On Thursday, a unanimous Supreme Court made it easier to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she did not get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.
"It's a great outcome. People should be judged the same regardless of their protected characteristics when it comes to how much evidence they have to produce, so we think it's a great victory," says attorney Jeff Jennings of Pacific Legal Foundation, a law firm that filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the Ohio woman.
The Ohio woman, Marlean Ames, has worked for the state's Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years.
Ames argued that she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people.
"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit's ‘background circumstances’ rule — which requires members of a majority group to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard to prevail on a Title VII discrimination claim — cannot be squared with either the text of Title VII or the Supreme Court's precedents," SCOTUSblog.com writes.
The “background circumstances rule” overrides the Equal Protection Clause set forth in the Constitution. Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth re-establishes that discrimination is discrimination no matter if the victim is part of a minority group or a majority group.
The ruling shows that there is a realization among all the justices that Title VII protects people of all political stripes, Jennings said.
"It was designed to be a civil rights law for all of us and not just certain groups," he says.
With the ruling in favor of Ames, Jennings expects there will be more discrimination claims because this opinion makes it easier for people to file a claim.
"Earlier, if you were in the majority group and you experienced reverse discrimination, it was harder for you to go to court because you had to satisfy the background circumstances rule and basically produce more evidence, but now, everyone has to produce the same amount of evidence." says Jennings. "So, there will definitely be plenty of discrimination claims in the future."
