Justice Clarence Thomas is very displeased with the landmark LGBTQ+ rights ruling because it was decided on the previous Bostock case and it’s “incorrect reasoning.”
The case decided this week is US v. Schrmetti. It’s a landmark case which allows Tennessee to continue banning mutilation surgeries and puberty blockers for minors. However, the decision was based on the Bostock ruling. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented on that case because of the “incorrect reasoning.”
The Bostock v. Clayton County case ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Thomas wrote that the Bostock logic “fails on its own terms.” He said that the decision didn’t even need to rely on Bostock.
“While the majority concludes that SB1 does not discriminate based on sex, even under Bostock’s incorrect reasoning, I would make clear that, in constitutional challenges, courts need not engage Bostock at all,” he wrote.
The Court Created Law in Bostock
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the dissent, “There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation. The document that the Court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive.”
Alito wrote at the time that while a bill extending those protections passed the House of Representatives, it had stalled in the Senate. It never passed.
“Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination because of ‘sex; still means what it has always meant. But the Court is not deterred by these constitutional niceties. Usurping the constitutional authority of the other branches, the Court has essentially taken H.R. 5’s provision on employment discrimination and issued it under the guise of statutory interpretation,” the dissent reads.
Therefore in essence, what the Supreme Court did was based on a ruling about a legislation that never existed. Under the guise of interpreting legislation they wrote legislation.
Now we have another case that relies on the same ruling.
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