In a unanimous decision Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with an Ohio woman who claimed she was the victim of reverse discrimination by her employer.

The justices determined the lower courts improperly forced her to clear a higher burden of proof and sent the case back for further hearings.

How we got here

In 2019, after working at the Ohio Department of Youth Services for 15 years, Marlean Ames applied for a promotion. Instead, she claims her supervisors “conspired” to demote her and move her to a different facility.

The woman who got the job Ames wanted, and the man who took her old job both identify as LGBTQ+. Ames is straight.

In 2020, Ames filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming her supervisors discriminated against her on account of her sexual orientation. The district and appeals court both sided with the agency — Ames had not shown the “background circumstances” to demonstrate her bosses punished her because she was straight.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected that background circumstances rule. Writing for the majority, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated it “cannot be squared with the text of Title VII or our longstanding precedents. And nothing Ohio has said, in its brief or at oral argument, persuades us otherwise.”

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 holds that employers may not discriminate on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Importantly, Jackson wrote, the text draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups.

“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,” Jackson wrote.

She added that the Circuit Court erred by rigidly enforcing an evidentiary standard, when court precedent holds there should be greater flexibility in proving discrimination cases.

Jackson noted Ohio “barely contests” the arguments Ames leveled against it. The state argued Ames’ Title VII claims would’ve failed even if they cleared the background circumstances test. But Jackson insisted that sits outside the scope of the case.

“We granted review to consider the validity of the ‘background circumstances’ rule, and we reject that rule for the reasons set forth above,” she wrote. “We leave it to the courts below to address any of Ohio’s remaining arguments on remand.”

Reactions

Following the ruling, both sides of the case portrayed it as a win. For Xiao Wang, a law school professor at the University of Virginia who represented Ames, that argument was straightforward.

“When Congress passed this law, it said, look, don’t discriminate,” Wang said, “don’t consider race, don’t consider religion, don’t consider sex, or some of these other characteristics.”

He argued the decision “reiterates and affirms” that message.

“If someone has a case, they’re subject to the same legal standards, and the same legal treatment as everyone else,” Wang argued.

Meanwhile Ohio Attorney General spokesman Dominic Binkley emphasized the fact that the Supreme Court didn’t decide the underlying discrimination claim.

“We are glad that the court agreed with what Ohio has said all along: ‘It is wrong to hold some litigants to a higher standard because of their protected characteristics.'”

Still, he said, “the court made clear that this case is not over,” referring to the opinion stating Ohio’s remaining arguments could be handled when they’re sent back to a lower court.

“We look forward to fully pressing those arguments as the case moves forward,” he said, “because the Ohio Department of Youth Services did not engage in unlawful discrimination.”

An Ohio Department of Youth Services spokesman declined to comment citing pending litigation.

As the case was considered by the Supreme Court, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed an amicus brief in the case, urging the court not to entertain Ames’ arguments. The LDF’s Assistant Counsel, Avatara Smith-Carrington, warned the decision doesn’t shift the balance and grant majority groups some new advantage in court.

“Of course everyone is protected by Title VII,” she said in a statement. “However, there is a persisting legacy of discrimination targeting black people and other historically marginalized groups that cannot be ignored.”

Equality Ohio downplayed the decision’s potential impact. In a statement, the group’s former legal director Maya Simek, cast it as a “technical and narrow correction.”

“What’s most important here is what the Court didn’t do,” she added. “It did not undercut or call into question the landmark Bostock decision, which affirms protections for LGBTQ+ people under federal employment law.”

Equality Ohio Executive Director Dwayne Steward insisted, “This ruling doesn’t roll back rights or erase hard-won protections. What it does is quietly reaffirm that Title VII means what it says: all workers are protected from discrimination.”

Drexel University Law Professor D. Wendy Greene has written extensively on anti-discrimination law and heads up the school’s Center for Law, Policy, and Social Action. She argued the most important factor going forward will be judicial perception.

When a judge believes racism is exceptional rather than commonplace, she said, workers of color often have to meet or exceed the evidence required by the “background circumstances test.” By the same token, if a judge believes “reverse discrimination” is the norm, litigants get greater leeway to make their case.

“These perceptions often shape judicial decision-making and the evidentiary burdens in intentional discrimination cases — with or without an express “background circumstances” evidentiary requirement,” she explained.

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.