United Steelworkers of America v. Weber

Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist dissented. Burger, in his opinion, agreed with the Court's judgment--"were I a Member of Congress considering a proposed amendment of Title VII." However, given the fact that they were not making legislation, but were members of the judicial branch of government interpreting a law originating in the legislative branch, he believed that their interpretation of Title VII overstepped the bounds established under the doctrine of the separation of powers. The Court was rewriting Title VII, he said, "to achieve what it regards as a desirable result." And this was unjustifiable, Burger stated, particularly because Title VII was unambiguous in its prohibition of all race-based discrimination. Burger acknowledged the "gross discriminations against minorities" as "one of the dark chapters in the otherwise great history of the American labor movement," and he agreed with all efforts toward voluntary compliance with Title VII. But he quoted Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who in 1921 warned against a "good result" achieved at the expense of judicial honesty.

Rehnquist wrote his own dissenting opinion, in which Burger joined. He began by making reference to 1984, George Orwell's novel depicting a futuristic police state which manipulates truth and language for its own purposes. The Court's ruling in Weber, Rehnquist argued, represented a similar disregard for truth, and he quipped that perhaps they should make it five years later, when it would truly be 1984. Title VII clearly stated that all forms of discrimination in the workplace were prohibited, a view that the Court had affirmed in Griggs v. Duke Power Company. Now the Court, like the all-powerful state in 1984, had suddenly reversed itself, and held that some forms of discrimination were appropriate. Rehnquist followed this with a lengthy discussion of the steps by which Title VII had been passed into law, thereby demonstrating the unambiguous quality of both the language and the intent of that statute.