Covid-19, did not immediately load in its entirety, possibly a result of high traffic to the Supreme Court's website. We live with the decision of the Supreme Court." Later Monday, Trump said at a White House event that "some people were surprised" with the top court's decision but "they've ruled, and we live with their decision. "LGBTQ people deserve equal treatment in the workplace and throughout society, and today's decision further underlines that federal law protects their right to fairness," Cook wrote.įormer Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said the court's move "confirmed the simple but profoundly American idea that every human being should be treated with respect and dignity." Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said the decision "affirms what shouldn't have even been a debate: LGBTQ Americans should be able to work without fear of losing jobs because of who they are."Īpple CEO Tim Cook, the first Fortune 500 chief executive to come out as gay, tweeted that he was grateful for the ruling. Gerald Bostock, one of the plaintiffs, said in an interview he was "elated." Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented. Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, a fellow conservative, and the court's liberal wing, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. They argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which says that employers may not discriminate based on "sex," also applies to sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases were brought by three workers who said they were fired from their jobs because they were gay or transgender. While workers in about half the country were protected by local laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, there was no federal law that explicitly barred LGBT workers from being fired on that basis. "That's because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex." "An individual's homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions," Gorsuch wrote in the decision, which applied to three separate cases.