Sotomayor, J., dissenting
Second, a public accommodations law ensures equal dignity in the common market. Indeed, that is the law’s “fundamental object”: “to vindicate ‘the deprivation of personal dignity that surely accompanies denials of equal access to public establishments.’ ” Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 250 (1964) (quoting S. Rep. No. 872, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., 16 (1964)). This purpose does not depend on whether goods or services are otherwise available. “ ‘Discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, hamburgers and movies; it is the humiliation, frustration, and embarrassment that a person must surely feel when he is told that he is unacceptable as a member of the public because of his [social identity]. It is equally the inability to explain to a child that regardless of education, civility, courtesy, and morality he will be denied the right to enjoy equal treatment.’ ” 379 U. S., at 292 (Goldberg, J., concurring). When a young Jewish girl and her parents come across a business with a sign out front that says, “ ‘No dogs or Jews allowed,’ ”[1] the fact that another business might serve her family does not redress that “stigmatizing injury,” Roberts, 468 U. S., at 625. Or, put another way, “the hardship Jackie Robinson suffered when on the road” with his baseball team “was not an inability to find some hotel that would have him; it was the indignity of not being allowed to stay in the same hotel as his white teammates.” J. Oleske, The Evolution of Accommodation, 50 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 99, 138 (2015).
To illustrate, imagine a funeral home in rural Mississippi agrees to transport and cremate the body of an elderly man who has passed away, and to host a memorial lunch. Upon learning that the man’s surviving spouse is also a man, however, the funeral home refuses to deal with the family.
- ↑ Hearings on the Nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg To Be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 139 (1993).
