U.S. Supreme Court Ends Heightened Evidentiary Hurdle for "Majority Group" Plaintiffs in Title VII Discrimination Cases

Background

In 2004, the Ohio Department of Youth Services hired Marlean Ames, a straight woman, to serve as an executive secretary. Ames was later promoted to the position of program administrator. In 2019, Ames applied for a management position at the agency. The agency interviewed Ames for the role but ultimately hired a lesbian woman. Shortly thereafter, Ames's supervisors demoted her to the executive secretary position. The agency then hired a gay man to fill the now-vacant program-administrator role. 

After these changes, Ames filed a Title VII lawsuit against the agency. Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Ames alleged that she was both denied the management role and demoted because of her heterosexual orientation. 

The district court granted the agency summary judgment. The district court applied the Supreme Court's McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green framework "for evaluating disparate-treatment claims that rest on circumstantial evidence." The first step of that framework requires the plaintiff to "make a prima facie showing that the defendant acted with a discriminatory motive." Applying Sixth Circuit precedent, the district court held that Ames failed to make such a showing because she failed to present evidence of "background circumstances" suggesting that the agency was the "rare employer who discriminates against members of a majority group"—here, heterosexual individuals. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, with one judge writing separately to express his disagreement with the "background circumstances" rule. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split about the propriety of such a burden.

The Decision

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected any heightened burden for a "majority-group" plaintiff in Title VII cases, vacated the Sixth Circuit's judgment, and remanded the case for application of the proper prima facie standard. While joining the Court's opinion in full, Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, also filed a concurring opinion.

1. Justice Jackson, writing for the unanimous Court, held that the "additional 'background circumstances' requirement is not consistent with Title VII's text or [the Court's] case law construing the statute." 

Text.Justice Jackson explained that "Title VII's disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs." Instead, the provision makes it unlawful for employers "to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) (emphasis added). As a result, the statute "left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone."

Precedent. Justice Jackson then explained that the Court's precedent "reinforce[d] that understanding of the statute." The Court's case law, she emphasized, "makes clear that the standard for proving disparate treatment under Title VII does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group," and has "long rejected 'inflexible formulation[s]' of the prima facie standard in disparate-treatment cases."

2. Justice Jackson next rejected Ohio's defense of the "background circumstances" requirement. In Ohio's view, the rule "does not operate to subject majority-group plaintiffs to a heightened evidentiary standard at all," and was "just another way of asking whether the circumstances surrounding an employment decision, if otherwise unexplained, suggest that the decision was because of a protected characteristic." But, Justice Jackson explained, that was simply not how the Sixth Circuit treated the "background circumstances" requirement, which was "expressly based" on a heightened burden.

3. In addition to joining the Court's opinion in full, Justice Thomas, writing for himself and Justice Gorsuch, wrote "separately to highlight the problems that arise when judges create atextual legal rules and frameworks." In his view, "[j]udge-made doctrines" like the "background circumstances" requirement "have a tendency to distort the underlying statutory text, impose unnecessary burdens on litigants, and cause confusion for courts." He also highlighted that "the McDonnell Douglas framework lacks any basis in the text of Title VII," "has proved difficult for courts to apply," and "exemplifies how judge-made doctrines can have amorphous bounds." In doing so, he emphasized that the Court had never "consider[ed]—much less h[eld]—that the framework is an appropriate tool for the summary-judgment task." As a result, he invited parties to ask the Court to consider whether that framework "is a workable and useful evidentiary tool."

Immediate Impact

The immediate impact is that Ames need not satisfy a heightened evidentiary burden to establish a prima facie case of disparate treatment under Title VII. Rather, minority- and majority-group members will now face the same evidentiary burden.