The Supreme Court held oral argument today in a case known as Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services. The case involved an allegation of so-called reverse discrimination against Marlean Ames who claimed she was discriminated against and lost jobs because she is straight.

Ames went to work in 2004 as an executive secretary at the Ohio Department of Youth Services. Ten years later, she was appointed as a program administrator. In a performance evaluation in 2018, Ames’s new supervisor, Ginine Trim – who is gay – indicated that Ames met expectations in 10 categories and exceeded them in an 11th.

But in 2019, she applied for a new position that she did not get. Soon after she was demoted to a previous job, where she earned just over half the hourly rate she had been making.

Ames then went to federal court in Ohio, contending that she had been the victim of discrimination based on her sexual orientation, in violation of federal employment laws. She contended that the department had hired a gay woman instead of her for a promotion for which she had applied. Moreover, she alleged, she had been demoted to a job that paid considerably less than her previous salary, with the department hiring a gay man to replace her.

Not only was the person hired to replace her gay, he was only 25 and, according to her claim, lacked the basic qualifications to hold her job. Ames also noted that her supervisor and other gay supervisors held a party to celebrate a gay employee's 30th year working for the organization whereas she was called into a meeting and told she could either retire or take a job making $40,000 less than her current job.

But the importance of this case goes well beyond what happened to Ames. That's because about half of federal courts require a higher standard of proof when a discrimination case is brought by a member of a majority group, i.e. by straight, white people.

Since the 1980s, nearly half of the nation’s federal appeals court circuits — including the one that covers Ohio — have required members of majority groups to establish “background circumstances” to prove a circumstantial claim of discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It is essentially an extra step that accounts for the fact that reverse discrimination is not typical.

The standard requires evidence that supports the suspicion that “the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority” — generally meaning people who are White, male or straight.

Ames lost her case because the lower court said she had failed to prove that extra level of discrimination and the appeals court agreed. But today the tone at the Supreme Court was very different. In fact, there was near unanimity on the central question of the case.

Everyone, on every side of the case, agreed that a strange rule governing employment discrimination suits in some parts of the country needs to go.

As Justice Neil Gorsuch quipped at one point, there appears to be “radical agreement.”...

...a handful of federal courts, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which heard Ames, apply a different rule to plaintiffs in the majority. Under this rule, members of the majority must show “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority” at a very early stage in their lawsuit.

Pretty much no one, including Ohio Solicitor General T. Elliot Gaiser, who was nominally in the Supreme Court Wednesday morning to defend the Sixth Circuit’s decision, supports this “background circumstances” rule. Gaiser began his presentation with a declaration that “Ohio agrees it is wrong to hold some litigants to a higher standard” because of their identity. Under questioning from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Gaiser agreed that Marlean Ames, the plaintiff in this case, “should have the same burden” as a gay plaintiff who made a similar allegation of discrimination.

So it looks like that "background circumstances" rule is about to be obliterated. And while Vox (quoted above) says a narrow decision on that point seems likely and is probably the best case outcome from this court, others think this could lead to a flood of new discrimination cases.

“If she wins, the flood of reverse discrimination claims will be like nothing we’ve ever seen,” said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the human resources association SHRM. “Straight, White people everywhere could be filing.”

As for Ames herself, she says she just wants to level the playing field.

“Little did I know at the time that I filed that my burden was going to be harsher than somebody else’s burden to prove my case,” Ames said. “I want people to try and understand that we’re trying to make this a level playing field for everyone. Not just for a White woman in Ohio.”

Finally, I can't fail to mention the framing of this Washington Post story about the case. The headline is "Supreme Court seems poised to lower bar for Whites to sue for job bias." Only in the subhead to get the relevant facts: "Marlean Ames challenged rulings requiring members of majority groups to meet a higher bar to prove job discrimination than groups that traditionally face bias."

So the court is poised to "lower" the bar for whites to the same standard used by everyone else. The Post should be ashamed of itself for that headline.

Supreme Court seems poised to lower bar for Whites to sue for job bias https://t.co/6pMM4VEFfC

— Post Politics (@postpolitics) February 26, 2025

This is one more instance where the Supreme Court is putting an end to legalized discrimination (the other being the Affirmative Action decision). Good riddance.