The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that discrimination claims from majority-group plaintiffs do not need to meet a higher legal bar than the one that plaintiffs from historically marginalized groups must meet.
The high court ruled that a federal appeals court erred by holding white, male, and straight employees to a higher standard, dubbed “background circumstances,” in discrimination cases. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the majority opinion, finding the requirement for extra evidence from those employees “not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”
“The Sixth Circuit has implemented a rule that requires certain Title VII plaintiffs—those who are members of majority groups—to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard … We conclude that Title VII does not impose such a heightened standard on majority-group plaintiffs,” Jackson said in the majority opinion.
The case centered on discrimination claims by Marlean Ames, an Ohio woman who filed a lawsuit after being removed from her job at the Ohio Department of Youth Services corrections agency. Ames, a straight woman, alleged she was unlawfully discriminated against when she was replaced by a younger gay man, and was later passed over for a different role, which was given to a lesbian woman who had not applied for the role initially. Ames claimed in her lawsuit that the Ohio Department of Youth Services corrections agency had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
During oral arguments in February, the justices appeared ready to strike down the “background circumstances” requirement for majority-group plaintiffs, something the high court did with its decision Thursday.
The unanimous decision remanded the discrimination case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for further proceedings without the higher standard implemented against Ames.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion, agreeing with the majority opinion in full, but aiming at “the problems that arise when judges create atextual legal rules and frameworks.” Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas’s concurring opinion.
“Judge-made doctrines have a tendency to distort the underlying statutory text, impose unnecessary burdens on litigants, and cause confusion for courts. The ‘background circumstances’ rule—correctly rejected by the Court today—is one example of this phenomenon,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas also railed against the framework established with the 1973 decision in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, which is used as the general framework when evaluating discrimination claims, as “a second judge-made rule.” The framework outlines that plaintiffs must establish a preponderance of evidence for a discriminatory claim, and if proven and the burden is shifted to the employer to prove that the employee was terminated for non-discriminatory reasons, then the plaintiff must be allowed to show a preponderance of evidence that those reasons were not the true reasons for the termination.
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Thomas argued that the McDonnell Douglas standard has “created outsized judicial confusion” and said the high court should evaluate its legality “in an appropriate case.”
“Atextual, judge-created legal rules have a tendency to generate complexity, confusion, and erroneous results. I am pleased that the Court correctly rejects the atextual ‘background circumstances’ rule today,” Thomas wrote.