by WorldTribune Staff, February 20, 2025 Real World News
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a discrimination case out of Ohio in which a woman says she was demoted for “being straight.”
Marlean Ames, a longtime employee in Ohio’s youth corrections system, said she was denied a promotion and demoted in 2019 with a $40,000 pay cut. Ames said she had a gay supervisor at the time and was passed over for a promotion in favor of a gay woman and then was demoted in favor of a gay man — both of whom, Ames asserted, were less qualified.
Ames had received numerous promotions and good evaluations over the years.
“That’s how I came to feel that I was being discriminated against because I was straight and pushed aside” for the gay employees, Ames said.
The U.S. Supreme Court said it will hear arguments on Wednesday in Ames’s bid to revive her civil rights lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Youth Services after lower courts threw it out. She is seeking monetary damages from the state.
Ames, 60, began working for the Ohio Department of Youth Services in 2004. She was promoted in 2014 to administrator of the department’s program aimed at complying with federal standards for preventing sexual abuse in its facilities.
In 2019, Ames interviewed for a newly created “bureau chief” position, but was not offered the job. It was filled by a gay woman who had not applied for the post. Around the same time, Ames learned she was being demoted to her previous secretarial role, resulting in an annual pay cut from about $100,000 to $60,000. A gay man was selected to take her place.
“Discrimination is discrimination,” Ames told Reuters. “This will hopefully be able to help anyone who feels they’ve been discriminated on to get a fair shake in the courtroom and not have to go to the lengths that I had to go to.”
Ames is challenging a requirement used by some U.S. courts that plaintiffs from majority groups, such as white and straight people, must provide more evidence than minority plaintiffs to make an initial — or “prima facie” — claim of discrimination under a seminal 1973 Supreme Court ruling that governs the multi-step process employed to resolve such cases.
These courts include the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Ames. They require majority-group plaintiffs to show “background circumstances” indicating that a defendant accused of workplace bias is “that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
The 6th Circuit ruled that Ames could not meet that bar, throwing out her case.
Louisiana State University employment law professor William Corbett said that if Ames wins, “I think those who believe that reverse discrimination is a prevalent problem will see it as a victory and an adjustment that puts reverse and traditional discrimination claims on equal footing.”
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