Opinion ID: 8414576
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sexual Orientation Discrimination As Traditional Sex Discrimination

Text: First, sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination for the simple reason that such discrimination treats otherwise similarly-situated people differently solely because of their sex. A person is discriminated against “because of ... sex” if that person is “exposed to disadvantageous terms or conditions of employment to which members of the other sex are not exposed.” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 80, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998) (quoting Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 25, 114 S.Ct. 367, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993) (Ginsburg, J., concurring)). As the Supreme Court has alternatively explained, an action constitutes sex discrimination under Title VII if “the evidence shows treatment of a person in a manner which but for that person’s sex would be different.” City of Los Angeles, Dep’t of Water & Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 711, 98 S.Ct. 1370, 55 L.Ed.2d 657 (1978) (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Whatever evidentiary route the plaintiff chooses to follow, he or she must always prove that the conduct at issue was not merely tinged with offensive sexual connotations, but actually constituted ’discrimina[tion] ... because of ... sex,’ ” Oncale, 523 U.S. at 81, 118 S.Ct. 998 (emphasis omitted), and Title VII’s prohibition “must extend to [discrimination] of any kind that meets the statutory requirements,” id. at 80,118 S.Ct. 998 (emphasis added). Sexual orientation discrimination meets this test. As the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has observed, sexual orientation “cannot be defined or understood without reference to sex,” Baldwin v. Foxx, E.E.O.C. Decision No. 0120133080, 2015 WL 4397641, at  (July 16, 2015), because sexual orientation is defined by whether a person is attracted to people of the same sex or opposite sex (or both, or neither). For this reason, the EEOC has concluded that “[s'Jexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination because it necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee’s sex.” Id. To illustrate, the EEOC gives an example: [AJssume that an employer suspends a lesbian employee for displaying a photo of her female spouse on her desk, but does not suspend a male employee for displaying a photo of his female spouse on his desk. The lesbian employee in that example can allege that her employer took an adverse action against her that the employer would not have taken had she been male. That is a legitimate claim under Title VII that sex was unlawfully taken into account in the adverse employment action. The same result holds true if the person discriminated against is straight. Assume a woman is suspended because she has placed a picture of her husband on her desk but her gay colleague is not suspended after he places a picture of his husband on his desk. The straight female employee could bring a cognizable Title VII claim of disparate treatment because of sex. Id. (citation omitted). Under this framework, “but for [the employee’s] sex,” the employee’s treatment would have been different. Manhart, 435 U.S. at 711, 98 S.Ct. 1370. Because this situation “meets the statutory requirements” of Title VII, the statute “must extend” to prohibit it. Oncale, 523 U.S. at 80, 118 S.Ct. 998. One could argue in response that a man married to a man is not similarly situated to a man married to a woman, but is instead similarly situated to a woman married to a woman. In other words, one might contend that, for comparative purposes, a gay man is not married to a man; he is married to someone of the same sex, and it is other people married (or otherwise attracted) to the same sex who are similarly situated for the purpose of Title VII. In my view, this counterargument, which attempts to define “similarly situated” at a different level of generality, fails to demonstrate that sexual orientation discrimination is not “but for” sex discrimination. The Supreme Court rejected an analogous argument on interracial marriage— “that members of each race [were] punished to the same degree” — in Loving v. Virginia and held that treating all members of interracial relationships the same, but less favorably than members of intrar-acial relationships, was a race-based classification violating the Equal Protection Clause. See 388 U.S. 1, 7-8, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967). The same logic suggests that it is sex discrimination to treat all individuals in same-sex relationships the same, but less favorably than individuals in opposite-sex relationships. Similarly, Manhart tells us that sex discrimination is treating someone “in a manner which but for that person’s sex would be different,” 435 U.S. at 711, 98 S.Ct. 1370 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted), suggesting that when evaluating a comparator for a gay, lesbian, or bisexual plaintiff, we must hold every fact except the sex of the plaintiff constant — changing the sex of both the plaintiff and his or her partner would no longer be a “but-for-the-sex-of-the-plaintiff” test. Thus in my view, if gay, lesbian, or bisexual plaintiffs can show that “but for” their sex, Manhart, 435 U.S. at 711, 98 S.Ct. 1370, they would not have been discriminated against for being attracted to men (or being attracted to women), they have made out a cognizable sex discrimination claim. In such a case, then, traditional sex discrimination would encompass discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Neither Simonton nor Dawson addressed this argument.