The Supreme Court yesterday sided 8-0 with a straight (okay, “cis”) woman in Ohio who filed a “reverse discrimination” lawsuit against her employer after her boss declined to promote her, preferring to promote “rainbow” staffers. In a unanimous ruling written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Justices agreed that a federal appeals court in Cincinnati erred by imposing a tougher standard for the case brought by Marlean Ames to move forward than if Ames had been a member of a minority group. 

The appellant, a straight, white woman, had filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that she had been the victim of employment discrimination based on her not being gay. The department had hired a lesbian for the position that she had sought, she contended, as well as a gay man to replace her after she was demoted.  The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit threw out Ames’s sexual orientation claim, arguing that her claim could not go forward unless she could show “background circumstances” to support her allegations of reverse discrimination, such as a “pattern” of reverse discrimination. 

SCOTUS reversed, sending the case back to the lower court. Federal employment discrimination law, Jackson explained, prohibits intentional discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Period. Minorities have no more intrinsic grounds to claim discrimination than majority groups.

Thank you!

The court of appeals in this case, Jackson wrote, incorrectly required that Ames “establish ‘background circumstances’ to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.’” This, Jackson wrote, is inconsistent with the text of the federal employment discrimination law which bars discrimination against everyone under exactly the same standard, without distinguishing between members of a minority group and members of a majority group. “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.” 

The Supreme Court’s precedents, Jackson emphasize, are clear that the test for showing discrimination in a case like Ames’s “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.” “The ‘background circumstances’ rule flouts that basic principle,” she concluded. 

Three instant ethical take-aways…

1. So much for the oft-heard canard that there is no such thing as “reverse discrimination,” and that it is impossible for a minority to engage in discrimination against a majority groups member because the latter isn’t “oppressed.”

2. The rationalizations supporting DEI are falling apart in chunks. Good.

3. It was very important for this decision not to show another Left vs Right schism. Justice Roberts was astute to hand the job of authoring the majority opinion to Justice Jackson, perhaps the most leftward jurist on the Court, and herself something of a DEI selection.