Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

10 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

Opinion of the Court 

male  employee  for  no  reason  other  than  the  fact  he  is  at-
tracted to men, the employer discriminates against him for
traits  or  actions  it  tolerates  in  his  female  colleague.    Put 
differently,  the  employer  intentionally  singles  out  an  em-
ployee to fire based in part on the employee’s sex, and the
affected employee’s sex is a but-for cause of his discharge.
Or  take  an  employer  who  fires  a  transgender  person  who
was identified as a male at birth but who now identifies as 
a  female.  If  the  employer  retains  an  otherwise  identical
employee  who  was  identified  as  female  at  birth,  the  em-
ployer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at
birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee 
identified  as  female  at  birth.  Again,  the  individual  em-
ployee’s sex plays an unmistakable and impermissible role
in the discharge decision.

That  distinguishes  these  cases  from  countless  others 
where Title VII has nothing to say.  Take an employer who 
fires  a  female  employee  for  tardiness  or  incompetence  or 
simply  supporting  the  wrong  sports  team.    Assuming  the 
employer would not have tolerated the same trait in a man,
Title VII stands silent.  But unlike any of these other traits 
or actions, homosexuality and transgender status are inex-
tricably bound up with sex.  Not because homosexuality or 
transgender status are related to sex in some vague sense 
or because discrimination on these bases has some dispar-
ate impact on one sex or another, but because to discrimi-
nate on these grounds requires an employer to intentionally 
treat individual employees differently because of their sex. 
Nor does it matter that, when an employer treats one em-
ployee worse because of that individual’s sex, other factors
may  contribute  to  the  decision.    Consider  an  employer
with  a  policy  of  firing  any  woman  he  discovers  to  be  a 
Yankees  fan.  Carrying  out  that  rule  because  an  em-
ployee is a woman and a fan of the Yankees is a firing 
“because of sex” if the employer would have tolerated the 
same  allegiance  in  a  male  employee.    Likewise  here.