[Amicius]

From the majority opinion: "The parties concede that the term 'sex' in 1964 referred to the biological distinctions between male and female."

I am not a lawyer but this sounds to me like the Supreme Court just admitted that while the text of the law doesn't include protection for gay or transgendered persons, they are going to retroactively "understand the term" as though it does.

How, then, can we assume any of the laws mean what the text says when a court can decide words mean something else? I have to agree with the dissent in this case; amending the Civil Rights to update, expand, or clarify the definition "sex" is the surest way to protect gay and transgender person from a future court taking a strict textual interpretation and annulling this ruling.

Too bad the court system can't create the equivalent of a bug report for legislation. If we had that then in this case the SCOTUS could have issued a legislative mandate to Congress requiring them to clarify or expand the definition of "sex" so that now-protected classes are protected from a further court ruling on what the actual text of the law says. It is the role of the court to interpret the laws, not make them.

[notahacker]

> I am not a lawyer but this sounds to me like the Supreme Court just admitted that while the text of the law doesn't include protection for gay or transgendered persons, they are going to retroactively "understand the term" as though it does.

The rest of the argument makes it very clear why the conservative textualist justice who wrote the opinion considers that discrimination against homosexual or transgendered people is based in part upon the biological distinction between male and female: the assumption that the sexual preferences or identity of the individuals in these cases would be entirely unobjectionable to the employer if their biological sex was different. They're very clear on this and go on for several pages about it.

You may or may not agree with this argument or its applicability to these specific cases, but cherry picking something from the beginning of their actual argument and substituting a completely different 'retroactively "understand the term"' argument of your own invention is disingenuous at best

[andromeduck]

Wouldn't that also open the door for 'transracial' discrimination suits from people like Rachel Dolezal?

[notahacker]

I suspect any employer who fired a white person for, say, dressing their hair like Rachel Dolezal whilst permitting their black employees to do so would already be in danger of the discrimination suit.

[whatisthiseven]

You should read the entire ruling:

"Ultimately, the employers are forced to abandon the stat-utory text and precedent altogether and appeal to assump-tions and policy. Most pointedly, they contend that few in1964 would have expected Title VII to apply to discrimina-tion against homosexual and transgender persons. And whatever the text and our precedent indicate, they say, shouldn’t this fact cause us to pause before recognizing liability?

This Court has explained many times over many years that,when the meaning of the statute’s terms is plain, our job isat an end. The people are entitled to rely on the law as written, without fearing that courts might disregard its plain terms based on some extratextual consideration.

And as we have seen, no ambiguity exists about how Title VII’s terms apply to the facts before us. To be sure, the statute’s application in these cases reaches “beyond theprincipal evil” legislators may have intended or expected toaddress.

But “‘the fact that [astatute] has been applied in situations not expressly antic-ipated by Congress’” does not demonstrate ambiguity; in-stead, it simply “‘demonstrates [the] breadth’” of a legisla-tive command."

When reading the opinion, which I strongly recommend, you won't feel like they are somehow reinterpreting words to mean different things. The opinion goes to great lengths to define every single word in Title VII, what it means, its intent, and precedence to build on its reasoning, which is states multiple times is based on a plain reading of the law.

[TallGuyShort]

That seems like it has always (at least far enough for 1964 to be in scope) been a perfectly reasonable definition for sex. Can you write a different definition without trying to warp it for current political issues?

[jakkyboi]

They aren't re-anything as far as I can read. They concede this to say that sex does not mean gender or sexual orientation, to make the point that then by extension, those two categories are protected from discrimination based on preconceived notions of sex. In the case of someone being gay and fired for this reason, the discrimination lies in the fact that if a gay man was a woman, the employer would not have fired this person based on them being attracted to men. It's an extension, not reinterpretation.

[raincom]

Many a case law is all about retroactively "understand the term". That's why oftentimes, law is called judge-made law.

[msla]

In 1860, the word "Senator" didn't include anyone except White males. Is that still how the term should be understood?