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SCOTUS 15: Help Us, Ruth Bader Ginsburg! You're Our Only Hope!

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"The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex."
 
unofan said:
"The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex."
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Is that the first time the Court has been so explicit? That seems like a pretty big deal.
 
bronconick said:
Wow. 2020 is so ****ing weird.
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I think this is completely consistent with the Roberts Court. He throws us a bone if it doesn't affect the Plutes. He's the Chief Justice of Heists; he doesn't give a f-ck about the right's social retardation.
 
"We agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex. But, as we’ve seen, discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex; the first cannot happen without the second."
 
unofan said:
"We agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex. But, as we’ve seen, discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex; the first cannot happen without the second."
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Distinct concepts from Sex how exactly? What an odd statement.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Distinct concepts from Sex how exactly? What an odd statement.
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Homosexuality (and heterosexuality) is different from sex -- accusative is different from nominative.

But I don't get how transgender is different from sex. I am a man and Miss T is a woman in the exact same sense. Unless they mean that Miss T has a sex, female, and then transgender is just the route there. Like, say, "natural" and "Caesarian" are both ways to be born but both people are born. But even that's not right since my understanding is the whole point is MissT was born a woman who happened to be mis-assigned.
 
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Kepler said:
So, what happened with Forest Service?
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Pipeline gets to go forward. Summary I saw on SCOTUSBlog is that transferring land from the Interior Dept to the Forest Service doesn't automatically make it a national park and therefore protected. Again, this was one of the minor/technical issue cases.

Thomas wrote for a 7-person majority. Sotomayor and Kagan dissented.
 
From SCOTUSBlog (who got a copy from the Court's public information office via email)
The Court holds in the US Forest Service Case (also known as the Appalachian Trail case) that because the Department of the Interior's decision to assign responsibility over the Appalachian Trail to the National Park Service did not transform the land over which the trail passes into land within the National Park system, the Forest Service had the authority to issue the special use permit" to Atlantic Coast Pipeline.​
 
MissThundercat said:
You mean... I can't get fired for being trans?
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Welcome to the human race MissT.... How nice of the Supreme Court to recognize something that has been the case since, oh I don't know, you were born. Next item on the agenda, lets get to work to make sure our LGBTQ friends and family can go through day-to-day life without still being in physical danger because of who they are.
 
The Court teed up the next round in the fight, though. Must've been the concession needed to get Roberts and Gorsuch on board today.

"Separately, the employers fear that complying with Title VII's requirement in cases like ours may require some employers to violate their religious convictions. We are also deeply concerned with preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution; that guarantee lies at the heart of our pluralistic society. But worries about how Title VII may intersect with religious liberties are nothing new; they even predate the statute's passage. As a result of its deliberations in adopting the law, Congress included an express statutory exception for religious organizations. §2000e-1(a). This Court has also recognized that the First Amendment can bar the application of employment discrimination laws "to claims concerning the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers." Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, 565 U. S. 171, 188 (2012). And Congress has gone a step further yet in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 107 Stat. 1488, codified at 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq. That statute prohibits the federal government from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion unless it demonstrates that doing so both furthers a compelling governmental interest and represents the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. §2000bb-1. Because RFRA operates as a kind of super statute, displacing the normal operation of other federal laws, it might supersede Title VII's commands in appropriate cases. See §2000bb-3.

But how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too."

tl;dr: Employers will now argue RFRA allows them to discriminate due to their religious beliefs, and we'll get to litigate that.
 
Alito's dissent opens with this:
"There is only one word for what the Court has done today:legislation."
 
I guess it is more accurate to say that MissT can no longer be treated like sh-t for being trans. She can be treated like sh-t for being a woman.

Progress!
 
unofan said:
tl;dr: Employers will now argue RFRA allows them to discriminate due to their religious beliefs, and we'll get to litigate that.
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I would think an organization would at least have to prove that the religious beliefs they were basing their discrimination on were sincere and strongly held. So a Catholic school could fire a teacher who came out as LGBT+ because they are obviously an organization affiliated with a specific religious denomination that considers same-sex relationships immoral, and that scenario has likely always been written out in the employee policy manual. OTOH, the BoD of Staples or Cargill can't wake up tomorrow morning and announce a new policy to fire all openly gay employees because they're now a Christian organization (this would be a dumb move for them even if it's legal, I'm just spitballing).
 
The whole idea that "religious liberty" gives you a hall pass from obeying civil rights law is so bizarre and offensive that it will probably be the distinctive legacy of conservatives of this period.

I mean, aside from the racism, blind stupidity, violence, and sociopathic greed. But hey, it's good to be multidimensional.
 
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