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comment by ilex
ilex  ·  1382 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: US Supreme Court backs protection for LGBT workers

Majority opinion by Gorsuch, a Trump appointee!

    Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. 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.




ButterflyEffect  ·  1381 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I am truly surprised to hear this from Gorsuch. Maybe I don't understand him well enough? Anyone have thoughts on where to start to dive into him a bit?

Especially considering, you know, I'm basically stuck with this guy for the rest of my life.

johnnyFive  ·  1381 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I would suggest the Neil Gorsuch Project, which was set up when he was nominated.

user-inactivated  ·  1382 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
johnnyFive  ·  1381 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think people misunderstand his ideology - it's not conservative the way Alito and Thomas are conservative. He's much more of an old-school conservative: generally hands-off when it comes to government action, which can be good (civil liberties) and not good (regulation). But IMO anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying a ton of attention. Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion when he was a circuit judge saying that he didn't think police should be able to apply the "plain sight" doctrine after they knocked on a guy's door despite a "no trespassing" sign on the property line.

b_b  ·  1381 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was just writing something very similar. This isn't the first time he's joined the liberals against perceived conservative orthodoxy; it's just the highest profile time. I think for most humans, of which Justices are obviously a subset, ideology stops at results. That is, whatever your ideological bent, you'll figure out a way to justify the desired outcome regardless of what you've said or indicated in the past. Gorsuch, on the other hand, appears to be extremely comfortable with his point of view, even in the times when it takes him to unexpected places. Although I rarely agree with him, I respect that a lot more than a flip flopper like the guy he replaced. You're the lawyer, so I'm sure you have a deeper perspective than me, but what I think is important to a functional rules based system is expectation of what the law is or ought to be given the body of rulings out there and the personalities likely to rule on future cases. When we have judges and justices who are willing to support and ends without regard to means it inhibits our ability to behave in a way that we can say with some certainty conforms to the law. Anyway, props to Gorsuch for going with his head on this one.

johnnyFive  ·  1381 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Indeed, and I think this is something that judges do more often than not. But it also goes to show how ridiculous the whole "original intent" argument is, because that is still a matter of interpretation.

b_b  ·  1381 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm a casual Court watcher, so everything I read I read with a layman's eye. It is always striking to me how many cases are decided 9-0. Those are clearly not the cases that typically garner the headlines, but it's nice to know that our judiciary can come to broadly similar conclusions given a set of laws and facts. That would seem to be the way you would most often want it in a rules based system where the law is applied dispassionately. Of course, culture war type stuff is rarely if ever dispassionate for anyone, even lawyers who believe themselves to be so.