Today, June 5, the Supreme Court released several decisions of the 2024-2025 Term, including Ames v. Ohio, in which the Court held unanimously that members of majority groups face the same burdens as minority groups when bringing employment discrimination claims.
What You Need to Know
- Question Before the Court: Is a heterosexual plaintiff, who believes she has lost employment opportunities because she was not gay, required to show that there were “background circumstances” which would support the suspicion that the defendant is an “unusual employer who discriminates against the majority”?
- What Happened at the Oral Argument: Very early in questioning, the counsel for the respondent, Ohio, acknowledged that the “idea that you hold people to different standards because of their protected characteristics is wrong,” leaving little doubt about how that element of the case would be resolved.
- What Did the Court Decide: In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that the background circumstances rule is not rooted in the text of Title VII or Supreme Court precedent. The Court emphasized that Title VII gives the “same protections to every ‘individual’ regardless of their membership in a minority or majority group.” In a concurrence, Justices Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, also suggested that American employers have become “obsessed” with “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives contributing to discrimination against perceived minority groups.
- What to Make of the Result: The Court’s ruling largely restates settled, and generally uncontroversial legal principles. It brings the handful of circuits who applied the background circumstances rule in line with the rest of the nation. Nevertheless, the timing of the ruling and concurrences from Justices Thomas’s concurrence may lend momentum to the anti-DEI legal movement, which has attempted to conflate support for diversity, equity and inclusion with "reverse discrimination." Observers should remember that most widely accepted DEI practices do not involve race or gender preferences and are not implicated by the ruling.