Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 21

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

wasn’t the only factor, or maybe even the main factor, but
it  was  one  but-for  cause—and  that  was  enough.    You  can 
call the statute’s but-for causation test what you will—ex-
pansive, legalistic, the dissents even dismiss it as wooden
or literal.  But it is the law. 

Trying  another  angle,  the  defendants  before  us  suggest 
that an employer who discriminates based on homosexual-
ity or transgender status doesn’t intentionally discriminate 
based on sex, as a disparate treatment claim requires.  See 
post,  at  9–12  (ALITO,  J.,  dissenting);  post,  at  12–13 
(KAVANAUGH,  J.,  dissenting).  But,  as  we’ve  seen,  an  em-
ployer  who  discriminates  against  homosexual  or 
transgender  employees  necessarily  and  intentionally  ap-
plies sex-based rules.  An employer that announces it will 
not employ anyone who is homosexual, for example, intends 
to penalize male employees for being attracted to men and
female employees for being attracted to women. 

What, then, do the employers mean when they insist in-
tentional  discrimination  based  on  homosexuality  or 
transgender  status  isn’t  intentional  discrimination  based 
on  sex?  Maybe  the  employers  mean  they  don’t  intend  to 
harm one sex or the other as a class.  But as should be clear 
by now, the statute focuses on discrimination against indi-
viduals,  not  groups.  Alternatively,  the  employers  may 
mean that they don’t perceive themselves as motivated by
a desire to discriminate based on sex.  But nothing in Title
VII turns on the employer’s labels or any further intentions
(or motivations) for its conduct beyond sex discrimination.
In Manhart, the employer intentionally required women to
make higher pension contributions only to fulfill the further
purpose of making things more equitable between men and 
women as groups.  In Phillips, the employer may have per-
ceived  itself  as  discriminating  based  on  motherhood,  not 
sex, given that its hiring policies as a whole favored women. 
But in both cases, the Court set all this aside as irrelevant. 
The employers’ policies involved intentional discrimination