Law Commons^™

Discrimination Under A Description, Patrick S. Shin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

In debates about the permissibility of certain kinds of differential treatment, our judgments often seem to depend on how the conduct in question is described. For example, legal prohibitions on same-sex marriage seem clearly impermissible insofar as they can be described as a form of sex discrimination, less clearly so, at least under federal law, if described simply as sexual orientation discrimination, and arguably not discriminatory at all insofar as they constitute a universally-imposed disability on marrying within one’s own sex. It seems, in other words, that the prohibition of same-sex marriage constitutes legally impermissible discrimination under some descriptions but …