The year 2024 was one of major political turnarounds. With President Trump’s re-election in the US, the continued death spiral of major woke companies like Disney, and the historic “No” vote in two Irish referenda, 2024 was a year to be remembered.
Further, and possibly greater evidence of the changing political tide came on the 5th June 2025, when, just shortly into “Pride Month”, the United States Supreme court decided in a case for a plaintiff who claimed that she had been subjected to discrimination on account of being straight. Not only this, but the judgment that, contrary to the opinion of the District and Appeal courts, the plaintiff did not need to present greater evidence than she would otherwise on account of being straight, was affirmed by one of the most progressive judges in the Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Jackson was appointed under the Biden administration, largely on account of the former president’s promise to appoint the first black woman to the United States’ Supreme Court. Justice Jackson’s senate confirmation hearing was memorable for her inability to answer the question: “What is a woman?”. She was a darling of the liberals, and at one point compared a proposed ban of so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors to a law prohibiting interracial marriage.
In 2004, Marlean Ames, the plaintiff in the case, was employed by the Ohio Department of Youth Services as a secretary, and ten years later, she was promoted to the role of program administrator. In 2019, she submitted an application for the post of “bureau chief of quality assurance and improvement”, but was turned down, her supervisor (a gay woman) allegedly telling her that she had “failed to lay out [her] vision for the role”. The post, after months of remaining empty, was eventually given to a seemingly less experienced lesbian employee, who had not even submitted an application. Ames, who had just completed 30 years at the agency, would then go on to be demoted, and was offered the choice of a wage cut of nearly 40 percent, or unemployment. Her post was later filled by a gay “25-year-old man with less than three years of service in [the] agency”.
Ames took the issue to court, alleging that the company had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that, apart from a few specific situations, “an unlawful employment practice is established when the complaining party demonstrates that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice”. “Sex”, in the article also being defined to include sexual orientation, Ames argued that she had been discriminated against for being straight.
When brought to the federal district court, however, the case was thrown out before trial when the court claimed that Ames had failed to present enough evidence of the discriminatory motive. Ames, being part of a majority group, was held by court policy to a higher burden of proof of “background circumstances” than if she was part of a minority. Finally, and after being dismissed also by the Court of Appeals, Ames appealed to the Supreme Court which ruled that there was not to be a higher evidentiary bar applied to majority groups. Justice Jackson made the statement 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”. Judge Clarence Thomas likewise criticised the practice, saying that “Courts with this rule have enshrined into Title VII’s anti-discrimination law an explicitly race-based preference”.
The discriminatory nature of the rule in question is very clear. It is an obvious inequality to require members of so-called “majority groups” to jump hurdles that are not applied to minorities in order to have their case heard. Justice Thomas wrote that “This rule is a product of improper judicial lawmaking”. According to Thomas, it was created in 1981 by judges who, applying their own “common sense”, decided that “extra evidence is required to prove discrimination when a Title VII plaintiff is white”. Perhaps in the early 1980’s it seemed ridiculous to imagine minorities being favoured over majorities in a court. It is no stretch of the imagination today. In modern times, many people would find it even commonplace to hear that a candidate for a position was favoured over their competitors for sex, orientation, or race. The obvious result of this practice, however, is that the majority groups become the ones subjected to discrimination. Essentially, the belief motivating the idea is that awarding positions is a zero sum game. If the liberals believe that one race has been discriminated against in the past, they only see it fair to equally discriminate against the “oppressing group” now (of course, such discrimination is masked by nice words like “equality” and “reparation”).
Another key observation, and one made by Justice Thomas, is that it is becoming more difficult to define minorities and majorities. Ultimately, it depends on the subjective opinion of the judges on how to draw the lines. Thomas noted that “women make up the majority of employees in certain industries, such as teaching and nursing, but the minority in other industries, such as construction”. Moreover, opinions can vary greatly on someone’s identity based on how they are viewed by others, particularly when a person may align with both a majority and a minority. With no sold basis by which to determine a person’s social status, someone could be part of a majority one day and a minority the next.
This practice is simply another example of liberals trying to atone for the sins they believe people to be responsible for merely by virtue of their population size. According to the worldview of those who conceived this practice, white people, Christians, or cisgenders are collective oppressors, regardless of their personal actions. Moreover, anyone who is considered part of a minority is a victim, even if they have never experienced any prejudice in their life. The oversimplification and classification of groups for the purpose of applying harsher rules only to some is the definition of the bigotry that these liberals suppose they are fighting; in their opinion, only the liberal elites should get to decide who receives justice or not. Until very recently, discrimination against majorities did not seem to matter. However, when judges like Jackson and Thomas, who sit on opposing ends of the political spectrum, can concur on a case of discrimination such as this, it appears that a massive shift is underway.
While Ames’ case is still unfinished – no court having actually concluded that she was subject to unlawful discrimination – the significance of this ruling should not be understated. Two years ago, Ames would have been labelled a homophobe simply for questioning her employers’ choices, whether they are in fact discriminatory or not, and the decision made by the District and Appeals Courts would likely have been hailed as “dismantling systemic homophobia”.
It is an undeniably good thing that people like Marlean Ames can now receive proper justice when they believe that they have been unfairly discriminated against – and on an equal footing with all other groups. If the issues of discrimination are to be solved, they cannot be simply masked with more discrimination, and it is a step in the right direction that one of the most influential progressive women in the United States now agrees.
___________________________________
Patrick Vincent is a writer based in Dublin.