“Supreme Court Revives Reverse Discrimination Case”
In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a lower court was wrong to impose a heightened evidentiary burden on a reverse discrimination claim brought by an Ohio woman. The Court remanded the case to the lower courts, clarifying that federal anti-discrimination laws apply equally to all individuals, regardless of whether they belong to a minority or majority group.
The case centers on Marlean Ames, a long-serving employee of the Ohio Department of Youth Services. After more than a decade of service and a positive performance evaluation in 2018, Ames applied for a new position in 2019 but was denied the role and subsequently demoted to a lower-paying job. She alleged that the decision was rooted in discrimination based on her sexual orientation, claiming that her department instead favored LGBTQ individuals, including a lesbian candidate who received the promotion and a gay man who replaced her.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed Ames’s claim, applying a “background circumstances” requirement unique to reverse discrimination cases. Under that test, majority-group plaintiffs must show either that a minority group member made the discriminatory decision or that there is a pattern of discrimination against the majority. Because Ames is straight and the department officials who made the decisions were also straight, the court concluded she had not met the bar to proceed.
Justice Jackson, writing for the Court, rejected that reasoning as inconsistent with the plain text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin”—without qualifying the protection based on group membership. The Court reaffirmed the standard three-step McDonnell Douglas framework for evaluating employment discrimination claims, emphasizing that the initial burden on plaintiffs is intentionally minimal. A plaintiff must merely offer enough evidence to support an inference of intentional discrimination—such as being qualified and rejected under suspicious circumstances.
Jackson wrote that the Sixth Circuit erred by adding a heightened burden for Ames and other majority-group plaintiffs. “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,” she stated.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, filed a concurring opinion questioning the validity of the McDonnell Douglas framework itself. He argued that the framework lacks grounding in statutory text and has proven difficult for courts to apply. Thomas expressed openness to revisiting and potentially overturning the framework in a future case.
The ruling sends Ames’s case back to the lower courts for reconsideration under the correct legal standard. Legal analysts suggest the decision could impact how reverse discrimination claims are treated going forward, reinforcing the idea that anti-discrimination protections apply uniformly, regardless of the claimant’s demographic background.
Source article found here: https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/supreme-court-rules-for-straight-woman-who-claims-she-was-subjected-to-reverse-discrimination/
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