Written by Sullivan & Cromwell LLP on February 28, 2025
On February 26, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, to address the question of whether a majority-group plaintiff must show additional “background circumstances” to support a discrimination claim under Title VII, beyond what a minority-group plaintiff must show. Based on the questioning at oral argument, it appears that a majority of the Justices agree with Ames that Title VII protects all workers equally and the same standards should apply to all Title VII plaintiffs.
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Plaintiff Marlean Ames filed a lawsuit against her employer, the Ohio Department of Youth Services (the “Department”), alleging that it violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after she was not selected for a promotion, and was subsequently demoted. Ames, who is heterosexual, alleged that these decisions were the result of discrimination based, among other things, on her sexual orientation, citing the fact that her supervisor is gay; that she was replaced in her original role with a gay employee; and that the promotion she had applied for was later filled with a gay employee. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Department.
On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court grant of summary judgment, on the grounds that because “Ames is heterosexual . . . she must make a showing in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima-facie case. Specifically, Ames must show ‘background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority,’” which is a standard that some federal circuit courts of appeal hold majority-group plaintiffs to in reverse discrimination cases.
The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case on February 26, 2025, and many of the Justices appeared to agree with Ames that the same standards for stating a Title VII claim should apply to all plaintiffs. Justice Kavanaugh, for example, asked, “So . . . all you want for this case is a really short opinion that says discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, whether it’s because you’re gay or because you’re straight, is prohibited, and the rules are the same whichever way that goes? . . . . That’s all we need to say, right?” Justice Barrett asked a question confirming that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has rejected the “background circumstances” rule. Justice Alito asked whether “the rule that the Sixth Circuit applied” was based on an interpretation of Supreme Court precedent that, he suggested, may be “no longer sound today.” In another line of questioning directed at the Department, Justices Kagan and Kavanaugh elicited an answer from counsel for the Department that “the idea that you hold people to different standards because of their protected characteristics is wrong.” As Justice Kagan noted to the Department’s counsel, “The question presented is whether a majority-group plaintiff has to show something more than a minority-group plaintiff, here, whether a straight person has to show more than a gay person. Everybody over here says no. You say no too. That was the question that we took the case to decide.”
