Racial segregation in every metropolitan area of this country was designed and forced, created, perpetuated by a racially explicit government policy at all levels of government that was designed to ensure that African Americans and whites couldn't live near one another.

Welcome to Amicus.

I'm your guest host, Mark Joseph Stern.

Dahlia Lithwick is out.

She'll be back for the next episode.

And later in this episode, she'll talk to Richard Rothstein about the history of housing segregation.

But first, I'm going to talk about two really important things that happened at the Supreme Court this week.

First, on Monday, the court agreed to hear three major cases asking whether current civil rights law prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people in the workplace.

And then on Tuesday, the justices heard oral arguments in a huge case challenging the Trump administration's

ability to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Before we get to the census drama, though, let's talk LGBTQ.

As we speak, Democrats in Congress are pushing a bill called the Equality Act that would protect LGBTQ people

in employment, housing, education, you name it. So why exactly does the Supreme Court have to decide

if existing law already protects LGBTQ people in the workplace? Here's the deal. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination, quote, on the basis of sex.

Courts and government agencies haven't interpreted that law consistently.

Lower courts disagree about whether sex discrimination includes LGBTQ discrimination, and now the Supreme Court needs to step in and set them straight, so to speak.

To walk us through this dispute, I'm going to chat with Jillian Thomas, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project and author of the fantastic book Because of Sex, a history of Title VII.

Jillian, welcome.

Hi, thanks for having me.

So, Jillian, I want you to take us back to 1964 when Congress was debating the Civil Rights Act.

The focus of the bill was, of course, on race.

It was largely an effort to fight Jim Crow.

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