curated citations to news sources
Some Supreme Court cases are not difficult because of the legal questions; they are difficult because of the narratives that test them.
Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, in which the Supreme Court correctly struck down a judge-made rule that imposed a higher burden of proof on discrimination plaintiffs from so-called majority groups, is one of those cases. The court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, was right to remind us that Title VII speaks to individuals, not demographics. And it was right to do so at a moment when the meaning of civil rights law is being contested from every direction.
The plaintiff in Ames was a straight woman passed over for a promotion in favor of a lesbian colleague and later replaced by a gay man. Courts below applied a special evidentiary hurdle to her claim, because of her status as a heterosexual woman. That rule wasn’t in the statute. It wasn’t in the case law. It was invented to screen out claims that judges instinctively distrust.
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But Title VII is a different tool. It does not directly allocate future opportunities. It adjudicates harm. It asks whether this person, in this workplace, was treated differently because of a protected trait. And that inquiry must remain universal, not because all forms of discrimination are historically equal—they are not—but because justice must be.
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