(FORTUNE Magazine) – It was not until he was deep into Judge Gerhard Gesell's recent decision in Ann B. Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse that your correspondent began twitching. Up to page 23, he found that he could equalize the pressure by generously venting steam through the ears. Gerhard finally got to him only when the opinion reached certain delicate questions about the real reasons for Ann's departure from Price Waterhouse. Were you paying attention, you would possibly already know that the Hopkins case represents yet another loopy landmark in antidiscrimination law. The case involves a female employee of PW who failed to make partner, resigned, and charged that she was a victim of sex discrimination. The precedent set by the case is really something. It tells us that a federal judge can force a firm like Price Waterhouse to make an employee like Ann a partner even when it has good reasons for not trusting the lady. Incidentally, we have yet to see these reasons in media coverage of the case. The New York Times and Washington Post continue to write about it as a fable of sexism being nobly overthrown, and possibly do not wish to clutter this story line with details discreditable to the plaintiff. But wait. A judge can make a partner of one deemed untrustworthy? Can it be? The road to this decision was somewhat serpentine. First, sex discrimination in employment, barred by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was redefined in a succession of court decisions. As invoked in the Hopkins case, it does not mean bias against women, which is what Congress thought it was outlawing, but a preference for feminine women over masculine women. Ms. Hopkins was conceded to be loud, profane, and ''macho''; and in viewing such traits as more bothersome in women than men -- and failing to make her a partner for this reason -- PW is said to have engaged in ''gender-based stereotyping'' violating Title VII of the act. Next step in the sequence: a 1984 Supreme Court ruling stating that Title VII, which covers job discrimination, applies to partnership decisions. The 1984 ruling was not too terrible so far as it went. Title VII bars discrimination on the ''terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,'' and you could argue that one of the privileges of working in a partnership is the chance to make partner. But the effect of this rule in the Hopkins case has been farcical. It seems that Ms. Hopkins was first proposed for partnership in 1982. A star business-getter, she had a lot of support from certain partners. But her nomination also elicited considerable groaning about her lack of ''interpersonal skills.'' One partner unfortunately added the sentiment that she ought to go to a ''charm school,'' and this phrase, invariably taken as emblematic of Price Waterhouse sexism, has echoed redundantly in media coverage of the case. Uncertain how to resolve these disputes, PW's policy board decided to place Ann's nomination on hold. To get placed on hold is ordinarily not a putdown: Most of those so placed do end up as partners. But in the Hopkins case, something unusual happened. A few months after the hold decision, she lost the support of her main advocates for partnership. At this point she concluded that the firm was not going to partnerize her. So she resigned and asked the < courts to make her a partner -- which Judge Gesell has now done. This is, it happens, the judge's second swing at the case. He originally heard it in 1985 and ruled in Ann's favor. His decision was reviewed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and then by the U.S. Supreme Court, which remanded it to Gesell for a new trial. So there has been a lot of judicial back-and-forth about Ann during the past five years. But it is only now, in Gesell's latest opinion, that aficionados of the case finally learn why Ann's supporters in the firm turned against her. They did so for reasons that had nothing to do with sex discrimination. The reason was that she had lied to one of these supporters about a major matter: the substance of a discussion between her and the firm's senior partner. In Gesell's summary: ''Ms. Hopkins misleadingly implied that Mr. Connor ((the senior partner)) had disparaged certain partners who opposed her candidacy and that he had warned of the adverse consequences his partners might experience for opposing her the next year.'' As this formulation indicates, Gesell accepted that Ann had intentionally misrepresented the senior partner's views. Gesell also indicated this was a good reason for her backers to withdraw their support. But why, then, force her on Price Waterhouse as a partner? The answer seems to be that Ann would have already been a partner, and so would have had no reason to lie about her partnership prospects, if the firm's initial concerns about her had not been impermissibly tainted by stereotypical sexism. It's enough to make a fellow go spastic.