Why Gorsuch upheld civil rights for LGBTQ Americans

When one of the high court’s staunchest defenders of LGBTQ rights, Justice Anthony Kennedy, retired in 2018, most court watchers expected those rights to only get rolled back. Enter a strict textualist.

In a landmark, and unexpected, decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that firing an employee because of their sexual orientation or gender identity violates federal law.

In what could be a month of blockbuster decisions from the high court, the ruling immediately ranks among the most consequential civil rights rulings in the court’s history, experts say. The...