Catholic Action League Condemns Supreme Court Decision in ‘Bostock’ Case

The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts press release, dated yesterday (June 15, 2020)…

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today condemned the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton CountyIn the ruling, which was released this morning, a majority on the Court held that the prohibition against discrimination based upon sex, contained in Title VII of the U. S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, applied to sexual orientation and so-called gender identity.

In the 6 to 3 decision, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, while Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas dissented. In his dissent, Justice Alito called the majority finding “preposterous,” “indefensible,” “a brazen abuse of our authority,” the arrogance of which was “breathtaking,” and compared it to piracy.

The Catholic Action League characterized the ruling as “an absurdly dishonest decision, fabricated and invented, which contradicted the clear meaning and the original legislative intent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “This morning, in an unlawful exercise in judicial supremacy, six members of the Supreme Court usurped the authority of Congress to legislate. In doing so, they abused their office, made a mockery of the separation of powers, and violated their oath to defend the Constitution.”

“Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination against women, ‘sex’ being understood, unambiguously, to mean the biological distinction between male and female. None of the framers of the act, and none of the members of the 88th Congress who voted for it, intended to prohibit discrimination in employment based on same sex behavior or upon ‘gender identity,’ a concept wholly unknown in 1964.”

“Since that time, Congress has refused, repeatedly, to enact employment non-discrimination legislation expanding the definition of Title VII to include homosexuals and the so-called transgendered. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that the expanded definition existed all along, undiscovered since 1964.”

What has happened is that in a decision untethered to the Constitution, and under the guise of interpreting a statute, the court has asserted its right to enact laws in the place of Congress. With this decision, the court has, as it did in Roe v. Wade, effectively claimed the right to function as a kind of paramount national legislature, which can be appealed to when the democratic process fails to produce the results desired by some interest group.”

“This decision will have grave implications for religious freedom, and for the integrity and identity of religious institutions. It will be used to narrow and eventually eviscerate the ministerial exception, which guarantees the right of church affiliated entities to control their own hiring, unfettered by the government.”

“Congress and the President must take steps to restrain an increasingly imperial judiciary, and return it to the constitutional responsibilities assigned it by the Founding Fathers.”

Pieter Schoubroeck (circa 1570), “The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah”