A new Supreme Court case threatens to gut the Court's one good trans rights decisionRepublican Justice Neil Gorsuch surprised most Court watchers by supporting trans rights in Bostock v. Clayton County. We're about to find out if he actually meant it.
Link to Full ArticleVOX - Ian Millhiser
Jul 26, 2024, 6:00 AM MDT
Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) ... Authored by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch and joined by Republican Chief Justice John Roberts, Bostock held that a decades-old federal civil rights law prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. It's also written using such expansive language that it leaves little doubt that discrimination against LGBTQ people is forbidden in many other contexts, including health care and education.
Nevertheless, two separate appeals court panels ... recently suggested that Bostock has nothing to say about discrimination by educational institutions like public schools and universities.
The red-state plaintiffs in Louisiana and Tennessee do not challenge any of the new rules that do not touch on transgender rights. And yet the lower courts struck down the Title IX regulations in their entirety. That alone is an error warranting intervention by the Supreme Court.
Title IX provides that no one shall face discrimination "on the basis of sex" in "any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." The first challenged provision of the new regulations defines the phrase "on the basis of sex" to include "discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity."Continue Reading Here----------
For those who may not have followed this, the Supreme Court in the Bostock case held that "it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex." And in that decision, gave specific examples that clarify what is meant. At issue is that Bostock was a ruling on Title VII (discrimination in the workplace) and opponents claim that it cannot apply to Title IX (Education).
