Conservatives took to Twitter Monday morning to express their shock and anger after learning Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch had authored a majority opinion stating that it is illegal for businesses to fire people for being gay or transgender.
A set of cases that came before the court had asked the justices to decide whether Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of “sex,” applies to gay and transgender people.
Joined by fellow conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s progressive wing, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, Gorsuch issued a landmark 6-3 ruling that Title VII forbids employers from discriminating against workers because they are gay or transgender, paving the way for breakthrough employment protections for LGBTQ people around the country. Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision.
“Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,” Gorsuch wrote. “The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
This ruling did not sit well with the conservative legal activists who put time, energy, and millions of dollars into securing Gorsuch’s confirmation to replace Justice Antonin Scalia at the start of President Donald Trump’s term, reports Slate.
His opinion apparently enraged Carrie Severino, the president of the Judicial Crisis Network, an organization which reportedly spent $10 million to secure Gorsuch’s confirmation in 2017 and promised another $10 million to secure Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s in 2018.
Severino accused Gorsuch of ruling “for the sake of appealing to college campuses and editorial boards” in “a brute force attack on our constitutional system.”
Justice Scalia would be disappointed that his successor has bungled textualism so badly today, for the sake of appealing to college campuses and editorial boards.
This was not judging, this was legislating—a brute force attack on our constitutional system. (1/x)
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) June 15, 2020
Thank you Kavanaugh, Alito and Thomas. To hell with the rest, especially that traitor Gorsuch.
— Ronald DeSantis (@realRonDeSantis) June 15, 2020
This Gorsuch decision is not originalist in any way; he acknowledges as much. It is simply a bad, outcome-driven legal decision. And it throws religious liberty, free speech, and employment law into complete turmoil.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 15, 2020
Here we go, the "conservative" scotus codifies transgenderism into…1964 act! 4th massacre of the day at scotus. Gorsuch, Roberts join liberals in majority. I opposed both Trump nominees and i was right. What a pathetic movement. What a fraud. Thats real originalism there.
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) June 15, 2020
The crisis moment for the “conservative legal movement” has arrived.
The Roe v. Wade of religious liberty is here, and it was delivered by golden boy Neil Gorsuch.
What comes next?
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) June 15, 2020
The absurdity of reading GENDER IDENTITY — literally a meaningless term — into civil rights law is just off the wall.
Our institutions have brain worms. Reject them entirely.
— Jon Schweppe 🇺🇸 (@JonSchweppe) June 15, 2020
All those evangelicals who sided with Trump in 2016 to protect them from the cultural currents, just found their excuse to stay home in 2020 thank to Trump’s Supreme Court picks.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 15, 2020
The conservative legal movement has accomplished two things: libertarian political economy (enforced by judges) and betrayal of social conservatives and traditionalists.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 15, 2020
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