"Eight months later, though, a six-justice majority of the court held that federal employment protections indeed protect trans people in the workplace. The basic logic of Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion in Bostock, which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberals joined, is that if an employer treats a transgender man differently than it would treat a man assigned male at birth, the workplace is treating that trans man differently "because of sex.""
"Conservative types who had expected Kavanaugh's confirmation to pay immediate dividends promptly lost their minds. In a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito called the majority's argument "deceptive" and its conclusion "preposterous." One conservative activist accused Gorsuch of abandoning textualism and succumbing to pressure from "college campuses and editorial boards"; another compared Bostock to Dred Scott, the 1857 Supreme Court case that denied citizenship to Black Americans and more or less started the Civil War."
Conservative expectations of a negative ruling rose after Justice Brett Kavanaugh replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, creating a conservative majority on the Court. A six-justice majority nonetheless held that federal employment protections apply to gay and transgender people. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that treating a transgender man differently than a man assigned male at birth constitutes discrimination "because of sex." Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices joined that opinion. Conservative critics reacted angrily: Justice Samuel Alito denounced the reasoning as "deceptive" and "preposterous," and activists accused Gorsuch of abandoning textualism.
Read at Slate Magazine
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