The Central Bostock Reasoning--And Concerns About Sex-Segregation

Looks like I was right about the central reasoning:

   “The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions,” Justice Gorsuch said, “because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”
   It was clear from a simple example, he wrote: An employer has two workers who are attracted to men, one male, one female. If the male employee is fired because of that attraction, the “employer discriminates against him for traits or actions it tolerates in his female colleague.”

   That continues to seem like a prima facie pretty solid argument to me. But I do agree with Alito that we ought to be concerned about its implications:

   The Alito dissent warned against celebrating the decision as “an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.” Instead, he predicted, it “will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety,” as LGBT individuals press future claims.
   “Transgender persons will be able to argue that they are entitled to use a bathroom or locker room that is reserved for persons of the sex with which they identify,” or join sports teams similarly segregated by sex, Justice Alito wrote. Gender-reassignment surgery could become covered by health insurance, teachers could be required to alter the pronouns by which they address students and religious entities could be compelled “to employ individuals whose conduct flouts the tenets of the organization’s faith,” he said.

Gorsuch "dismissed such speculation," arguing that this was a narrow decision about employment...but that's what we keep hearing--and it keeps being wrong. The implications of the 1964 Civil Rights Act just keep multiplying (some might say: metastasizing). And we know that the left has already passed legislation in NY, DC, and CA that undermines the First Amendment by compelling speech--enforcing misuse of pronouns, specifically. So we know they'll keep trying to push these speech-control measures.

   And the type of argument Gorsuch describes isn't nearly so strong when applied to transgenderism--which is an inherently weird kind of case. Sexual orientation is pretty straightforward--as is just dressing in ways traditionally reserved to the opposite sex. But transgenderism can involve ostentatiously false and irrational beliefs--and it's less clear that employers shouldn't be able to take that into account. Seems to me that employers can have good reason to fire employees who pretend to believe--a fortiori who do believe!--outlandishly and provably false things. E.g. if my employee is clearly black but pretends to be Asian, or is 5'2" and repeatedly insists to customers that he's 6'4". Can e.g. Hooters or a strip club be obligated to hire men who misrepresent themselves as women? Even if this is obvious to everyone? Maybe that reduces to a question about whether businesses can hire on the basis of physical attractiveness...

   There are other concerns, too, but I gotta get to work.

   Anyway, I haven't read the opinion, and am too busy to do so soon--but I look forward to it.