Page:Bostock v. Clayton County (2020).pdf/17

Rh these submissions did not sway the Court. That an employer discriminates intentionally against an individual only in part because of sex supplies no defense to Title VII. Nor does the fact an employer may happen to favor women as a class.

In Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power v. Manhart, 435 U. S. 702 (1978), an employer required women to make larger pension fund contributions than men. The employer sought to justify its disparate treatment on the ground that women tend to live longer than men, and thus are likely to receive more from the pension fund over time. By everyone’s admission, the employer was not guilty of animosity against women or a “purely habitual assumptio[n] about a woman’s inability to perform certain kinds of work”; instead, it relied on what appeared to be a statistically accurate statement about life expectancy. Id., at 707–708. Even so, the Court recognized, a rule that appears evenhanded at the group level can prove discriminatory at the level of individuals. True, women as a class may live longer than men as a class. But “[t]he statute’s focus on the individual is unambiguous,” and any individual woman might make the larger pension contributions and still die as early as a man. Id., at 708. Likewise, the Court dismissed as irrelevant the employer’s insistence that its actions were motivated by a wish to achieve classwide equality between the sexes: An employer’s intentional discrimination on the basis of sex is no more permissible when it is prompted by some further intention (or motivation), even one as prosaic as seeking to account for actuarial tables. Ibid. The employer violated Title VII because, when its policy worked exactly as planned, it could not “pass the simple test” asking whether an individual female employee would have been treated the same regardless of her sex. Id., at 711.

In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75 (1998), a male plaintiff alleged that he was singled out by his male co-workers for sexual harassment. The Court