Gorsuch: liberal hero

[Bill the Cat]

But he says clearly that Title VII only had biological sex in mind - so he took precedent over the text. What if he did that with the Constitution? And from what I read these precedents were ambiguous.

[Starlight]

Gorusch is big on past precedent. This was a pretty cut and dried past precedent ruling.

Lower courts have been all over the place on this topic. They have disagreed both on whether Title VII applies, and among those courts who thought it did, they have disagreed on why it does and their different lines of reasoning had different implications for how far-reaching the consequences were.

There was no particular expectation that SCOTUS would give this ruling, and if anything, people were assuming that a conservative SCOTUS with Trump appointed judges would side with the lower courts who had said Title VII didn't apply. Instead, the ruling was that it does apply, and somewhat shockingly they opted for the most generous and expansive interpretation offered by any of the lower courts rather than any sort of narrow ruling. This is a very LGBT friendly ruling, which certainly didn't have to be that way given the diverse precedents.

I had thought the fact that Gorsuch attends an LGBT friendly church might indicate the ruling was going to go this way. An indeed, he wrote the decision.

[Terraceth]

But he says clearly that Title VII only had biological sex in mind - so he took precedent over the text.

He may have said that the people who wrote the law didn't have things like sexual orientation in mind. However, the entire point of textualism is that it doesn't matter what the writers thought, it's what the text says. The law forbids discrimination based on "sex," and repeatedly held precedent prompts you to examine discrimination on a "but-for" basis; that is, if it were but for their sex/race/other protected class, would they have been fired/demoted/mistreated? (in other words, if everything else was the same, but they were male instead of female, or female instead of male) Gorsuch concluded the answer was a very obvious "yes"--e.g. if you a fire a man for marrying a man but would not fire a woman for marrying a man, then it's a case of discrimination based on sex--and ruled accordingly.

Even if one disagrees with Gorsuch's reasoning or ruling, one can't really claim it wasn't textualist.

[seer]

He may have said that the people who wrote the law didn't have things like sexual orientation in mind. However, the entire point of textualism is that it doesn't matter what the writers thought, it's what the text says. The law forbids discrimination based on "sex," and repeatedly held precedent prompts you to examine discrimination on a "but-for" basis; that is, if it were but for their sex/race/other protected class, would they have been fired/demoted/mistreated? (in other words, if everything else was the same, but they were male instead of female, or female instead of male) Gorsuch concluded the answer was a very obvious "yes"--e.g. if you a fire a man for marrying a man but would not fire a woman for marrying a man, then it's a case of discrimination based on sex--and ruled accordingly.

Even if one disagrees with Gorsuch's reasoning or ruling, one can't really claim it wasn't textualist.

If I remember correctly you said this would be the line of reasoning a while back.