On June 5, 2025, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, No. 23-1039, reviving a lawsuit brought by a heterosexual female employee who alleged she was discriminated against by her employer in favor of less qualified gay candidates. The decision conclusively establishes that the evidentiary burden in so-called “reverse discrimination” cases is identical as in cases brought by members of minority race, gender, and sexual orientation groups.
Marlean Ames worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for 15 years, rising from executive secretary to Program Administrator. In 2019, Ms. Ames applied and interviewed for a newly created management position in the agency’s Office of Quality and Improvement, but the Department hired a lesbian instead. A few days later, Ms. Ames received word that, not only was she not getting the promotion she hoped for, but she was also being demoted to her original secretarial position and stripped of the pay raise that had accompanied her promotion. The agency then filled Ms. Ames vacant former role with a newly hired candidate, a gay man.
Ms. Ames sued the agency under Title VII, alleging she was denied the promotion and demoted because of her sexual orientation—heterosexual—but she lost at the trial court and again at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal appellate court concluded that Ms. Ames failed to meet her prima facie burden of proving discrimination because she had not pointed to “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” The Sixth Circuit reasoned that, as a straight woman, Ms. Ames was required to prove additional facts to establish reverse discriminatory bias “in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima facie case.” Like the Sixth Circuit, the Seventh, Eighth, Tenth, and D.C. Circuits also imposed a heightened evidentiary burden on majority-group plaintiffs as compared to minority-group plaintiffs at the prima facie stage; other Circuits did not. The Supreme Court granted review to resolve the Circuit split.
Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson opined that the Sixth Circuit’s “additional ‘background circumstances’ requirement is not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.” Noting that Title VII makes it unlawful “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual … because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” the Court concluded that Title VII’s protections apply to every individual without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group. In other words, “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”
The Court reminds employers and courts alike that a plaintiff’s burden at the prima facie stage is neither “rigid, mechanized, or ritualistic.” Having adduced sufficient evidence that she was qualified for the positions she held and sought and that she was treated less favorably than others not sharing her sexual orientation, Ms. Ames satisfied her modest prima facie burden. At that stage, the trial court should have considered whether her employer could credibly rebut her allegations of discrimination with evidence of a legitimate, non-prextual, non-discriminatory reason for its employment decisions. As the lower courts never moved past the prima facie analysis and applied the wrong evidentiary burden even at that early stage, the Court remanded the case for further consideration.
The takeaway for employers is that Ames levels the playing field for majority-group and minority-group Title VII litigants. Employers should not dismiss out of hand claims by male employees alleging more favorable treatment of women or of white employees alleging more favorable treatment of people of color, nor should courts seek that “something more” that would prove the employer to be an outlier that discriminates against the majority. The Supreme Court has spoken unanimously: all claims of discrimination are subject to the same evidentiary burden, regardless of the plaintiff-employee’s majority-group status.