Supreme Court tackles straight woman's 'reverse' discrimination case [View all]

Source: NBC News/Reuters

Feb. 21, 2025, 2:19 PM EST


Marlean Ames received numerous promotions and good evaluations over the years working in Ohio’s youth corrections system, so when she was denied a promotion and demoted in 2019 with a $40,000 pay cut she said she felt “shocked and hurt and humiliated.” But, according to Ames, that was not all. She had a gay supervisor at the time, she was passed over for a promotion in favor of a gay woman and she was demoted in favor of a gay man — both of whom, Ames asserted, were less qualified than her.

“That’s how I came to feel that I was being discriminated on because I was straight and pushed aside for them,” Ames, 60, said in an interview. The U.S. Supreme Court is due next Wednesday to hear arguments in her bid to revive her civil rights lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Youth Services after lower courts threw it out. She is seeking monetary damages from the state.

A ruling in her favor by the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, could make it easier for non-minorities, including white people and heterosexuals, to pursue claims of illegal bias — often called “reverse” discrimination — under a landmark federal anti-discrimination law.

The dispute centers on how plaintiffs like Ames must try to prove a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex — including sexual orientation. Ames is challenging a requirement used by some U.S. courts that plaintiffs from majority groups, such as white and straight people, must provide more evidence than minority plaintiffs to make an initial — or “prima facie” — claim of discrimination under a seminal 1973 Supreme Court ruling that governs the multi-step process employed to resolve such cases.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/supreme-court-tackles-straight-womans-reverse-discrimination-case-rcna193219