“When an employee voluntarily applies for, and obtains, a job transfer, his employer has not subjected him to an adverse employment action.” Sixth Circuit judge Jeffrey Sutton set forth that elementary proposition, in exactly those words, three times in his dissent a year ago in Deleon v. Kalamazoo County Road Comm’n.

In his dissent today (beginning at p. 26 of the order list) from the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari, Justice Alito calls the Sixth Circuit majority’s contrary holding “so clearly wrong that summary reversal is warranted.” As Alito sums it up, the employee’s supervisors “did not violate federal law”—did not engage in an adverse employment action—“by granting him the transfer that he sought and that they had no reason to believe that he did not want.”