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Page Number: 12

8 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

Opinion of the Court 

too.  Maybe  the  law  concerns  itself  simply  with  ensuring 
that employers don’t treat women generally less favorably 
than they do men.  So how can we tell which sense, individ-
ual or group, “discriminate” carries in Title VII? 

. . .  sex.” 

The  statute  answers  that  question  directly.   It  tells  us 
three  times—including  immediately  after  the  words  “dis-
criminate  against”—that  our  focus  should  be  on  individu-
als, not groups:  Employers may not “fail or refuse to hire 
or . . . discharge any individual, or otherwise . . . discrimi-
nate against any individual with respect to his compensa-
tion,  terms,  conditions,  or  privileges  of  employment,  be-
cause  of  such  individual’s 
§2000e–2(a)(1)
(emphasis added).  And the meaning of “individual” was as
uncontroversial in 1964 as it is today:  “A particular being
as distinguished from a class, species, or collection.”  Web-
ster’s New International Dictionary, at 1267.  Here, again,
Congress could have written the law differently.  It might
have said that “it shall be an unlawful employment practice
to prefer one sex to the other in hiring, firing, or the terms 
or conditions of employment.”  It might have said that there
should be no “sex discrimination,” perhaps implying a focus 
on differential treatment between the two sexes as groups.
More narrowly still, it could have forbidden only “sexist pol-
icies” against women as a class.  But, once again, that is not 
the law we have. 

The consequences of the law’s focus on individuals rather 
than  groups  are  anything  but  academic.  Suppose  an  em-
ployer fires a woman for refusing his sexual advances.  It’s 
no defense for the employer to note that, while he treated 
that individual woman worse than he would have treated a 
man, he gives preferential treatment to female employees 
overall.  The  employer  is  liable  for  treating  this  woman 
worse in part because of her sex.  Nor is it a defense for an 
employer  to  say  it  discriminates  against  both  men  and
women because of sex.  This statute works to protect indi-
viduals  of  both  sexes  from  discrimination,  and  does  so