What's your opinion on the SCOTUS ruling, that protects LGBT+ workers from job discrimination?

Full disclosure: I helped write one of the amicus briefs for this case.

I’m not surprised by the ruling, though I am surprised it was 6–3. Oral arguments suggested it was going to be 5–4. I haven’t been able to read the whole decision yet, but the reasoning that seems to have won the day is one that has been building up for a while now and that was more or less designed to put judges like Roberts and Gorsuch (and originally Scalia) in a position where they had to either support it or break with their own principles.

As for Trump, I don’t think he’ll try to do anything about it. He has played both sides of this debate since the very beginning, saying he’s the greatest friend the LGBTQ community has ever had and then silently gutting protections for LGBTQ people. There’s no predicting Trump, of course, but coming out against the decision would be contrary to his strategy on LGBT issues up to this point.

P.S. I fixed the topics for you.

@SavoirFaire

Thanks for fixing the topics.

Would it be possible to delete the “gay rights” one, since that’s already included in “LGBT”?

About time and no surprise. Some things come out in the wash and this was one of them.

@Brian1946 Done!

@SavoirFaire Thanks!

A pleasant surprise for me, I thought the protections would be gutted by the SCOTUS.

I’m very happy about this decision.

It was probably already the law, but this settles it.

I’m very happy.

My state has had LGBT protections in employment for a long time now, so it doesn’t really effect me, but I am so glad that the 23 states and hundreds of cities and counties across the country that until today had no protections for LGBT workers are no longer able to fire someone just for being who they are.

Long overdue.

The surprise isn’t the decision, that was pretty obvious.

The surprise was that it was written by a conservative christian republican judge.

I’m thrilled about it. Finally, some good news.

Excellent decision. And amusing to me that Gorsuch is not the “MAGA judge” that many (on both sides) thought he would be.

Firing someone for being gay is not “religious freedom”.

I was so fucking shocked that you could have knocked me over with a feather. I thought that thumper had the SCOTUS so stacked that no one would dare to go against him or his wishes.

I’m thrilled that the SC finally took a stand that can’t be blamed on the liberals

I’m not terribly surprised by the SCOTUS ruling, but I am a little surprised by the 6–3 decision. Roberts being in the majority in this case does not shock me. He might lean conservative, but he’s more of a swing vote than folks seem to want to think. Gorsuch – I dunno. I won’t say he’s more liberal, per se, but he seems to be perhaps a bit more civil libertarian than his predecessor, Antonin Scalia, was.

I was surprised by the decision. It seems to be part of a pattern of actions taken in response to the anti-discrimination marches. It is as if there was something that was simmering for a long time that is now coming out. NASCAR banned confederate flags and several states have removed confederate statues. The NFL now allows kneeling during the national anthem. The Supreme Court has also decided not to vote on Trump’s appeal to reconsider the legality of sanctuary cities.

Until recently, I thought Trump had a good chance of being re-elected. Now I am not so sure. The tide of history does not seem to be going his way. With all the things going on, there is a need for presidential leadership, a statement before the country of how the federal government plans to handle the various crises. We get nothing but Twitter rants. The image of Trump hiding in his bunker or tear gassing peaceful protesters so he can get a picture taken holding a bible upside down is not going to help.

Trump has not selected any ‘conservatives’ Conservative is not a side. These are constitutionalists, who interpret the law the way it was written and intended to be interpreted.

@LostInParadise Trump was never hiding in his bunker—he was on the news and in press conferences every day. Joe Biden has been hunkering in the basement with his Visiting Angels, trying to make technology work. Antifa with caches of bottles, bricks, and frozen water bottles is not a peaceful protest.

@Yellowdog , Trump hid in the bunker during protests in the capital. Link

Oh, @Yellowdog, why do you keep disputing the fact that 45 was in the bunker? He was in the bunker. It’s that simple. Whether he was “cowering” or “hiding” or simply reacting to what he or the Secret Service perceived as a threat is a matter of perspective, but he WAS in the bunker.

The whole “Biden is missing / Trump is hiding” thing is nonsense. Biden is practicing social distancing in accordance with both state and federal guidelines. Trump and/or the Secret Service was reacting to a perceived danger. If the pandemic and the protests had come four years earlier, and if Obama went to bunker while Trump was broadcasting from his basement, we’d see the exact opposite pattern of complaints. And whenever the pattern of complaints depends entirely on which team uniform someone wears, you know it’s a bullshit issue.

@Yellowdog “Trump has not selected any ‘conservatives’ Conservative is not a side.”

Conservativism is a political philosophy that comes with a set of principles, and the principles espoused by the judges Trump has appointed are conservative ones. Ergo, they are conservative judges. As much as we should appreciate Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement that there are no Trump judges or Obama judges—other than to the extent that some judges were appointed by Trump and some were appointed by Obama—we should also recognize that this doesn’t mean the judges are all blank slates with neither pasts nor principles to inform the decisions they make.

“These are constitutionalists, who interpret the law the way it was written and intended to be interpreted.”

First things first, “constitutionalism” is a view about the source of a government’s legitimacy and the limits of its authority. It is not a theory of judicial interpretation. Perhaps you are thinking about originalism or textualism? But all of the originalists on the court are also textualists, and textualism explicitly rejects the idea that judges should consider a statute’s original intent (since intentionalism requires judges to consider intent regardless of what the text says, whereas textualism requires judges to consider what the text says regardless of the intent of those who wrote it).

And of course, all judges think they are interpreting the law the way it was written. They just have different approaches to what that means. Nor is it clear that there is such a thing as the way that the law was “intended to be interpreted.” Leaving aside the fact that the US Constitution was written by a group of people who were deeply divided over a variety of complicated issues and had differing—sometimes even contrary—intentions when deciding what to put in it, the simple fact is that you can find arguments for both strict and loose constructionism in the writings of any individual Founder (most notably Thomas Jefferson, who is explicitly cited by scholars on both sides as the inspiration for their view). It’s rather difficult to stick to the original intent when the Founders—both as a group and as individuals—lacked a single, cohesive intention.

And that’s why nearly every school of judicial interpretation that has any serious sway with either judges or scholars rejects intentionalism. Case in point: Scalia and Ginsburg have both railed against intentionalism at various times.