--- title: SCOTUS Eases Path for 'Reverse Discrimination' Lawsuits description: The court unanimously sided with an Ohio woman who claimed she was passed over for a promotion and later demoted because she is straight. canonical: https://time.com/7291474/supreme-court-reverse-discrimination/ author: Chantelle Lee article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-06-05T16:42:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-11T00:53:06.523Z article:section: Politics og:title: SCOTUS Eases Path for 'Reverse Discrimination' Lawsuits og:description: The court ruled in favor of a woman who argued she was passed over for a promotion and demoted because she is straight. og:url: https://time.com/7291474/supreme-court-reverse-discrimination/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe9fd78acdbd492b/6998c72c1f6709f567f56725/SCOTUS-Reverse-Discrimination.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Supreme Court Issues Opinions og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: SCOTUS Eases Path for 'Reverse Discrimination' Lawsuits twitter:description: The court ruled in favor of a woman who argued she was passed over for a promotion and demoted because she is straight. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe9fd78acdbd492b/6998c72c1f6709f567f56725/SCOTUS-Reverse-Discrimination.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Straight Woman In ‘Reverse Discrimination’ Case > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Jun 5, 2025 4:42 PM UTC  An exterior view of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2024. An exterior view of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2024. Andrew Harnik—Getty Images by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Jun 5, 2025 4:42 PM UTC Lawsuits for “reverse discrimination” will face an easier path after the U.S. Supreme Court [unanimously sided](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1039%5Fc0n2.pdf) on Thursday with a woman who argued that she was passed over for a promotion and later demoted because she is straight. The court’s ruling is a departure from previous court decisions that have set a higher bar in cases where people who are part of a majority group, such as those who are white and straight, filed lawsuits alleging discrimination under federal civil rights law. But the Supreme Court said in its ruling that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race and sexual orientation, among other characteristics, “draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. Rather, the provision makes it unlawful ‘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.’” “By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group—Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court. The case was brought by Marlean Ames against the Ohio Department of Youth Services, where she started working in 2004\. In 2019, she applied for a promotion, but was turned down and a colleague with less seniority—who was a lesbian woman—received the promotion instead. Ames was later demoted and her previous role was given to another colleague who had less seniority, a gay man. She sued under Title VII, alleging in her lawsuit that she was denied the promotion and then demoted due to her sexual orientation. Her supervisors, however, said Ames was passed over for the promotion because she didn’t have the vision and leadership skills needed for the role and demoted because they had concerns about her leadership skills. Lower courts had previously ruled against Ames, saying her lawsuit failed to demonstrate “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” But the Supreme Court ruled that requirement was “not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7291474/supreme-court-reverse-discrimination/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7291474/supreme-court-reverse-discrimination/"},"headline":"Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Straight Woman In ‘Reverse Discrimination’ Case","datePublished":"2025-06-05T16:42:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-11T00:53:06.523Z","description":"The court unanimously sided with an Ohio woman who claimed she was passed over for a promotion and later demoted because she is straight.","url":"https://time.com/7291474/supreme-court-reverse-discrimination/","keywords":["Supreme Court","News Desk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe9fd78acdbd492b/6998c72c1f6709f567f56725/SCOTUS-Reverse-Discrimination.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chantelle Lee","jobTitle":"Reporter","url":"https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe9fd78acdbd492b/6998c72c1f6709f567f56725/SCOTUS-Reverse-Discrimination.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Supreme Court Issues Opinions","caption":"Supreme Court Issues Opinions","creditText":"Andrew Harnik—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/supreme-court/","name":"Supreme Court"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7291474/supreme-court-reverse-discrimination/","name":"Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Straight Woman In ‘Reverse Discrimination’ Case"}}]}] ```