Of Trump’s Supreme Court appointees, Gorsuch remains my least favorite because of his tendency to go rogue with completely insane decisions.
McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which Gorsuch decided that much of the state belongs to Indian tribes was so bad even Roberts wouldn’t sign on to it, but Bostock v. Clayton County was one of the greatest betrayals, falsely claiming that “sex” in Title VII could, despite its original stated intent, cover sexual identity.
Rep. Howard Smith had introduced what eventually became Title VII, with a letter which asked, that since there were more women than men, “why the Creator would set up such an imbalance of spinsters, shutting off the ‘right’ of every female to have a husband of her own, is, of course, known only to nature… but I am sure you will agree that this is a grave injustice to womankind and something the Congress and President Johnson should take immediate steps to correct… especially in this election year.”
To add to the already hilarious joke, six Supreme Court justices just decided that what the Southern racist really meant by “sex” was gay and transgender because in Washington D.C. no joke is too funny that it can’t be taken seriously as a basis for judicial activism and lawsuits.
It’s still a joke, but we’re not allowed to laugh anymore.
“Few in 1964 would have expected Title VII to apply to discrimination against homosexual and transgender persons. But legislative history has no bearing here,” Gorsuch writes.
History? Who cares about it anyway. And now Bostock v. Clayton led to this magnificent triumph of justice.
A federal judge has found that a Georgia sheriff’s office was illegally discriminating when it denied gender reassignment surgery to a deputy.
US District Judge Marc Treadwell ruled June 2 that Houston County cannot exclude surgery for the transgender woman from its health insurance plan, citing a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding that a Michigan funeral home couldn’t fire an employee for being transgender.
Because the taxpayers and other employees in a small Georgia county should be on the hook for this man’s cosmetic surgery.
Treadwell wrote in his order that Lange, a 16-year-employee, told the sheriff and other county officials in 2018 that he wanted to begin dressing as a woman at work, while inquiring about whether Houston County’s health plan would cover his gender reassignment surgery.
Sheriff Cullen Talton, first elected sheriff in 1972, initially took it as a joke, Treadwell wrote, and then said he doesn’t “believe in sex changes,” before ultimately granting permission for Lange to dress as a woman, but warned he would need “tough skin” to deal with her coworkers.
County commissioners voted unanimously to keep the exclusion in 2019, after Lange had asked them to pay for his surgery in a public meeting, claiming they were trying to keep health insurance costs low. The surgery he was seeking was estimated to cost $25,600 at the time.
Treadwell found it’s undisputed that Lange’s surgery “medically necessary” and questioned whether the concern about costs was just a smokescreen to discriminate against Lange.
“Undisputed”.
Treadwell is obviously an Obama appointee. But he’s using Gorsuch’s insistence that “sex” covers any kind of sexual identity. That betrayal of the law is why some Georgia taxpayers will now be stuck with the bill for Mr. Lange’s surgery.
Leave a Reply