A unanimous Supreme Court sided with a straight woman in her discrimination appeal, ruling that a lower court applied too strict a standard against her. The justices sent her case back to that lower court for further litigation under the proper standard.
After being passed over and demoted in favor of a lesbian woman and a gay man, Marlean Ames brought a discrimination claim against her employer, the Ohio Department of Youth Services. But as a member of a “majority” group, she had a greater burden to show what courts call “background circumstances” that would “support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
The legal question at the Supreme Court was whether majority-group plaintiffs need to show such circumstances. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court said the additional requirement is inconsistent with federal law and Supreme Court precedent, so it sent the case back for further litigation.
Among the parties who agreed that the lower court ruling against Ames got it wrong were not only the America First Legal Foundation, a group founded by Donald Trump ally Stephen Miller, but also the federal government during the Biden administration.
“The ‘background circumstances’ requirement has no basis in Title VII’s text, and it contradicts this Court’s precedent, including the Court’s assurances that all plaintiffs may proceed according to the same standards,” the government wrote in a December filing from the office of then-Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars the failure or refusal “to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, defended the state. His office cast the “background circumstances” rule as a simple application of Supreme Court precedent that’s “just another way of asking whether the circumstances surrounding an employment decision, if otherwise unexplained, suggest that the decision was because of a protected characteristic.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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