October 6, 2024
Supreme Court To Determine Whether Straight Whites Face Tougher Standards In Bias Claims
A woman maintains she was discriminated against because she's straight and white.
The Supreme Court will review a reverse discrimination case after a 2023 Ohio court ruling that found Marlean Ames, a straight white woman, did not provide sufficient evidence to support her claim that she was discriminated against because of her race and sexual orientation. Ames contends that she was unfairly treated specifically because she is white and straight.
Ames’ request to review the ruling centers on an argument that the court asked her to make evidentiary showings beyond what is required of minorities who file discrimination claims.
According to Law.com, Ames alleges that her boss, a gay woman, didn’t promote her in order to promote a gay woman whom Ames alleges was unqualified for the position.
According to Ames, she was also removed from her position as a program administrator and replaced by a gay man.
In her petition to the Supreme Court, Ames maintained that it was unfair to require majority-group plaintiffs to show additional circumstances not asked of other plaintiffs who sue under Title VII.
Title VII refers to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark federal law that prohibits employment discrimination. Under Title VII, it is illegal for employers to discriminate against individuals based on certain protected characteristics. These protected classes include: race, color, religion, sex (which includes pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity as interpreted by the courts), and national origin.
“Discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed,” her lawyers wrote, referring to the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Griggs v. Duke Power. “Imposing a background circumstances requirement on majority-group plaintiffs, as five courts of appeals have done, defies these fundamental principles.”
Griggs v. Duke Power Co. is a landmark Supreme Court case that addressed employment discrimination and the application of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case centered on the practices of Duke Power Company, which had a policy of requiring employees to have a high school diploma and pass a standardized intelligence test to qualify for certain positions.
In Ames’ case, she sued upon receiving a right-to-sue letter from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but a federal court threw out her lawsuit, determining that Ames failed to demonstrate “background circumstances support[ing] the suspicion that [DYS] is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
According to the ruling, Ames failed to produce a pattern of similar discrimination or any proof that employment decisions were made by members of the gay community.
However, Sixth Circuit Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote in his concurrence that “our court and others have lost their bearings in adopting this rule” and thought that the ruling would result in scrutiny from a higher court.
The State of Ohio, which maintains the Ohio Department of Youth Services, Ames’ former employer, maintained that she was “difficult to work with” and that the Ohio DYS had “nondiscriminatory” reasons for picking another candidate and removing Ames from her position.
According to the State of Ohio, “Ames’s failure to introduce any evidence on this point means that no matter how the Court answers the Question Presented her discrimination claim would still fail at the prima facia stage.”
Ames’ argument is that the Ohio federal court’s decision is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VII provision, which establishes that it is illegal to discriminate based on an individual’s sexual orientation.
According to Reuters, if the Supreme Court rules in her favor, it could provide a boost to a number of lawsuits from white workers who claim that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies discriminated against them. Although the court will hear arguments during its new term, which begins on Oct. 7, no ruling is expected in the case until the end of June 2025.
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