Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 11

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

employers  only  when  they  “fail  or  refuse  to  hire,”  “dis-
charge,”  “or  otherwise  . . .  discriminate  against”  someone 
because  of  a  statutorily  protected  characteristic  like  sex. 
Ibid.  The employers acknowledge that they discharged the
plaintiffs in today’s cases, but assert that the statute’s list 
of verbs is qualified by the last item on it:  “otherwise . . . 
discriminate against.”  By virtue of the word otherwise, the 
employers suggest, Title VII concerns itself not with every 
discharge, only with those discharges that involve discrim-
ination. 

Accepting this point, too, for argument’s sake, the ques-
tion becomes:  What did “discriminate” mean in 1964?  As 
it  turns  out,  it  meant  then  roughly  what  it  means  today:
“To make a difference in treatment or favor (of one as com-
pared with others).”  Webster’s New International Diction-
ary 745 (2d ed. 1954).  To “discriminate against” a person,
then,  would  seem  to  mean  treating  that  individual  worse 
than others who are similarly situated.  See Burlington N. 
& S. F. R. Co. v. White, 548 U. S. 53, 59 (2006).  In so-called 
“disparate treatment” cases like today’s, this Court has also 
held that the difference in treatment based on sex must be 
intentional.  See, e.g., Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 
487 U. S. 977, 986 (1988).  So, taken together, an employer
who  intentionally  treats  a  person  worse  because  of  sex— 
such  as  by  firing  the  person  for  actions  or  attributes  it
would  tolerate  in  an  individual  of  another  sex—discrimi-
nates against that person in violation of Title VII. 

At first glance, another interpretation might seem possi-
ble.  Discrimination sometimes involves “the act, practice,
or  an  instance  of  discriminating  categorically  rather  than
individually.”  Webster’s  New  Collegiate  Dictionary  326
(1975); see also post, at 27–28, n. 22 (ALITO, J., dissenting).
On that understanding, the statute would require us to con-
sider the employer’s treatment of groups rather than indi-
viduals, to see how a policy affects one sex as a whole versus 
the other as a whole.  That idea holds some intuitive appeal