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.