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Page Number: 150.0

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BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting 

First,  courts  must  follow  ordinary  meaning,  not  literal
meaning.  And courts must adhere to the ordinary meaning 
of phrases, not just the meaning of the words in a phrase. 
There is no serious debate about the foundational inter-
pretive  principle  that  courts  adhere  to  ordinary  meaning,
not literal meaning, when interpreting statutes.  As Justice 
Scalia explained, “the good textualist is not a literalist.”  A. 
Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation 24 (1997).  Or as Profes-
sor Eskridge stated: The “prime directive in statutory inter-
pretation is to apply the meaning that a reasonable reader 
would  derive  from  the  text  of  the  law,”  so  that  “for  hard 
cases  as  well  as  easy  ones,  the  ordinary  meaning  (or  the
‘everyday  meaning’  or  the  ‘commonsense’  reading)  of  the 
relevant statutory text is the anchor for statutory interpre-
tation.”  W.  Eskridge,  Interpreting  Law  33,  34–35  (2016) 
(footnote omitted).  Or as Professor Manning put it, proper 
statutory  interpretation  asks  “how  a  reasonable  person, 
conversant with the relevant social and linguistic conven-
tions, would read the text in context.  This approach recog-
nizes that the literal or dictionary definitions of words will 
often fail to account for settled nuances or background con-
ventions that qualify the literal meaning of language and,
in particular, of legal language.”  Manning, The Absurdity
Doctrine, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 2387, 2392–2393 (2003).  Or as 
Professor Nelson wrote: No “mainstream judge is interested
solely in the literal definitions of a statute’s words.”  Nelson, 
What Is Textualism?, 91 Va. L. Rev. 347, 376 (2005).  The 
ordinary meaning that counts is the ordinary public mean-
ing  at  the  time  of  enactment—although  in  this  case,  that 
temporal  principle  matters  little  because  the  ordinary
meaning of “discriminate because of sex” was the same in
1964 as it is now. 

Judges adhere to ordinary meaning for two main reasons: 
rule  of  law  and  democratic  accountability.    A  society  gov-
erned by the rule of law must have laws that are known and 
understandable to the citizenry.  And judicial adherence to