Supreme Court removes "background circumstances" hurdle in discrimination cases

The Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Ames v. Ohio Dept of Youth Services, 145 S.Ct. 1540 (June 5, 2025) resolving a circuit split and finding the practice of requiring plaintiff members of a “majority group” to show “background circumstances” to prevail on a Title VII claim unsupported under the language of Title VII and illegal. In addition to the Sixth Circuit, this heighted standard was also applied here in the Eighth Circuit.

Ames has now abrogated Hammer v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d 722 (8th Circ. 2004) and removed the additional “background circumstances” hurdle on majority member plaintiffs to file a Title VIII discrimination case. Ames, a heterosexual woman, filed suit under Title VII alleging discrimination due to her sexual orientation and claimed she was demoted and lost out on a promotion due to being heterosexual.  Because the court found Ames was a majority group plaintiff, she was required to and failed to show “background circumstances” that her employer is the rare one that discriminates against a majority group. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment against Ames.  

In reviewing the additional “background circumstances” requirement for majority-group plaintiffs applied by the Sixth Circuit and others, the Supreme Court noted there simply is no distinction between majority-group and minority-group plaintiffs found in the text of Title VII. Indeed, the text prohibits discrimination “against any individual” and simply does not support a different evidentiary standard based on whether the plaintiff is in the so called, “majority group.” 

Further, such a rule ignored the Court’s instructions to avoid inflexible applications of the McDonnell Douglas’s first prong. In McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), the Court laid out a 3-step burden-shifting framework for evaluating Title VII claims: (1) Plaintiff bears the initial burden to produce enough evidence to support an inference of discriminatory motive; (2) then if met by plaintiff, the burden shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the decision; and (3) then if met by employer, plaintiff has a fair opportunity to show the stated justification was pretextual for discrimination. The Court notes the first prong is not supposed to be onerous for the plaintiff and the “background circumstances” rule required an impermissible heightened standard to meet the first prong. Interestingly, Justice Thomas and Gorsuch concur in the opinion and basically invite a plaintiff to question the continued workability and usefulness of the McDonnel Douglas framework.