A day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision making it easier for majority groups, including straight people, to bring anti-discrimination claims, acting U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Andrea Lucas welcomed the decision and promised the agency would dismantle identity politics.
The Supreme Court in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services clarified “that discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristic is unlawful discrimination, no matter the identity of who engaged in the discrimination or which workers were harmed or benefited,” she said on June 6.
In Ames, the Supreme Court rejected the “background circumstances” test, a judge-made doctrine adopted by several circuit courts, Lucas noted. The background circumstances test had required majority-group plaintiffs to show that their employer was the unusual employer who discriminates against the majority. She said the court correctly concluded that this test was contrary to the plain text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the court’s precedents.
Lucas promised that “under my leadership, the EEOC is committed to dismantling identity politics that have plagued our employment civil rights laws by dispelling the notion that only the ‘right sort of’ plaintiff is protected by Title VII. In the wake of Ames, there can be no more confusion.”
She said that following Ames, the “flawed” background circumstances test no longer shields employers...
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