The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a straight woman who twice lost positions to gay workers, saying an appeals court had been wrong to require her to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group.
The decision came two years after the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education and amid the Trump administration’s fierce efforts to root out programs that promote diversity. The ruling will place further pressure on employers and others to eliminate affirmative action and other initiatives that seek to provide opportunities to members of historically disadvantaged groups.
Nearly half of the federal appeals courts had required men and white people and other members of majority groups to meet a more demanding standard when they sued for workplace discrimination. In eliminating that requirement, the court said that a federal civil rights law demanded equal treatment of all individuals.
The standard for proving workplace discrimination under the law, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court, “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.”
The case was brought by Marlean A. Ames, who had worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which oversees parts of the state’s juvenile corrections system. After a decade there, in 2014 she became the administrator of a program addressing prison rape. Five...
Romania's Defense Minister Ionuț Moșteanu resigned Friday over false claims on his resume, marking the second time in recent weeks that a NATO country close to Russia has had to change its defense...