On Thursday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of an Ohio woman who wants to present a claim of labor discrimination against the State, claiming that it was approved by a work based on its heterosexual orientation.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered the opinion.
The plaintiff, Marlean Ames, alleges that his employer, the Ohio Youth Services Department, denied a promotion and then degraded it, in both cases by selecting homosexual candidates who were less qualified. His supervisor at that time was also gay.
AMES had worked for the department for more than 15 years and received sterling performance reviews.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Law of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation.
Marlean Ames in his lawyer in Akron, Oh, on February 20, 2025.
Maddie McGarvey/for Washington Post through Getty Images
To present a case in the Federal Court, the plaintiffs must initially submit a Prima Facie case, Latin for “at first glance”, a legal term to indicate that there are enough facts to support a claim.
Judge Jackson, writing to the court, said that Ames had been unfair to a higher legal standard as a member of a majority group.
“The question in this case is yes, to satisfy that Prima Facie Burden, a plaintiff who is a member of a majority group must also show” background circumstances to support the suspicion that the accused is that the unusual employer who discriminates against the majority, “Jackson wrote, citing the decision of the sixth coup downtry.
“We maintain that this additional requirement of ‘background circumstances’ is not consistent with the text of Title VII or our jurisprudence that builds the statute. Consequently, we annul the trial below and the return for the application of the appropriate facie prima standard.”
The ruling means that the demand of AMES can advance, but does not necessarily mean that it succeeds in its case against its former employer.
