The consequences of the law’s focus on individuals rather than groups are anything but academic. Suppose an employer fires a woman for refusing his s… - Neil Gorsuch

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The consequences of the law’s focus on individuals rather than groups are anything but academic. Suppose an employer fires a woman for refusing his sexual advances. It’s no defense for the employer to note that, while he treated that individual woman worse than he would have treated a man, he gives preferential treatment to female employees overall. The employer is liable for treating this woman worse in part because of her sex. Nor is it a defense for an employer to say it discriminates against both men and women because of sex. This statute works to protect individuals of both sexes from discrimination, and does so equally. So an employer who fires a woman, Hannah, because she is insufficiently feminine and also fires a man, Bob, for being insufficiently masculine may treat men and women as groups more or less equally. But in both cases the employer fires an individual in part because of sex. Instead of avoiding Title VII exposure, this employer doubles it.

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About Neil Gorsuch

Neil McGill Gorsuch (August 29, 1967) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Gorsuch is a proponent of textualism in statutory interpretation, originalism in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, and is an advocate of natural law philosophy.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Neil McGill Gorsuch
Alternative Names: Neil M. Gorsuch

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Additional quotes by Neil Gorsuch

Whether you serve ultimately as a lawyer or judge, I hope as an officer of the court all the same you will help explain these virtues to your clients, your family, and your friends. In popular culture, we often see people deriding judges who issue unpopular rulings or lawyers who represent unpopular clients. We see those who confuse a judge's ruling or a lawyer's representation with support for the person's cause or personal favoritism or bias. They suggest that when a judge rules for a corporation, he loves corporations. Or that when a lawyer represents a criminal defendant, he loves criminals.
Attacks like these miss the mark. They misunderstand completely the role of judge and lawyer. I hope you will help remind those you encounter that if they want to secure their own liberty from oppression, they should want lawyers and judges who are unafraid to follow the law where it leads and enforce the law fearlessly, without bending to the passing whims and wishes of public opinion. For one day, too, you might remind your friends, they could find themselves braced against the prevailing winds of the day, in need of a lawyer and facing a judge. And when that day comes, I hope you will ask them, would they rather stand before a court of public opinion or a court of law?

Despite my real concerns, though, I confess I remain an incorrigible optimist. America has overcome daunting odds time and again. At our nation's birth, almost no serious thinker in Europe thought a democracy could survive long without devolving into chaos or tyranny Yet almost 250 years later, here we stand. For much of our history, the promise of equal treatment under the law looked more like an unserious fiction than an earnest ambition. Yet while much remains to be done, we have made many strides to realize that promise, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. World wars, terrorist attacks, political assassinations, economic depressions, the fall of other countries to communism and fascism, and so much more have tested our nation, too. Still, America remains the greatest beacon of liberty the world has ever known. The ideals embodied in our Declaration of Independence- that each of us enjoys certain inalienable rights, that all of us are created equal, that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed- have inspired billions of people around the world and captured truths that resonate in every human heart. I would never bet against the American people.

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