Supreme Court revives case of Ohio woman who says she was demoted because she is straight

The Supreme Court unanimously determined Thursday that an Ohio woman can move forward with her complaint alleging that a state agency passed her over for promotion because she is heterosexual.

In a 9-0 decision authored by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the high court ruled that plaintiff Marlean Ames did not have to meet a higher burden of proof to prove that she was discriminated against despite being part of a “majority” group.

Ames had sued the Ohio Department of Youth Services in November 2020, alleging that she was wrongfully denied a promotion in favor of a lesbian who was not qualified for the role and then demoted from her position and replaced with a gay man who should not have been eligible to take over her job.

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Her complaint will be sent back to the lower courts for further review.

Two lower courts, including the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, dismissed Ames’ case, concluding that as a straight woman who is part of a “majority group,” she needed to provide “background circumstances” as evidence that she was a victim of an “unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

During oral arguments in February, justices on the Supreme Court seemed baffled by the state of Ohio’s defense in the case.

But Solicitor General T. Elliot Gaiser distanced himself from that key conclusion.

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Gaiser, argued that the state was “not defending the exact language there” and that Ames’s burden shouldn’t be “scrutinized on that level.”

In her opinion, Jackson rattled through court precedent while ripping apart the lower court ruling and pointed to the text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, and nation of origin.

“As a textual matter, Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs,” the liberal justice noted. “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”

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Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas penned a concurrence joined by fellow conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, backing the majority opinion “in full,” while highlighting “problems that arise when judges create atextual legal rules and frameworks.”

The Supreme Court’s decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services merely revives Ames’ reverse discrimination suit and doesn’t delve into the actual merits of the case. 

Ohio previously stressed that many of the key officials involved in making the personnel decisions that vexed Ames were straight. 

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The state has also contended that Ames was seen as difficult to work with and noted that her demotion came as the Department of Youth Services wanted to revamp its team to concentrate on sexual violence in its juvy system.

Ames had been in charge of an initiative to stop rape in prison.