Supreme Court weighs whether 'background circumstances' rule imposes extra Title VII burden in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services

The Supreme Court heard oral argument Tuesday in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, a Title VII employment-discrimination case in which petitioner Marlene Ames says the Sixth Circuit imposed an extra "background circumstances" evidentiary requirement on majority-group plaintiffs.

Counsel for Ames, Mister Wang, told the court Ames had worked at the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than two decades and received a positive 2018 year-end performance review before experiencing two adverse employment actions in 2019: she was passed over for a bureau chief promotion that remained open for eight months and later lost her job and was replaced, the briefs and argument say. "Equal justice under law," Wang said near the argument's close, framing the petition as a request that Title VII apply the same way to majority- and minority-group plaintiffs.

The central legal question in the argument was whether the Sixth Circuit's so-called background circumstances rule, which the Sixth Circuit described as an additional…