Mr Alito also criticized fellow conservative Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch for his opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, which said that federal civil rights laws protect LGBTQ+ employees, calling Mr Gorsuch’s reasoning “in my view indefensible.”

“It is inconceivable that either Congress or voters in 1964 understood discrimination because of sex to mean discrimination because of sexual orientation, much less gender identity,” he said. “If Title VII had been understood at that time to mean what Bostock held it to mean, the prohibition on discrimination because of sex would never have been enacted. In fact, it might not have gotten a single vote in Congress.”

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