Unfortunately it's time to yell about RFRA again. Hold on to your butts, because here's the bad news about Monday's Title VII ruling.

Gorsuch CAREFULLY leaves the door open for his interpretation of Title VII as applying to discrimination based on gay or transgender status to be undercut by a pretextual religious freedom claim.

He's talking about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which gives individuals (and, once expanded by case law, corporations) the right to evade the requirements of other statutes by claiming that their free exercise of religion is being substantially burdened.

Gorsuch calls RFRA a “kind of super statute [which] displac[es] the normal operation of other federal laws [and] might supersede Title VII’s commands in appropriate cases.” YIKES. Lemme say that again. Y I K E S.

He points out that no RFRA claims were brought before the Supreme Court in the Bostock/Harris/Zarda cases but signals in the least subtle way possible that he expects and welcomes such a case in the future.

At some point soon, a case will probably come up in which an employer argues that complying with the Bostock interpretation of Title VII by not discriminating against employees on the basis of their gay or trans status is an unacceptable infringement on its religious freedom.

(following the blueprint that Hobby Lobby laid out regarding their religious objections to following the sections of the ACA that mandated employee insurance plans that covered contraception)

Basically, this decision says that Title VI prohibits employment discrimination based on an employee’s gay or transgender identity for any reason that is not framed in religious terms. It's not a loophole. They've been setting it up this way for decades.

I cannot stress this enough: when people talk about this, they often frame it like the religion is the point and the discrimination is the method. It's the other way 'round. The discrimination is the point. The religion is just the costume it wears.