Headline Roundup • June 5th, 2025
Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Straight Woman in Discrimination Case
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of a straight woman, Marlean Ames, who filed a lawsuit against her employer for alleged discrimination based on her sexual orientation on Thursday.
The Details: Ames, who worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services, claimed she was both denied a promotion and demoted due to her heterosexual orientation. Previously, the District Court and the Sixth Circuit held that she failed to meet a heightened burden of proof for discrimination as part of a majority group. The Supreme Court verdict, authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dismissed the lower court's decision and revived Ames' case for further court proceedings. The ruling is expected to ease the process for individuals from majority groups to sue for discrimination.
For Context: The case focused on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, and sex—including sexual orientation. Some US courts had required plaintiffs from majority groups to provide more evidence than minority plaintiffs to claim discrimination under this act. The Supreme Court ruled that there can be no distinctions between majority-group and minority-group plaintiffs under Title VII.
How The Media Covered It: USA Today (Lean Left bias) and Reuters (Center) used the term “reverse” discrimination to describe the case while the National Review (Lean Right) did not. The National Review said, “The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday in favor of a straight woman who sued her employer for discrimination when she was denied promotion and demoted because of her sexual orientation.” The wording from the National Review implies she was objectively demoted due to her orientation by using the word “when” without including “allegedly” or “she claimed,” although the case has not been settled. Reuters, on the other hand, said she filed a “lawsuit claiming she was illegally denied a promotion.”
Revised by the AllSides staff (of humans) after a first draft from our custom AI. Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Megan Jelinger/Reuters
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday in favor of a straight woman who sued her employer for discrimination when she was denied promotion and demoted because of her sexual orientation.
The decision will make it easier for members of majority groups to sue for discrimination in parts of the country and comes amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote the opinion for the court.
“By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’ — without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority...
The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier on Thursday for people from majority backgrounds such as white or straight individuals to pursue claims alleging workplace "reverse" discrimination, reviving an Ohio woman's lawsuit claiming she was illegally denied a promotion and demoted because she is heterosexual.
The justices, in a 9-0 ruling authored by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, threw out a lower court's decision rejecting a civil rights lawsuit by the plaintiff, Marlean Ames, against her employer, Ohio's Department of Youth Services. Ames said she had a gay supervisor when she was passed over...
The Supreme Court agreed on June 5 that a worker faced a higher hurdle to sue her employer as a straight woman than if she'd been gay.
The unanimous decision, which landed amid a national backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, could trigger a wave of “reverse discrimination” lawsuits.
The justices rejected a lower court’s ruling that Marlean Ames could not sue the Ohio Department of Youth Services because she’d failed to provide “background circumstances” showing the department was “that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
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