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MASSIVE SOCIAL UPHEAVAL

Justice Gorsuch Mocked for Claiming Making It Illegal to Fire LGBTQ People Could Cause ‘Massive Social Upheaval’

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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, the jurist many believe holds a stolen seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, appeared to be a potential swing vote Tuesday during oral arguments in three cases that will decide if federal civil rights law bans the firing of LGBTQ people simply because they are LGBTQ.

At one point Gorsuch, 52, appeared to agree that at least in part, firing someone for being LGBTQ is sex discrimination. Sex discrimination is banned by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But rather than interpreting the law and applying it, Gorsuch and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court on Tuesday offered up reasons why they just couldn’t make what they seemed to know was the right choice. And so they engaged in a massive dereliction of duty.

“We will be acting exactly like a legislature,” said Justice Samuel Alito, if the Court decides that the word “sex” in the Civil Rights Act includes and applies to LGBTQ people, according to the Los Angeles Times. He appears to be a no vote.

Chief Justice John Roberts “asked whether the court should be in the business of ‘updating old statutes’ and said the word ‘sex’ was understood at the time to mean men and women,” so he too appears to be a no vote.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh reportedly said little during Tuesday’s arguments, but he is widely expected to vote against LGBTQ civil rights.

Justice Gorsuch, a “textualist,” meanwhile, offered interesting insightful commentary.

(Textualism is a made-up theory adopted by conservatives, including the late Justice Antonin Scalia, over the past 50 years to stall progress.)

“Let’s do truth serum, OK? Wouldn’t the employer maybe say it’s because this person was a man who liked other men?” he asked when offered an example of a man being fired for dating men, when a woman would not be fired for dating men. “And isn’t that first part sex?”

But, as the Times notes, Gorsuch “also voiced concern about what he called the ‘massive social upheaval’ that might be caused by extending the law to LGBTQ workers.”

The ACLU’s National Legal Director, David Cole, pushed back against Gorsuch’s false and ignorant claim in this stunningly brave rebuke:

Theoretically, that’s not the job of Supreme Court justices. Aside from the fact that his claim is absolutely wrong – nearly half of Americans already believe (incorrectly) that federal law protects LGBTQ people from being fired for being LGBTQ – interpreting the law and the Constitution, not perceived possible public reaction, is their job.

Gorsuch’s words struck a nerve for my paying attention online and on social media, fueling widespread mockery.

Take a look.

 

Image by JFK Library via Flickr 

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