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BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

Opinion of the Court 

Sometimes  small  gestures  can  have  unexpected  conse-
quences.  Major initiatives practically guarantee them.  In 
our  time,  few  pieces  of  federal  legislation  rank  in  signifi-
cance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  There, in Title VII, 
Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the
basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  Today,
we  must  decide  whether  an  employer  can  fire  someone
simply for being homosexual or transgender.  The answer 
is clear.  An employer who fires an individual for being ho-
mosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or ac-
tions it would not have questioned in members of a different 
sex.  Sex  plays  a  necessary  and  undisguisable  role  in  the 
decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. 

Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have
anticipated their work would lead to this particular result.
Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s con-
sequences  that  have  become  apparent  over  the  years,  in-
cluding its prohibition against discrimination on the basis
of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male 
employees.  But the limits of the drafters’ imagination sup-
ply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.  When the ex-
press terms of a statute give us one answer and extratex-
tual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest.  Only
the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to
its benefit. 

I 

Few facts are needed to appreciate the legal question we 
face.  Each  of  the  three  cases  before  us  started  the  same 
way:  An employer fired a long-time employee shortly after 
the  employee  revealed  that  he  or  she  is  homosexual  or 
transgender—and  allegedly  for  no  reason  other  than  the 
employee’s homosexuality or transgender status. 

Gerald Bostock worked for Clayton County, Georgia, as a
child  welfare  advocate.   Under  his  leadership,  the  county
won national awards for its work.  After a decade with the