Most top Republican lawmakers are unconcerned by a Monday Supreme Court decision that prohibits employers from firing people for being gay or transgender.
The decision, handed down in Bostock v. Clayton County, interpreted Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include protections for gay and transgender people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee who usually votes with the conservative wing of the court.
While Gorsuch’s turn angered many social conservatives, several leading senators who helped confirm him to the court found it praiseworthy. Senate Majority Whip John Thune praised Gorsuch for his “independence,” noting that even since 2017, when Gorsuch was nominated, the country has “changed a lot on the issue.”
“I assume that he looked at the facts and the law, and that’s the conclusion he came to,” Thune said. “And that’s what, when we nominated him and confirmed him, we wanted him to do.”
Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, with the former being up for reelection this year in a heated race, tweeted their support for the court’s decision.
“This is long overdue, and is significant progress as we seek to protect and uphold the rights and equality of all Americans,” Murkowski said in a statement.
Other Republicans, including Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, also expressed their support for the Supreme Court’s decision. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley noted that the court unburdened Congress’s “necessity for acting” on the issue by making protections, which have long failed in both the House and the Senate, the “law of the land.”
On the whole, however, most elected Republicans chose not to comment on the decision, including, notably, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spearheaded Gorsuch’s nomination after successfully using the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death as a political tool in the 2016 presidential election.
The few senators who dissented did so on the grounds that they felt the court overstepped its authority by amending an act of Congress. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said that, while he doesn’t think gay and transgender people should be discriminated against in the workplace, he would have preferred that the “decision would have been reached by Congress rather than the court.”
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who, like Romney, is a practicing Mormon, tweeted after the decision that he did not agree with it for the same reasons that Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote a dissent, disagreed. Alito warned in his dissent that the court had unjustly created “legislation.” He also wrote that in granting protections, the court put transgender issues on a collision course with religious freedom, issues in women’s sports, and, more broadly, the freedom of speech.
The Mormon church filed an amicus brief through Brigham Young University before the decision. It opposed protections for gay and transgender people on the grounds that they could endanger the freedom of speech at faith-based institutions.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the only Republican to speak about the issue on the Senate floor, excoriated the decision in a Tuesday rant. Hawley, who like Lee and Romney felt that the court acted outside its authority, also ripped Gorsuch and fellow conservative Justice John Roberts for delivering a decision contrary to the beliefs of religious conservatives.
“What will become of church hiring liberty?” Hawley asked. “What will become of the policies of religious schools? What will become of the fate of religious charities? Who knows? Who’s to say?”
Hawley encouraged religious conservatives to abandon the Republican establishment, which he said cares more about “cutting taxes and handing out favors for corporations” than their needs.
“If this case makes anything clear, it is that the bargain that has been offered to religious conservatives for years now is a bad one,” Hawley said. “It’s time to reject it.”
