In a landmark opinion issued on June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. __ (2020), addressed the question of whether sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes an employee’s sexual orientation and gender identity. In a 6-3 opinion, the majority concluded that Title VII protection extends to employees discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, and held that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” The opinion included three consolidated cases where the employer in each case terminated the employee after learning of the of the employee’s sexual orientation or transgender status.
Relying on the unambiguous statutory language, the Court rejected the arguments that Congress did not intend to provide Title VII protection based on sexual orientation or gender identity at the time it was enacted. Moreover, the Court stated it must apply the law as written and cannot refuse to enforce the statute based on unexpected or unintended applications of the law when it was passed. With this decision the Court ultimately announced a straightforward rule that “[a]n employer violates Title VII when it intentionally fires an individual employee based in part on sex.”
The dissenting justices disagreed that Title VII’s protection against sex discrimination extended to sexual orientation or gender identity because Congress did not intend to provide such protection when the law was passed in 1964 and that Congress, not the Court, is responsible for amending Title VII.
Notably, Massachusetts, along with several other states, already prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
