Supreme Court Punted on Protections for Religion in Workplace. Justice Gorsuch Wasn’t Having It.

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Heritage Foundation

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday released various opinions and orders, as it does in the flurry of activity in the spring season that precedes the court’s summer recess.

While most orders are released without commentary, among this week’s batch was a denial of a petition for writ of certiorari that included a strongly worded dissent from Justice Neil Gorsuch on why he disagreed with the court’s refusal to hear the case.

The dissent (joined by Justice Samuel Alito) is particularly noteworthy in our current culture, one driven toward more and more anti-religious animosity.

Denials of certiorari are quite common. After all, the Supreme Court grants only about 3% of the thousands of petitions it receives each year.

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But Small v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water on its face looked to be perhaps the type of case Gorsuch was hoping for when he left the door open a crack to questions of how best to protect religious interests under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in his 2020 majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

Perhaps it would have been a way to at least partially redeem himself from what many conservative legal scholars thought was a botched ruling in that case.