Alito: Court's 'Preposterous' Trans Ruling Threatens Religion, Speech, Privacy, and Safety

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that discrimination on the basis of sex includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). In a powerful dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito condemned the ruling as “preposterous” and betraying “breathtaking” arrogance. He noted that Congress has tried and repeatedly failed to amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in just this fashion and that no one interpreted the law this way until 2017. In this decision, as in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court usurped the power of Congress by creating “legislation.” Perhaps most importantly, however, Alito warns that the decision will have wide-ranging destructive impacts on key freedoms Americans hold dear, and he predicts that “the entire Federal Judiciary will be mired for years in disputes about the reach of the Court’s reasoning.”-- More...