Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

22 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

Opinion of the Court 

necessary  to  the  result  if  a  member  of  the  opposite  sex
might face the same outcome from the same policy?  

What the employers see as unique isn’t even unusual.  Of-
ten  in  life  and  law  two  but-for  factors  combine  to  yield  a 
result that could have also occurred in some other way.  Im-
agine  that  it’s  a  nice  day  outside  and  your  house  is  too 
warm, so you decide to open the window.  Both the cool tem-
perature outside and the heat inside are but-for causes of 
your choice to open the window.  That doesn’t change just 
because you also would have opened the window had it been 
warm outside and cold inside.  In either case, no one would 
deny that the window is open “because of ” the outside tem-
perature.  Our cases are much the same.  So, for example,
when it comes to homosexual employees, male sex and at-
traction to men are but-for factors that can combine to get
them  fired.  The  fact  that  female  sex  and  attraction  to 
women can also get an employee fired does no more than 
show the same outcome can be achieved through the com-
bination  of  different  factors.  In  either  case,  though,  sex 
plays an essential but-for role.

At bottom, the employers’ argument unavoidably comes 
down to a suggestion that sex must be the sole or primary 
cause of an adverse employment action for Title VII liability 
to  follow.  And,  as  we’ve  seen,  that  suggestion  is  at  odds
with  everything  we  know  about  the  statute.   Consider  an 
employer eager to revive the workplace gender roles of the 
1950s.  He enforces a policy that he will hire only men as
mechanics and only women as secretaries.  When a quali-
fied woman applies for a mechanic position and is denied,
the “simple test” immediately spots the discrimination:  A 
qualified man would have been given the job, so sex was a
but-for cause of the employer’s refusal to hire.  But like the 
employers before us today, this employer would say not so 
fast.  By  comparing  the  woman  who  applied  to  be  a  me-
chanic to a man who applied to be a mechanic, we’ve quietly