This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 17th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court has ruled that transsexuals are covered by some pre-existing anti-discrimination law.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch writes

that firing individuals merely for being transsexual violates Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Cato's Walter Olson, who does not toot his own horn,

saw this coming.

But Gorsuch. You know, if you were paying attention to Gorsuch, his record and especially what he said at oral argument,

it would not have been such a surprise. Most people apparently were very surprised, but

Gorsuch has always been the justice who is for read the text and let the heavens fall around you but you know to do what is your

best interpretation of the text and when the case was argued it was framed by the very smart lawyers for Bostick as a textualist case.

They said, look at the text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act where it says because of sex and then just take that literally.

And this was what, of course, Kavanaugh in his dissent said, you're taking this so literally literally we can't be this literal all the time

you know judges have to read it in social context they have to put themselves in the

minds of what people understood it as meaning in 1964.

But Gorsuch has always been loyal to the idea

that if you can answer the question within the four corners of the document,

whether it be a law or a contract or the Constitution, then you don't go outside that.

So it was an argument perfectly pitched for him.

All right, so this was, I don't know if it was you or someone else who characterized it this way,

a surprise, plain meaning case.

I am proud of that phrase.

...