This Supreme Court decision about LGBTQ employment isn't just huge. It's a game changer
— two about discrimination against gay people and one about discrimination against a transgender person. Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first appointee to the Supreme Court, wrote the opinion that covered all three cases. Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s four liberals joined Justice Gorsuch in the opinion. includes sexual orientation and gender identity. The law doesn’t mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” at all, but Justice Gorsuch said that doesn’t matter.
He then reasoned very simply to explain his conclusion. I don’t normally like big long quotes like this, but his explanation is very straightforward and instructive, so it’s worth reading: “Consider, for example, an employer with two employees, both of whom are attracted to men. The two individuals are, to the employer’s mind, materially identical in all respects, except that one is a man and the other a woman. If the employer fires the male employee for no reason other than the fact he is attracted to men, the employer discriminates against him for traits or actions it tolerates in his female colleague.
LGBTQ lawyers have been making this argument for decades, but lower courts have danced around it repeatedly, and the Supreme Court has never entertained it. All of the past LGBTQ rights rulings have relied on other principles, such as liberty, dignity, or that laws can’t be based on hatred.
Which is why today’s decision could have reverberations way beyond employment discrimination law. Other areas of federal law also prohibit discrimination based on sex — the
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