When the current U.S. Supreme Court, which typically divides 6-3 or 5-4 on the most sensitive cases, unanimously disagrees with the lower courts, that’s a good indication the lower courts were way off base.
Such was the situation, until last week, in about half the nation’s federal courts, which had set up rules that made it more difficult for members of historically majority groups — white, male or straight — to prove discrimination than for members of historically minority groups — Black, female or gay.
Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone Black female member, said there is no justification in the Constitution or in federal law to make distinctions between typical discrimination and “reverse discrimination.” If individuals are treated worse in employment decisions because of their gender, race, religion or sexual identity, it doesn’t matter to which group the victims belong. They have the same access to judicial redress and the same rules in proving their claim.
In the matter before the Supreme Court, a straight woman from Ohio claimed she was passed over for promotions and demoted because of her sexual orientation. Her lawsuit, though, was rejected by the lower courts because she could not provide “background circumstances” to back up her allegation. Such background circumstances in an employment case would typically include that the alleged discriminatory decision was made by a member of the relevant minority group or that there was statistical evidence demonstrating a pattern of bias by the employer against members of the relevant majority group.
The Supreme Court did not say the woman had proven her allegation. What it said was that her standard of proof should be no different than a minority-group plaintiff, and it sent the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings.
This case was unique not only because all the justices, regardless of their ideological leanings, concurred. It was also unique that the allies for the plaintiff stretched across the political spectrum.
The flawed assumption behind the disparate set of evidence rules was that discrimination against minority groups is more believable than discrimination against majority groups. The former is certainly more common, but the latter occurs as well. It all depends on whether the people making the decision bring a bias to the process, either to unfairly hold back members of a minority group or to give them an unfair advantage.
The lower court rules, now thrown out, were themselves discriminatory. They treated certain classes of plaintiffs differently than other classes based on what should have been irrelevant criteria.
The Supreme Court rightly and unanimously said that had to stop.
