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Page Number: 63

26 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

Long before Title VII was adopted, many pioneering state
and federal laws had used language substantively indistin-
guishable  from  Title  VII’s  critical  phrase,  “discrimination
because of sex.”  For example, the California Constitution
of 1879 stipulated that no one, “on account of sex, [could] be
disqualified  from  entering  upon  or  pursuing  any  lawful 
business, vocation, or profession.”  Art. XX, §18 (emphasis 
added).  It  also  prohibited  a  student’s  exclusion  from  any 
state  university  department  “on  account  of  sex.”    Art.  IX, 
§9; accord, Mont. Const., Art. XI, §9 (1889).

Wyoming’s  first  Constitution  proclaimed  broadly  that
“[b]oth male and female citizens of this state shall equally 
enjoy all civil, political and religious rights and privileges,” 
Art. VI, §1 (1890), and then provided specifically that “[i]n
none of the public schools . . . shall distinction or discrimi-
nation be made on account of sex,” Art. VII, §10 (emphasis 
added); see also §16 (the “university shall be equally open
to students of both sexes”).  Washington’s Constitution like-
wise required “ample provision for the education of all chil-
dren . . . without distinction or preference on account of . . . 
sex.”  Art. IX, §1 (1889) (emphasis added). 

The Constitution of Utah, adopted in 1895, provided that
the right to vote and hold public office “shall not be denied
or abridged on account of sex.”  Art. IV, §1 (emphasis added).
And in the next sentence it made clear what “on account of 
sex”  meant,  stating  that  “[b]oth  male  and  female  citizens 
. . . shall enjoy equally all civil, political and religious rights
and privileges.”  Ibid. 

The  most  prominent  example  of  a  provision  using  this
language was the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, 
which bans the denial or abridgment of the right to vote “on
account of sex.”  U. S. Const., Amdt. 19.  Similar language
appeared in the proposal of the National Woman’s Party for 
an Equal Rights Amendment.  As framed in 1921, this pro-
posal forbade all “political, civil or legal disabilities or ine-
qualities  on  account  of  sex,  [o]r  on  account  of  marriage.”