Tuesday round-up

Ipse Dixit (podcast) looks at “how courts have construed Title VII’s prohibition on employment discrimination differently in relation to LGBTQ individuals than other social groups,” focusing on how this may play out in three cases on the Supreme Court’s agenda this term. At Reason, Damon Root notes that, although the “late Justice Antonin Scalia was nobody’s idea of a gay rights activist,” “Scalia’s jurisprudence will be favorably cited and employed by the openly gay petitioner and his lawyers” when the Supreme Court considers “whether anti-gay workplace discrimination is illegal under current federal law” in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. At The World and Everything in It (podcast), Mary Reichard unpacks the arguments on behalf of the employer in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which involves discrimination against transgender people. In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Vicki Wilson argues that “redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ creates chaos, not only for employers, but also for girls in our schools and women throughout society.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of respondent Stephens in this case.]

Briefly:

• At Bloomberg Law, Roy Strom reports that in remarks yesterday in Chicago, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “expressed exasperation over the long odds of enacting a number of changes in U.S. law and civic life, ranging from a less-contentious Supreme Court confirmation process to campaign finance reform.”
• For AP, Jessica Gresko reports that in a race-discrimination case filed against Comcast by TV-network owner Byron Allen that the court will hear this term, “[t]he question for the justices is whether Allen needs to show that race was just a factor in Comcast’s decision not to offer him a contract or whether it was the sole factor.”
• At The Wall Street Journal, Kyle Peterson interviews Justice Neil Gorsuch about the justice’s new book, “A Republic, if You Can Keep It.”
• At the Mississippi Business Journal, Ben Williams remarks that “[e]veryone should read at least one opinion from each term,” and he selects his favorite from October Term 2018.
• At Vox, Richard Hasen considers a threat in Michigan to the viability of independent redistricting commissions, mentioned last term in Rucho v. Common Cause, in which the court held federal courts cannot hear partisan-gerrymandering challenges to electoral maps, “as potential other avenues for dealing with the problem of state legislatures drawing districts to benefit themselves and their party.”

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