In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday upheld the claims of a woman who faced workplace discrimination because of her “majority group” identity—in this case, being a heterosexual.
The decision upholds the rights of majority group individuals to be free from “reverse discrimination,” a right considered protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered the opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a concurring opinion, in which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined.
The court struck down the “background circumstances” rule imposed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, a rule that restricts protections for members of majority groups.
“The Sixth Circuit has implemented a rule that requires certain Title VII plaintiffs—those who are members of majority groups—to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard in order to carry their burden under the first step of [a legal framework],” Justice Jackson wrote. “We conclude that Title VII does not impose such a heightened standard on majority-group plaintiffs.”
“As a textual matter, Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs,” she explained. “Rather, the provision makes it unlawful ‘to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
“By establishing the same protections for every “individual”—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group—Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” the justice added.
Justice Thomas agreed with the opinion but wrote separately to “highlight the problems that arise when judges create atextual legal rules and frameworks.” He called the rule “a product of improper judicial lawmaking.”
The case, Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, addressed alleged employment discrimination claims from the plaintiff, Marlean Ames, who says she was denied a promotion and then demoted because of her sexual identity.
The Ohio Department of Youth Services hired Ames in 2004 as an executive secretary. After 10 years, the department promoted her to program administrator.
When Ames applied for a new position in 2019, despite receiving positive performance evaluations from her gay supervisor, she was denied the job and soon after demoted to a position paying half the hourly rate of her previous secretarial position. Both the new position she applied for and the program administrator position she was demoted from were then filled by gay employees.
Ames filed a lawsuit claiming the department discriminated against her because of her sexual identity. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected her claim, stating that it found no pattern of discrimination beyond Ames’ case. The court argued that Ames was unable to provide the necessary “background circumstances” to support her allegations of reverse discrimination.
“If Ames had been in a minority group, all she would have to show to get a trial is that someone with a different sexuality was treated better,” GianCarlo Canaparo, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, explained in The Daily Signal. “But because she is in a majority group, she must show ‘background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.’”
Canaparo added, “Ames lost [in the lower courts] because she’s part of a ‘majority’ group (heterosexuals), and as such, she must provide more preliminary evidence of discrimination than someone in a ‘minority’ group before she can get a trial.”
The Supreme Court has recognized that Title VII nondiscrimination protections apply equally to majority group individuals, a precedent set by the 2009 case Ricci v. DeStefano, where the justices ruled that discriminatory effects resulting from diversity efforts are illegal. The Ames decision could have significance for future “reverse discrimination” cases.
Xiao Wang, director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, represented Ames and argued that requiring members of majority groups to prove “background circumstances” only perpetuates the workplace reverse discrimination Ames faced.
Ohio had argued that the “background circumstances” requirement involved no more than “asking whether the circumstances surrounding an employment decision, if otherwise unexplained, suggest that the decision was because of a protected characteristic.”
Yet Justice Jackson wrote that the appeals court explicitly applied the “background circumstances” rule in a different manner, showing that “a higher evidentiary standard was being imposed on Ames because of her sexual orientation.”
America First Legal, which filed an amicus brief taking the same position as the ultimate ruling, celebrated the decision.
“The Supreme Court unanimously held that discrimination is discrimination, independent of contextual factors that stretch the plain meaning of Title VII,” Dan Epstein, vice president of America First Legal, said in a statement. “Justice Thomas’s citation to America First Legal’s briefs in his concurrence reflects the unmistakable impact of America First Legal’s ability to provide solid footing for the courts to uphold the rule of law for all Americans.”
