Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services

Facts of the Case

Provided by Oyez

The Ohio Department of Youth Services hired Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, in 2004 and promoted her to Administrator of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2014. In 2017, Ames was assigned a new supervisor, Ginine Trim, who is gay. Trim reported to Assistant Director Julie Walburn, and in 2019, Ryan Gies was appointed as the Department's Director. Both Walburn and Gies are heterosexual. In December 2018, Trim gave Ames a generally positive performance evaluation.

In April 2019, Ames applied for the position of Bureau Chief of Quality but was not selected. Shortly after, Trim suggested that Ames consider retirement. On May 10, 2019, Ames was demoted from her PREA Administrator position, resulting in a significant pay cut. The Department then promoted Alexander Stojsavljevic, a 25-year-old gay man, to the PREA Administrator position. Later that year, Yolanda Frierson, a gay woman, was chosen as Bureau Chief of Quality. Following these events, Ames filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and then sued the Department under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, asserting claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation and sex. The district court granted summary judgment to the Department, holding that Ames lacked evidence of “background circumstances” necessary to establishing her prima facie case for her claim based on sexual orientation, and that Ames lacked evidence of pretext for purposes of her sex-discrimination claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed.

Questions

Does a plaintiff who belongs to a majority group need to demonstrate “background circumstances suggesting that the defendant is the unusual employer who discriminates against the majority” in order to establish a prima facie case of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Conclusions

Employers violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when they intentionally discriminate against any individual—regardless of that person’s membership in a majority or minority group—on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The statute does not impose a higher evidentiary burden on plaintiffs who belong to majority groups. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored the unanimous opinion of the Court.

Title VII’s plain text prohibits discrimination against “any individual” because of a protected characteristic and does not authorize different standards for plaintiffs based on whether they are members of majority or minority groups. The Sixth Circuit’s “background circumstances” rule, which required a plaintiff who is in a majority group to show evidence that the employer is the unusual kind that discriminates against the majority, imposed an additional burden inconsistent with the statute. Title VII’s protection is focused on individuals, and nothing in its language supports a rule that applies only to majority-group plaintiffs. The Court’s prior decisions have emphasized this principle, noting that Title VII bars discriminatory preferences for any group and that minority and majority plaintiffs must be treated alike.

In addition to lacking a textual basis, the background circumstances requirement undermines the flexible evidentiary standard established in the McDonnell Douglas framework used in Title VII cases that rely on indirect evidence of discrimination. This framework was never meant to be rigid or mechanically applied. The Sixth Circuit’s approach ignored this guidance by requiring all majority-group plaintiffs to present specific types of evidence—such as statistical data or information about the decisionmaker’s identity—in order to proceed. That kind of blanket requirement contradicts the principle that factual contexts vary and that prima facie cases should be evaluated flexibly.

Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, arguing that judge-made doctrines like the “background circumstances” rule—and even the McDonnell Douglas framework itself—lack support in Title VII’s text and need to be reconsidered in a future case.