Page:Bostock v. Clayton County (2020).pdf/42

Rh this opinion includes the full definitions of “sex” in the unabridged dictionaries in use in the 1960s.)

In all those dictionaries, the primary definition of “sex” was essentially the same as that in the then-most recent edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary 2296 (def. 1) (2d ed. 1953): “[o]ne of the two divisions of organisms formed on the distinction of male and female.” See also American Heritage Dictionary 1187 (def. 1(a)) (1969) (“The property or quality by which organisms are classified according to their reproductive functions”); Random House Dictionary of the English Language 1307 (def. 1) (1966) (Random House Dictionary) (“the fact or character of being either male or female”); 9 Oxford English Dictionary 577 (def. 1) (1933) (“Either of the two divisions of organic beings distinguished as male and female respectively”).

The Court does not dispute that this is what “sex” means in Title VII, although it coyly suggests that there is at least some support for a different and potentially relevant definition. Ante, at 5. (I address alternative definitions below. See Part I–B–3, infra.) But the Court declines to stand on that ground and instead “proceed[s] on the assumption that ‘sex’ ... refer[s] only to biological distinctions between male and female.” Ante, at 5.

If that is so, it should be perfectly clear that Title VII does not reach discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity. If “sex” in Title VII means biologically male or female, then discrimination because of sex means discrimination because the person in question is biologically male or biologically female, not because that person is sexually attracted to members of the same sex or identifies as a member of a particular gender.

How then does the Court claim to avoid that conclusion?