General
USCCB Amici Curiae brief in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2019)
USCCB Amici Curiae brief in Gerald Lynn Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, August 23, 2019
The amici are national religious organizations that share the conviction that Title VII is not fairly read to address sexual orientation, and that such a reading would create serious burdens on religious liberty, speech, association, and other constitutional and statutory values.
We submit this brief in support of Respondent Clayton County in No. 17-1618, and in support of Petitioners Altitude Express, et al., in No. 17-1623. We urge this Court in both cases to hold that “sex” as used in Title VII does not include “sexual orientation.”
By forbidding workplace discrimination based on sex, Congress intended to level the playing field between men and women. Differential treatment based on “sexual orientation,” however, does not expose women to disadvantageous terms or conditions to which men are not exposed (or vice versa). Therefore, it is not sex discrimination. Nor is “sexual orientation” a protected class under an “association” theory. Under that theory, it is a violation of Title VII’s ban on race discrimination to subject an employee to adverse terms or conditions of employment for associating with or marrying someone of another race. That theory makes perfect sense in the race context because the employer’s adverse treatment of the employee is rooted in the very evil that Title VII is intended to prevent: adverse work conditions that flow from racism. In the case of homosexual relationships, however, adverse workplace treatment is not grounded in sexism, and the evil that Congress intended to prevent (treating women less favorably than men or vice versa) is simply not implicated.