Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 3

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

3 

Syllabus 

And  in  Oncale  v.  Sundowner  Offshore  Services,  Inc.,  523  U. S.  75,  a 
male plaintiff alleged a triable Title VII claim for sexual harassment 
by co-workers who were members of the same sex. 

The lessons these cases hold are instructive here.  First, it is irrele-
vant what an employer might call its discriminatory practice, how oth-
ers  might  label  it,  or  what  else  might  motivate  it.    In  Manhart,  the 
employer might have called its rule a “life expectancy” adjustment, and
in Phillips, the employer could have accurately spoken of its policy as 
one based on “motherhood.”  But such labels and additional intentions 
or motivations did not make a difference there, and they cannot make
a difference here.  When an employer fires an employee for being ho-
mosexual  or  transgender,  it  necessarily  intentionally  discriminates 
against that individual in part because of sex.  Second, the plaintiff’s
sex  need  not  be  the  sole  or  primary  cause  of  the  employer’s  adverse
action.  In Phillips, Manhart, and Oncale, the employer easily could
have pointed to some other, nonprotected trait and insisted it was the 
more important factor in the adverse employment outcome.  Here, too, 
it is of no significance if another factor, such as the plaintiff’s attrac-
tion  to  the  same  sex  or  presentation  as  a  different  sex  from  the  one 
assigned at birth, might also be at work, or even play a more important 
role  in  the  employer’s  decision.  Finally,  an  employer  cannot  escape 
liability by demonstrating that it treats males and females comparably 
as groups.  Manhart is instructive here.  An employer who intention-
ally fires an individual homosexual or transgender employee in part
because of that individual’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.  Pp. 12–15. 

(c) The employers do not dispute that they fired their employees for 
being homosexual or transgender.  Rather, they contend that even in-
tentional discrimination against employees based on their homosexual 
or transgender status is not a basis for Title VII liability.  But their 
statutory  text  arguments have  already  been  rejected  by  this  Court’s 
precedents.  And none of their other contentions about what they think 
the law was meant to do, or should do, allow for ignoring the law as it 
is.  Pp. 15–33.

(1) The  employers  assert  that  it  should  make  a  difference  that 
plaintiffs would likely respond in conversation that they were fired for
being gay or transgender and not because of sex.  But conversational 
conventions do not control Title VII’s legal analysis, which asks simply
whether sex is a but-for cause.  Nor is it a defense to insist that inten-
tional discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status is
not intentional discrimination based on sex.  An employer who discrim-
inates against homosexual or transgender employees necessarily and 
intentionally  applies sex-based rules.  Nor does it make a difference