By Jan Wolfe and Erin Mulvaney

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court made it easier for workers to sue for reverse discrimination in a ruling that allowed a woman to pursue a claim that she was denied a job promotion because she is straight.

The unanimous decision on Thursday revives a lawsuit brought by Marlean Ames, who alleged the Ohio state agency where she works denied her a promotion, and then demoted her, because she is heterosexual. She said that both her old job and the one she had sought were given to gay people. Her supervisor at the time was also gay.

The high court, in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said a Cincinnati-based appeals court erred by requiring Ames to show "background circumstances" suggesting the employer was hostile to straight people -- which wouldn't have been required had a gay employee claimed discrimination.

The ruling resolves a split that had emerged among federal appeals courts over whether the "background circumstances" test should be applied to reverse discrimination claims brought by individuals from majority demographic groups, such as straight or white people. Five federal appeals courts use that standard, while three appeals courts have rejected it.

Jackson said that adding more legal hurdles for plaintiffs who aren't minorities "cannot be squared with the text of Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] or our longstanding precedents."

Title VII prohibits discrimination because of an "individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The Supreme Court extended that protection to LGBT workers in 2020. But public opinion is divided over whether equal opportunity should require absolute neutrality, or if it should take into account the historic discrimination that minority groups have faced.

Claims of discrimination from members of majority groups have already become more common in recent years, and Gibson Dunn partner Jason Schwartz said Thursday's decision "will supercharge the current wave of reverse discrimination lawsuits by removing a significant obstacle for plaintiffs."

Ames was represented at the high court by the University of Virginia School of Law's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Xiao Wang, the clinic's director, said the court's decision makes clear that "Title VII is supposed to protect everyone on the same terms."

"I think people just want to make sure that whatever discrimination looks like, it needs to be subject to the same standards," Wang added.

Dominic Binkley, a spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, said the state agency where Ames worked didn't unlawfully discriminate against her.

Ames has worked since 2004 at the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which runs the state's juvenile correctional facilities. She was in charge of the agency's prison-rape prevention program in 2019 when she applied for a promotion.

Ames didn't get the job and, according to her suit, a department supervisor suggested she consider retirement. The following month, Ames was stripped of her current post and offered the choice of demotion to a lower-paying position or leaving the department altogether.

A lesbian received the promotion Ames had sought, and administrators gave her old prison-rape prevention job to a 25-year-old gay man. The state said she was reassigned not due to discrimination but because of a reorganization in the department.

Ohio argued in court filings that the "background circumstances" rule was misunderstood. People who were members of majority groups, like Ames, weren't actually subject to higher legal standards, it said. Instead, the test was just another way to apply the Supreme Court's earlier precedents, the state said.

The court rejected that argument, saying the rule effectively required members of majority groups to produce evidence of discrimination, such as statistical proof, that would not be required from minorities.

Some civil-rights groups had submitted briefs to the court supporting the "background circumstances" rule. Courts should be able to consider the "realities of this country's persisting legacy of discrimination," the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund wrote in one filing.

Ames got backing from critics of diversity, equity and inclusion -- or DEI -- programs. Among the groups filing briefs in support of her was America First Legal Foundation, a legal group founded by White House aide Stephen Miller, which has filed civil rights complaints against large employers like Starbucks over their hiring practices.

The backlash to DEI programs was stoked by the high court's 2023 decision ending the use of race in college admissions. The decision in cases filed against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina spurred many private companies to roll back their DEI programs that they had championed only years before, even though they weren't directly implicated in the ruling. The Trump administration has also sought to dismantle DEI programs.

An analysis by Gibson Dunn showed a steady increase in lawsuits challenging DEI programs since the Harvard decision. Major companies that have been sued include Starbucks, Meta, Expedia, CBS and Johnson & Johnson.

Write to Jan Wolfe at jan.wolfe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 05, 2025 13:29 ET (17:29 GMT)

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