Plaintiff Marlean Ames sued the Ohio Department of Youth Services in federal court raising claims of sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII. The District Court granted summary judgment to the agency, the Sixth Circuit affirmed, and Ames appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court.
Factual Overview
Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services in various roles since 2004, starting as an executive secretary and eventually being promoted to program administrator. In 2019, Ames applied for a newly created management position in the agency’s Office of Quality and Improvement. Although the agency interviewed her for the position, it ultimately hired a different candidate—a lesbian woman—to fill the role.
A few days after Ames interviewed for the management position, her supervisors removed her from her role as program administrator. She accepted a demotion to the secretarial role she had held when she first joined the agency, resulting in a significant pay cut. The agency then hired a gay man to fill the vacant program-administrator position. Ames subsequently filed a lawsuit against the agency under Title VII, alleging that she was denied the management promotion and demoted because of her sexual orientation.
The District Court granted summary judgment to the agency, analyzing Ames’s claims under the McDonnell Douglas framework. The court concluded that Ames had failed to make a prima facie showing because she had not presented evidence of “background circumstances” suggesting that the agency was the rare employer who discriminates against members of a majority group. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that Ames, as a straight woman, was required to make this showing “in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima-facie case.” The panel concluded that plaintiffs can typically satisfy this burden by presenting evidence that a member of the relevant minority group made the employment decision or with statistical evidence showing a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.
Legal Analysis
The “Background Circumstances” Rule Violates Title VII: The Supreme Court held that 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 claim, cannot be squared with the text of Title VII or the Court’s precedents. The Court emphasized that Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. The provision focuses on individuals rather than groups, barring discrimination against “any individual” because of protected characteristics. Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.
The Court reinforced this understanding by citing precedents such as Griggs v. Duke Power Co., which stated that “[d]iscriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed” in Title VII. The Court also referenced McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co., which held that Title VII prohibits racial discrimination against white petitioners “upon the same standards as would be applicable were they Negroes.”
Rejection of Ohio’s Alternative Arguments: Ohio argued that the “background circumstances” rule does not subject majority-group plaintiffs to a heightened evidentiary standard but rather is “just another way of asking whether the circumstances surrounding an employment decision, if otherwise unexplained, suggest that the decision was because of a protected characteristic.” The Court rejected this argument as directly at odds with the Sixth Circuit’s description of the rule and its application in the case. The Court noted that the Sixth Circuit explicitly held that Ames was required to make a showing “in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima-facie case” because she was heterosexual.
The Court also declined to address Ohio’s alternative argument that Ames’s Title VII claims would fail even absent the “background circumstances” rule, stating that these arguments would require resolution of issues that the Court of Appeals did not address in the first instance and that fall beyond the scope of the question presented.
Justice Thomas’s Concurring Opinion
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, wrote separately to highlight problems that arise when judges create atextual legal rules and frameworks. He argued that judge-made doctrines have a tendency to distort the underlying statutory text, impose unnecessary burdens on litigants, and cause confusion for courts. Thomas criticized the “background circumstances” rule as a paradigmatic example of improper judicial lawmaking that lacks any basis in Title VII’s text and contravenes the statutory command by imposing a higher burden on some individuals based solely on their membership in a particular demographic group.
Thomas also expressed concerns about the McDonnell Douglas framework itself, noting that it lacks any basis in the text of Title VII and has proved difficult for courts to apply. He outlined several problems with the framework: it is incompatible with the summary-judgment standard, fails to encompass all ways a plaintiff could prove a Title VII claim, requires artificial distinctions between direct and circumstantial evidence, and has created significant judicial confusion. Thomas indicated his willingness to consider whether the McDonnell Douglas framework is a workable and useful evidentiary tool in an appropriate case.
The Supreme Court vacated the Sixth Circuit’s judgment and remanded the case for application of the proper prima facie standard, unanimously holding that Title VII does not impose a heightened evidentiary standard on majority-group plaintiffs under the McDonnell Douglas framework.
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