Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf
Page Number: 37.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

5 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

Second, a public accommodations law ensures equal dig-
nity in the common market.  Indeed, that is the law’s “fun-
damental object”: “to vindicate ‘the deprivation of personal
dignity that surely accompanies denials of equal access to 
public  establishments.’ ”  Heart  of  Atlanta  Motel,  Inc.  v. 
United  States,  379  U. S.  241,  250  (1964)  (quoting  S. Rep.
No. 872, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., 16 (1964)).  This purpose does 
not  depend  on  whether  goods  or  services  are  otherwise 
available.  “ ‘Discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, 
hamburgers and movies; it is the humiliation, frustration, 
and embarrassment that a person must surely feel when he
is  told  that  he  is  unacceptable  as  a  member  of  the  public 
because of his [social identity].  It is equally the inability to
explain to a child that regardless of education, civility, cour-
tesy, and morality he will be denied the right to enjoy equal
treatment.’ ”    379  U. S.,  at  292  (Goldberg,  J.,  concurring). 
When a young Jewish girl and her parents come across a 
business with a sign out front that says, “ ‘No dogs or Jews 
allowed,’ ”3 the fact that another business might serve her 
family does not redress that “stigmatizing injury,” Roberts, 
468  U. S.,  at  625.  Or,  put  another  way,  “the  hardship
Jackie Robinson suffered when on the road” with his base-
ball team “was not an inability to find some hotel that would 
have him; it was the indignity of not being allowed to stay
in the same hotel as his white teammates.”  J. Oleske, The 
Evolution of Accommodation, 50 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib.
L. Rev. 99, 138 (2015).

To illustrate, imagine a funeral home in rural Mississippi 
agrees to transport and cremate the body of an elderly man
who has passed away, and to host a memorial lunch.  Upon 
learning  that  the  man’s  surviving  spouse  is  also  a  man,
however, the funeral home refuses to deal with the family. 

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3 Hearings on the Nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg To Be Associate
Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  before  the  Senate
Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 139 (1993).