Supreme Court sides with woman claiming anti-straight job discrimination [View all]
Source: Washington Post
June 5, 2025 at 10:32 a.m. EDT
The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a straight woman who claimed she faced bias in the workplace after she was passed over for positions that went to gay colleagues. The decision will make it easier for members of majority groups to prove job discrimination claims.
The justices unanimously struck down a standard used in nearly half the nation’s federal circuits that required people who are White, male or not gay to meet a higher bar to prove workplace bias in certain cases than do individuals whose minority communities have traditionally faced discrimination.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote the opinion for the court, agreed with Marlean Ames, who argued that it was unconstitutional to have different standards for different groups of people. “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Jackson wrote.
The Supreme Court decision revived Ames’s discrimination claim against the agency overseeing youth corrections facilities in Ohio, sending it back to the lower courts that had ruled she hadn’t met the higher bar of proof.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/05/workplace-discrimination-supreme-court-decision/
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Link to SCOTUS RULING (PDF) - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1039_c0n2.pdf
Article updated.
Original article -
The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a straight woman who claimed she faced bias in the workplace after she was passed over for positions that went to gay colleagues. The decision that will make it easier for members of majority groups to prove job discrimination claims.
The justices unanimously struck down a standard used in nearly half the nation's federal circuits that required people who are White, male or not gay to meet a higher bar to prove workplace bias in certain cases than do individuals whose minority communities have traditionally faced discrimination.
Marlean Ames argued it was unconstitutional to have different standards for different groups of people. She asked the Supreme Court to revive her discrimination claim against the agency overseeing youth corrections facilities in Ohio. Lower courts had ruled she hadn't met the higher bar of proof.
"Little did I know at the time that I filed that my burden was going to be harsher than somebody else's burden to prove my case," Ames said in an interview earlier this year. "I want people to try and understand that we're trying to make this a level playing field for everyone. Not just for a White woman in Ohio."
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