Case example
By Amy Howe
On February 20, 2025
11:05
The judges will hear Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services On February 26 (Katie Barlow)
Marlean Ames says she is the victim of reverse discrimination: She was not hired for a job as she wanted and she was closed down because she is equal. Ames defendant and brought her case to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the judges will hear oral arguments about whether a federal appeal court wrongly demanded her to fulfill a stricter standard for her case to go beyond if she had been a member of a minority group – for example, if she had been a lesbian.
Ames claims that Lower Court’s decision should be overturned to give everyone – whether they are a member of a minority group or a majority group – “an equal opportunity to prove their case.” But her employer counts that a decision to Ames’s benefit, as a practical case, allows virtually all employment discrimination proceedings, including reverse discrimination, to move forward.
The case comes two years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students to Fair Admissions v. Harvard Collegewhere the judges effectively ended the use of affirmative action in college recordings. This case was brought by a group that claimed that Harvard discriminated against Asian-American applicants. Writing for the majority emphasized Chief Justice John Roberts that the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment is “universal in its use.”
Recently, the Trump administration has dismantled or challenged diversity, justice and inclusion initiatives – known as DEI – in the federal government and other jobs.
Ames began working in 2004 as a performing secretary at the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which oversees the inclusion and rehabilitation of children and teens who commit crimes. In 2014, she was appointed program administrator.
Ames began reporting to a new supervisor Ginine Trim, who is gay, in 2017. In a 2018 performance evaluation, Trim said that Ames met expectations in 10 categories and exceeded them in an 11.
In 2019, Ames applied for, but did not get, a new position as agency manager. Shortly after this, the assistant director of the department (which is equal) and the department’s HR Head with Ames met and removed her from her job as a program administrator – and earned $ 47.22 in the hour – but gave her the opportunity to return to her earlier job where she would earn $ 28.40 an hour.
Ames chose to live in the department and was later promoted to another program administrator job. Shortly after, the department hired a gay woman for agency Chief position that Ames had been looking for, and a gay man for the program administrator job that Ames had had.
Ames went to court where she claimed she had been a victim of discrimination based on her gender and sexual orientation, contrary to the federal employment laws.
For her sexual orientation requirements, the US appeals law for the 6th circuit acknowledged that Ames’ cases in several respects are a “easy” at the preliminary stage. Her claim is based on sexual orientation, she held her job as a program administrator for five years “with reasonably good reviews,” she was replaced by a gay man, and a gay woman got the job she wanted.
But because Ames is equal, the appeal court also demanded her to show “background relationships” that would “support the suspicion that the defendant is the unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” The plaintiffs usually make this kind of display, explained the appeal court with evidence that a member of a minority group made the allegedly discriminatory decision, or with evidence showing a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.
But Ames can’t show any of these things, the appeal court claimed. The decisionmakers in her case-the people who hired another to Bureau Chief Job and who put her-was also equal, and the only “pattern” she can point to is her own case.
Judge Raymond Kethledge – reportedly on President Donald Trump’s shortlist of the Supreme Court during his first administration – wrote a separate opinion that criticized the court’s demand that Ames show special “background relationships” because she is equal. Such a rule, he said, was not a “brilliance” in the law of discrimination on employment discrimination at the center of the case, but instead “a deep scratch across its surface” that “discriminates” “on the grounds that the statute ban .
Ames came to the Supreme Court and sought a review of the 6th circuit decision. The judge who was agreed in November to weigh.
In her Brief in the Supreme Court, Ames claims that demanding that she shows “background conditions” is in conflict with the text of Section VII in the Civil Rights Act, which simply prohibits discrimination “against any person with regard to the conditions of the terms of employment, because of it Single’s gender ”or other protected property. There, “so the law used requires something more of her than the law as written.”
In fact, Ames notes that the federal government has explicitly rejected the idea of a “background circumstances” requirements “for decades.” When considering requirements for discrimination, she emphasizes that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “applies the same evidence standard on all requirements, regardless of the victim’s race or the type of proof.”
The requirement “Background Circumstances” is also as a practical case difficult for courts to apply, says Ames. There is “almost no guidance” for courts that can be used to decide whether the applicant is a member of a majority or a minority group, she claims. To the extent that an early decision made by the US Appeals Law of the District of Columbia Circuit, using the “Background Relationship” rule, suggests that the status of a majority or minority group is related to whether a group is “social dissatisfaction”, judges are facing , “At best formidable obstacles” by drawing such distinctions. “At worst,” Ames writes, they shall “Classify based on ‘unambiguous’ and ‘irrational stereotypes.'”
In a brief filed by Elizabeth Prelogar, who served as the US lawyer under the Biden administration, the federal government agrees with Ames that the requirement of “background circumstances” imposed on the appeal of appeal “has no basis in Section VII’s text . ” In addition, she tells the judges, the requirement “also contradicts the precedent of this court, including the court’s insurance policies that all the applicants can continue according to the same standards.”
The Ohio Department of Youth Services is pushing back against any proposal that the appeal court kept Ames to a higher standard because she is equal. The requirement of “background circumstances” claims the department is simply an “method of analysis” for courts that can be used in cases such as Ames rather than “an additional element” that the applicants can show.
Department VII, emphasizes the department, requires the applicants to show that they were victims of discrimination “because of” a protected property – here because Ames was equal. The requirement “Background Circumstances”, explains the department, “is best understood as just another way of asking if the circumstances surrounding” the employer’s decision suggests that the employer acted with discriminatory motives.
The Court of Appeal, emphasizes the department, has “made it clear that the requirement for background conditions is not cumbersome.” It simply saw “to see if Ames had introduced evidence that was sufficient to create an inference of discrimination – and thought she had not done so.” An example of evidence that “typically could” create such an inference, hinted at the Court of Appeal would be evidence that a member of a minority group – in this case, + people – took the employment decision at the center of the dispute or statistics showing a pattern of discrimination From the employer against members of the majority group – here, equal people.
Ames did not have to present this proof, the department writes, but she had to present some kind of evidence – which she did not. The department actually emphasizes, “Ames has not identified a single proof that suggests that sexual orientation played some role in the hiring decision mentioned in her promotion requirements.”
If the Supreme Court concludes that there has been a “misunderstanding” about the claims imposed by the court of appeal, the department suggests that the judges could give an opinion in which they make it clear that “courts may consider any Relevant evidence when deciding whether a plaintiff of Section VII ”has made the first view required for her case to move forward. “But it doesn’t have to turn the sixth circuit’s decision in this case to do so,” the department insists.
