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Supreme Court To Hear Major Employment Discrimination Case Today

By: Jonathan Turley | February 26, 2025

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/02/26/supreme-court-to-hear-major-employment-discrimination-case-today/

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case with potentially sweeping implications for discrimination cases. Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Service involves an Ohio woman, Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against for being straight as less-qualified LGBT colleagues in Ohio’s youth corrections system were promoted. Ames alleged that she was treated differently due to her heterosexuality at the Ohio Department of Youth Services, resulting in not just a demotion but a pay cut in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Ames started working at the Ohio Department of Youth Services in 2004 as an executive secretary and was promoted several times, ultimately reaching program administrator. In 2017, Ames was given a new supervisor, Ginine Trim, who is openly gay. She alleges that she met or exceeded performance review standards but was discriminated against due to being straight. Her case was dismissed by the lower courts using a three-step process for handling discrimination cases based on indirect evidence under McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973).

Under that test, plaintiffs must first present sufficient evidence of discrimination but also requires an added burden for those individuals who are part of a majority group. The test requires plaintiffs like Ames to provide additional “background circumstances” to “support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

She is arguing that all parties should bear the same burden. In her filing, she calls for the Court to reject the precedent:

“Judges must actually treat plaintiffs differently, by first separating them into majority and minority groups, and then imposing a ‘background circumstances’ requirement on the former but not the latter. In other words, to enforce Title VII’s broad rule of workplace equality, courts must apply the law unequally.”

The case could further develop discrimination precedent two years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College.

In reviewing her claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit called the matter an “easy” call at the preliminary stage. It noted that Ames could not show that a member of a minority group made the allegedly discriminatory decision, or with evidence demonstrating a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.

Judge Raymond Kethledge criticized the court’s requirement that Ames show special “background circumstances” because she is straight. Such a rule, he argued, “discriminates” “on the very grounds that the statute forbids.”

Ames argues that the test’s “background circumstances” component conflicts with the text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination “against any individual with respect to the terms of conditions of employment because of that individual’s sex” or other protected characteristic. She argues “that the law as applied demands something more of her than the law as written.”

The Court could break from McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green and continue the push of Chief Justice John Roberts in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College to make the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment “universal in its application.”