Guest Post by Laura Bea and Adam Stolz, Esq. – Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs. (2025)

 

Guest Post by Laura Bea and Adam Stolz, Esq. – Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs. (2025)

Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services:

Sixth Circuit Reversed in Applying Higher Burden to Reverse-Discrimination Claims 

Last week, SCOTUS ruled unanimously in favor of a straight woman who claims she was subjected to reverse discrimination. In an opinion that may come to impact corporate hiring policies, practices, and procedures—and accelerate the ongoing wave of DEI/reverse discrimination lawsuits in the U.S.—the Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not impose a heightened evidentiary burden on majority-group plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases. As further discussed below, the Court reaffirmed its longstanding framework established in McDonnell Douglas as the benchmark for all Title VII discrimination cases, which the Eleventh Circuit generally follows, so we shouldn’t expect much change locally. But a concurrence by Justice Thomas questions the legitimacy of the entire McDonnell Douglas framework, so a seismic shift could potentially lie ahead.  

The underlying facts of Ames are relatively straightforward. Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, had worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services since 2004. In 2019, she interviewed for a new management position, but the agency ultimately hired another candidate who happened to be a lesbian woman. Shortly afterward, the agency demoted Ames from her role as program administrator and hired a gay man to replace her. So, not only did she get passed over for the promotion, but she was also demoted to a former position where her hourly salary was just over half what she had recently been earning. Ames then filed a federal lawsuit against the agency under Title VII, alleging that she had been the victim of employment discrimination based on her sexual orientation as a heterosexual person.

The district court granted summary judgment for the employer, applying the Sixth Circuit’s modified McDonnell Douglas framework and finding Ames failed to show background circumstances suggesting bias against majority-group members. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that its precedent indeed required Ames, as a heterosexual person in a majority group, to provide evidence beyond the standard prima facie requirements.

The Supreme Court resolved a circuit split by rejecting the notion that majority-group plaintiffs must provide additional “background circumstances” to support the suspicion that the defendant is “that unusual employer who discriminated against the majority”—such as showing that a minority group member made the allegedly discriminatory decision or that the employer has a pattern of discriminating against the majority. The Court explained that “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone” because the text of the federal law at issue bars discrimination against every “‘individual’—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group.” Accordingly, Ames’ case was remanded to be reevaluated under the first prong of the McDonnell Douglas framework as it would be for any other discrimination case—i.e., whether plaintiff [Ames] made a prima facie showing that defendant [the agency] acted with a discriminatory motive. The Court’s decision will have the most immediate impact in the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Tenth, and D.C. Circuits, all of which previously applied the heightened “background circumstances” standard.

As previewed, Justice Thomas also wrote a concurring opinion joined by Justice Gorsuch that challenges the legitimacy of the McDonnell Douglas framework and invites litigants to petition the Court to revisit and potentially overrule it. Setting aside the merits of the position, Justice Thomas’s eagerness to expound on legal philosophies beyond the issue on certiorari may be reminiscent to some of his concurrence last year in Trump v. United States where he challenged the constitutionality of the special counsel role. In any event, the implications of judicial officers inviting issues to be brought before them and previewing their rulings raises legitimate concerns about the potential erosion of stare decisis.

For now, however, Ames will require employment defense attorneys to take reverse discrimination cases more seriously even if such claims are, or at least have historically been, far less common than lawsuits brought by minority-group plaintiffs.