A University of Illinois Springfield professor is examining LGBTQ discrimination as the U.S. Supreme Court sees it, and he’s written a new book about it.
A 1989 case, Price Waterhouse v Hopkins, was a forebearer to the 2020 Bostock v Clayton County (Ga.) case, says political science professor Jason Pierceson. In the older case, heterosexual Ann Hopkins sued her employer.
“She was denied a promotion to partner because she was seen by her colleagues as too masculine. They told her to go to charm school,” said Jason Pierceson, author of Before Bostock: The Accidental LGBTQ Precedent of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. “Her lawyer put forward a new theory, sex stereotyping, which means that when you make an employment decision based on assumptions about gender and sex roles, then you’re discriminating. The court agreed with that, and the Supreme Court then developed this idea that sex stereotyping was prohibited by the Civil Rights Act.”
Pierceson says what’s notable about Bostock is that Justice Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts are on board with antidiscrimination here.