On June 5, 2025, the Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (available here), concluding that courts cannot require members of a majority group to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard to prevail on a Title VII claim. In that case, Ames, a heterosexual woman, had worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services since 2004. That agency operates Ohio’s juvenile correction system. In 2019, Ames was working as a program administrator and applied for a newly created management job. The agency selected a lesbian woman for that new job, and a few days after Ames’s interview, demoted Ames from her program administrator position to a secretarial role she had held when she first joined the agency. This resulted in a significant pay cut for Ames. The agency then hired a gay man to fill Ames’s vacated program administrator position.
After her demotion, Ames sued under Title VII alleging she was denied the promotion and then demoted because of her sexual orientation. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granted summary judgment in favor of the agency and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. Those courts held that under the traditional framework for evaluating disparate-treatment claims, Ames could not make a prima facie showing that the agency acted with a discriminatory motive because she failed to provide “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” Those lower courts reasoned that, as a straight woman, Ames was required to make this showing “in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima-facie case,” and that this heightened burden could be satisfied with evidence that a member of the relevant minority group made the employment decision at issue, or with statistical evidence showing a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group. Four other Circuits had similarly held or suggested that majority-group plaintiffs must satisfy a heightened burden standard to prevail under Title VII, while other Circuits had not imposed a heightened burden on majority-group plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Ames to resolve the Circuit split and held that the “background circumstances” rule fails under Title VII’s text and the Court’s precedents. The Court explained that Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision bars employers from intentionally discriminating against their employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Court emphasized that Title VII does not distinguish between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs, defeating the notion that the statute leaves room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone. In addition, the Court highlighted its precedents, including a prior holding that “[d]iscriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely . . . what Congress has proscribed” in Title VII. For these reasons, the Court held that a heightened evidentiary standard, such as the “background circumstances” rule implemented by the Sixth Circuit, fails under Title VII and that courts may not impose additional burdens on majority-plaintiffs under the law.
Given the current executive administration’s focus on scrutinizing and sometimes attacking certain DEI and affirmative action policies, programs, or practices, the Ames opinion provides a good reminder to employers that Title VII prohibits all discrimination in the workplace – including discrimination against majority groups of employees – and that employers should not base any employment decision on an employee’s protected characteristics. The employment lawyers at Poyner Spruill are available to provide any assistance your business may need with employment decisions or implementing anti-discrimination and other EEO policies.
