Days after a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, a webinar explored the frustration some Colorado conservatives felt at the consequences, the case’s legal reasoning and the man responsible for it.
“Should we be apologizing for Neil Gorsuch?” asked Jeff Hunt, the head of the conservative Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, on Thursday.
“I think the jury is still out,” responded Michael J. Norton, an attorney with Thomas N. Scheffel & Associates, P.C. in Denver. Hunt said his question arose on a conference call with The Federalist Society the day the decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia and its related cases was handed down.
Donald Trump, during the campaign for president in 2016, released a list of judges approved by the conservative legal group The Federalist Society. Gorsuch, at the time a federal appellate judge in Colorado, was on the list. In his opinion for the majority, Gorsuch wrote that “Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee. We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.”
Norton, who is married to Republican former Lt. Gov. Jane E. Norton, called the ruling “crazy.”
“We should never give in. We should fight for every square inch of freedom,” he said. “We should stand up for our principles. We should stand up for truth. We should stand up for righteousness. We should stand up for the moral values of the Bible and we should keep on keeping on. God has asked us, I think commanded us, to stand and stand firm.”
Read more at Conservative-led webinar decries Gorsuch, implications of LGBTQ decision.
