Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 168

24 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting 

to the “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,” as 
this Court rightly concluded.  Meritor Savings Bank, FSB 
v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, 64 (1986) (internal quotation marks 
omitted).10 
  By contrast, this case involves sexual orientation discrim-
ination, which has long and widely been understood as dis-
tinct from, and not a form of, sex discrimination.  Until now, 
federal  law  has  always  reflected  that  common  usage  and 
recognized that distinction between sex discrimination and 
sexual orientation discrimination.  To fire one employee be-
cause she is a woman and another employee because he is 
gay  implicates  two  distinct  societal  concerns,  reveals  two 
distinct biases, imposes two distinct harms, and falls within 
two distinct statutory prohibitions. 

—————— 

10

 An amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs suggests that the plaintiffs’ 
interpretive  approach  is  supported  by  the  interpretive  approach  em-
ployed by the Court in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Edu-
cation, 347 U. S. 483 (1954).  See Brief for Anti-Discrimination Scholars 
as Amici Curiae 4.  That suggestion is incorrect.  Brown is a correct de-
cision as a matter of original public meaning.  There were two analytical 
components of Brown.  One issue was the meaning of “equal protection.”  
The Court determined that black Americans—like all Americans—have 
an individual equal protection right against state discrimination on the 
basis of race.  (That point is also directly made in Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 
U. S. 497, 499–500 (1954).)  Separate but equal is not equal.  The other 
issue  was  whether  that  racial  nondiscrimination  principle  applied  to 
public schools, even though public schools did not exist in any compara-
ble  form  in  1868.    The  answer  was  yes.    The  Court  applied  the  equal 
protection principle to public schools in the same way that the Court ap-
plies, for example, the First Amendment to the Internet and the Fourth 
Amendment to cars. 

  This  case  raises  the  same  kind  of  inquiry  as  the  first  question  in 
Brown.  There, the question was what equal protection meant.  Here, the 
question is what “discriminate because of sex” means.  If this case raised 
the question whether the sex discrimination principle in Title VII applied 
to some category of employers unknown in 1964, such as to social media 
companies,  it  might  be  a  case  in  Brown’s  second  category,  akin  to  the 
question whether the racial nondiscrimination principle applied to public 
schools.  But that is not this case.