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

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

15 

Opinion of the Court 

more important factor in the adverse employment outcome.
So, too, it has no significance here if another factor—such 
as the sex the plaintiff is attracted to or presents as—might
also be at work, or even play a more important role in the 
employer’s decision.

Finally,  an  employer  cannot  escape  liability  by  demon-
strating  that  it  treats  males  and  females  comparably  as 
groups.  As Manhart teaches, an employer is liable for in-
tentionally requiring an individual female employee to pay 
more into a pension plan than a male counterpart even if 
the scheme promotes equality at the group level.  Likewise, 
an employer who intentionally fires an individual homosex-
ual  or  transgender  employee  in  part  because  of  that  indi-
vidual’s sex violates the law even if the employer is willing
to subject all male and female homosexual or transgender 
employees to the same rule. 

III 
What do the employers have to say in reply?  For present 
purposes, they do not dispute that they fired the plaintiffs 
for being homosexual or transgender.  Sorting out the true
reasons for an adverse employment decision is often a hard 
business, but none of that is at issue here.  Rather, the em-
ployers submit that even intentional discrimination against 
employees  based  on  their  homosexuality  or  transgender 
status supplies no basis for liability under Title VII.

The employers’ argument proceeds in two stages.  Seek-
ing footing in the statutory text, they begin by advancing a
number of reasons why discrimination on the basis of ho-
mosexuality or transgender status doesn’t involve discrim-
ination because of sex.  But each of these arguments turns
out  only  to  repackage  errors  we’ve  already  seen  and  this
Court’s precedents have already rejected.  In the end, the 
employers  are  left  to  retreat  beyond  the  statute’s  text,
where they fault us for ignoring the legislature’s purposes