August 16, 2022
On July 28, 2022, EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson’s scholarship was cited by Michigan State Supreme Court Justice David F. Viviano and Justice Brian K. Zahra in their respective dissenting opinions issued in the case of Rouch World, LLC v Department of Civil Rights.
Justice Viviano cited Anderson’s “Disagreement is Not Always Discrimination: On Masterpiece Cakeshop and the Analogy to Interracial Marriage,” published in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, to reject the argument that people who support marriage understood as the union of husband and wife are inherently motivated by animus.
Justice Viviano’s also cited Anderson’s “On the Basis of Identity: Redefining Sex in Civil Rights Law and Faulty Accounts of Discrimination,” published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, to rebut a common activist claim that opposition to same-sex marriage is sex discrimination in the same way that opposition to interracial marriage is race discrimination.
Justice Zahra also cited “On the Basis of Identity” to recall that judicial precedent leading up to Bostock v. Clayton County considered unlawful sex discrimination that which establishes a double standard between men or women because of their sex. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock that any decision or standard which is conscious of sex qualifies as sex discrimination deeply undermines a sound understanding of sex discrimination jurisprudence.
You can read Justice Viviano and Justice Zahra’s opinions in Rouch World, LLC v Department of Civil Right. Anderson is cited on pages 47 and 90 of the PDF. You can read “On the Basis of Identity” and “Disagreement is Not Always Discrimination” on Anderson’s SSRN page.
Ryan T. Anderson, Ph. D., is President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
