Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 41.0

4 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

(1997).  If the Court finds it appropriate to adopt this the-
ory, it should own up to what it is doing.5 

Many will applaud today’s decision because they agree on 
policy grounds with the Court’s updating of Title VII.  But 
the  question  in  these  cases  is  not  whether  discrimination
because of sexual orientation or gender identity should be 
outlawed.  The  question  is  whether  Congress  did  that  in 
1964. 

It indisputably did not. 

I 
A 

Title VII, as noted, prohibits discrimination “because of 
. . . sex,” §2000e–2(a)(1), and in 1964, it was as clear as clear 
could be that this meant discrimination because of the ge-
netic and anatomical characteristics that men and women 
have  at  the  time  of  birth.    Determined  searching  has  not 
found a single dictionary from that time that defined “sex” 
to  mean 
identity,  or 
“transgender  status.”6  Ante,  at  2.    (Appendix  A,  infra,  to 

sexual  orientation,  gender 

—————— 

5 That  is  what  Judge  Posner did  in  the  Seventh  Circuit case  holding
that Title VII prohibits discrimination because of sexual orientation.  See 
Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Ind., 853 F. 3d 339 (2017) (en 
banc).  Judge Posner agreed with that result but wrote: 

“I  would  prefer  to  see  us  acknowledge  openly  that  today  we,  who  are 
judges rather than members of Congress, are imposing on a half-century-
old statute a meaning of ‘sex discrimination’ that the Congress that en-
acted it would not have accepted.”  Id., at 357 (concurring opinion) (em-
phasis added). 

6 The Court does not define what it means by “transgender status,” but 
the American Psychological Association describes “transgender” as “[a]n
umbrella  term  encompassing  those  whose  gender  identities  or  gender
roles  differ  from  those  typically  associated  with  the  sex  they  were  as-
signed at birth.”  A Glossary: Defining Transgender Terms, 49 Monitor
on Psychology 32 (Sept. 2018), https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/09/ce-
corner-glossary.    It  defines  “gender  identity”  as  “[a]n  internal  sense  of
being male, female or something else, which may or may not correspond