By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday decided to decide whether it should be harder for workers from “majority backgrounds,” such as white or heterosexual people, to prove claims of workplace discrimination.
The justices accepted an appeal from Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, who tried to revive her lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Youth Services, in which she said she lost her job to a gay man and was passed over for a promotion in favor of a gay man. woman in violation of federal civil rights law.
The Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided last year that she had not shown the “background circumstances” required by courts to prove she faced discrimination because she is straight, as she claimed.
She filed her lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal law that prohibits discrimination in the workplace based on characteristics such as race, sex, religion and national origin.
Since the 1980s, at least four other U.S. appeals courts have passed similar hurdles in proving discrimination claims against members of majority groups, largely in cases involving white men. Those courts have said the higher bar is justified because discrimination against these workers is relatively uncommon.
But other courts have said that Title VII does not distinguish between bias against minority and majority groups.
A Supreme Court ruling in favor of Ames could boost the growing number of lawsuits by white and heterosexual employees who claim they were discriminated against under companies’ diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The court will hear arguments in the case during its new term, which begins Monday, with a decision expected by the end of June.
Attorneys for Ames and the Ohio agency, which oversees the incarceration and rehabilitation of juvenile crime offenders, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ames was responsible for ensuring the agency’s compliance with a federal law intended to discourage sexual violence in prisons. She has said that despite positive feedback on her job performance, she was demoted to her old job in 2019 and had her pay cut by almost $20 an hour.
Ames has said she was replaced by a younger gay man, and later in 2019 she was denied the promotion she had sought, which went to a gay woman.
She sued the department in 2020. An Ohio federal judge dismissed the case last year, saying she had not shown the “background circumstances” that supported her claim of discrimination.
The 6th Circuit affirmed that decision last December. The 6th Circuit said background circumstances may include evidence that a member of a minority group, such as a gay person, made the challenged employment decision, or data showing a larger pattern of discrimination by an employer against members of a majority group.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
