According to legal scholars familiar with civil rights litigation, the Supreme Court appears poised to support and control straight women's discrimination claims in lawsuits that could overturn the precedent that “civil rights law applies to inequality.”
Petitioner Marlene Ames claims she was demoted and handed over in favor of two ineligible gay employees who have not applied or interviewed for the role.
The issue in her case is that some lower courts need some of the lower courts, which are needed by those who are thought to be in “majority groups” (in this case heterosexuals”) to prove that discrimination occurred under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
During oral arguments Wednesday, the judge and attorneys on both sides of the dispute agreed that the Court of Appeal had made a mistake in Ames' case.
Trump-appointed Judge Brett Kavanaugh said Wednesday that all the courts really need to do is “a really short opinion that speaks of discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
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US Supreme Court (Fox News Digital)
At one point during the debate, Ohio lawyer Elliot Geyser is bewildered by liberal justice Elena Kagan when he argued on behalf of the Ohio Department of Youth Services that “the idea of keeping people to different standards due to protected characteristics is wrong.”
“I mean, it's a bit of a unique situation. It's not, because this is what the court said. “And you're here, and I don't know exactly what to make of this.”
Geyser said he agreed to Ames “about its main premise,” but he “doesn't believe Ames has proven enough evidence to make claims of discrimination.”
“I think there were six deposits under oath if you can't show evidence that you were motivated by protected traits when you behaved at a disadvantage. Certainly, if you can't show any adverse behavior at all, that's not enough to create a burden of production for the employer,” Gazer said. “And that sample pattern approved the four elements that McDonnell Douglas laid out, and the court adapted it under this court's guidance.”
The governance precedent in question is McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. It's green. This was a case in 1973 when the High Court established a four-stage process for dealing with discrimination cases based on indirect evidence. Geiser justly said that despite the incorrect application of the Court of Appeals' precedent, Ames did not meet the criteria set by those tests.
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Supreme Court Judges Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Connie Barrett, Judge John Robertt, Judge Elena Kagan and Judge Sonia Sotomayor will attend the inauguration ceremony held at the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025. (Washington Post via Ricky Carioti/Getty Images)
Giancarlo Canaparro, a senior legal expert at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the “head of proof” at the heart of the case, which several circuit courts chose to apply, is not supported by the “Title VII text.”
“There was an ideological movement that said texts in the Civil Rights Act, not just Title VII, and everything was equally true for everyone, but in reality it was intended to give special protection to a particular group, and that protection doesn't apply to other groups. “And that logic underpins rules like the Sixth Circuit. If you're a majority group, you're entitled to less protection and you have this different standard.”
In a verbal discussion, Canapalo said, “Almost everyone except Judge Jackson, “Look, the text is what it is. That's really clear.”
He also said Ohio's goal in the case is to raise the standard for everyone and make it more difficult to file discrimination claims. Under the current McDonnell Douglas framework, plaintiffs must provide minimal preliminary evidence to propose discrimination, and then employers must prove justified reasons to fire the employee, Canapalo said.
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“It sounds good in theory now, but what really works is that the evidential burden that many plaintiffs have to put up with is so low that what happens functionally in many cases is that the accused employer must prove their own innocence,” he said.
According to Canapalo, Geyser's proposal is to bring the plaintiff's initial burden to ensure that employers must present strong litigation before employers need to protect themselves, while maintaining equal standards for everyone.
“I think Ames will win, but that means a few things. Number one, that means there is a doctrine that traditionally applies civil rights law unequally,” he said.
This approach is expected to have significant implications for the second Trump terminology, especially as the president issued enforcement measures, except for discriminatory DEI policies.
“I think it has a pretty powerful effect on continuing to shape the country towards an understanding of color blindness in the law,” he said.
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Meanwhile, Andrea Lucas, acting chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, wrote in a post in X, “a neutral standard that Scotus has “already applied” and “already applied” for decades.”
“@useeoc unanimously signed a brief at @TheJustcepteptt's Ames. Don't wait for Scotus' opinion. Wait now in Title VII,” she wrote.
“EOC has never held its position,” Lucas told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Thursday.
“EOC's position is to test that this background situation conflicts with the McDonnell Douglas Standard, which contradicts the Supreme Court precedent,” Lucas said. “We already had the policy and enforcement positions we've had for decades.”
Ames started working at Ohio In 2004, he was the Secretary General of the Youth Services Bureau, overseeing the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. Since 2009, she has been promoted several times, and by 2014, according to a Supreme Court filing, she has been promoted to program administrator.
In 2017, Ames began reporting to Ginin Trim, the new supervisor of openly homosexuals. During the 2018 performance review, TRIM met expectations in most areas and rated them as exceeding one.
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However, in 2019, after Ames applied for the department's top position and failed to obtain it, she was excluded from the role of program administrator, the court filed. The department's assistant director and HR head were both straight and offered her the option to return to her previous job with pay cuts. Ames chose to stay in the department and was later promoted to another program administrator position. The department then hired gay women for the role of director Ames wanted, and gay men for the position of program manager she previously held.
Amidst a clear sign of a bipartisan agreement on the underlying controversy, U.S. Attorney General Elizabeth Pleger, under the Biden administration, filed an outline of Amicus in December, urging the Supreme Court to break the Court of Appeals' ruling.
The Supreme Court is expected to announce its ruling by the end of June.
