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https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/06/06/supreme-court- reverse-discrimination-lawsuit/84051923007/

There is no such thing as reverse discrimination. There is just
discrimination. It doesn't matter if someone is White or Black, straight
or gay, male or female. It only matters if they've been discriminated
against.

On June 5, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision removing
barriers for members of majority groups to file anti-discrimination suits.
In this case, Marlean Ames, a straight woman, filed a suit against her employer, which she said denied a promotion in favor of a gay woman, and
later demoted her in favor of a gay man filling her role.

The news media covering this decision has widely referred to it as a
�reverse discrimination� case, but that shows their understanding of discrimination is wrong. The unanimous decision from the court in this
case is correct and offers valuable lessons for how the left needs to
rethink its group politics.

Reverse discrimination isn't a thing. There is only discrimination.

The ruling overturns a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that
placed a heightened burden upon a plaintiff who is a member of a "majority group" in discrimination cases, requiring that the plaintiff shows
�background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is
that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.�

Essentially, the lower court established different criteria for
determining whether a single person had a valid discrimination case
against an employer, compared with a person who was part of the majority.
The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional, sending the case
back to a lower court.

Different rules based on different groups is precisely the kind of discrimination that American law prohibits. This is the spirit of all of American anti-discrimination law, including the relevant statute in this
case, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents employment discrimination based on all sorts of characteristics.

The only test in cases of discrimination should be if you prove you were discriminated against due to an immutable characteristic. If yes, you have
a case. If not, you don�t. There is no need to consider whether somebody
is even a part of a minority group, or even how their discrimination plays
into any sort of broader civil rights struggle. In this case, because the plaintiff was straight, the lower court added an additional burden for her
to prove discrimination than if a gay person had filed an identical suit.

Title VII provides far more detail on how one proves discrimination than
my haphazard framework, but the spirit is the same in that there is no
mention of one's group status being a determining factor.

�As a textual matter, Title VII�s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group
plaintiffs,� writes Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the unanimous
decision.

This case is a promising step, but legal neutrality on characteristics is
not a consensus
In the decision at issue, the court reached consensus, with all nine
justices signing on to Justice Jackson�s opinion.

While unanimous decisions are not uncommon, what is interesting about this
case is that the liberal justices have signed on to an approach typically favored by conservatives.

Justice Clarence Thomas has long advocated for constitutional
colorblindness, and the reality is that American law treats all
characteristics equally in its application of laws.

This very issue divided the nation's highest court into its respective ideological leanings just two years ago, when Students for Fair Admissions
won against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, resulting in affirmative action admissions practices being outlawed nationwide.

In that very decision, Justice Jackson authored a fiery dissent against
the colorblind approach of the majority opinion. While that case deals
with race and this one deals with sexual orientation, any protected characteristic should be viewed the same.

Decisions like these make Justice Jackson�s jurisprudence all the more frustrating. The same principles that demand neutrality of the law in some areas are suddenly thrown out the window when it comes to affirmative
action.

I hope that the recent case is a genuine change of heart from Justice
Jackson and the other liberal justices, but I fear that this case is just another puzzling inconsistency from the court�s junior justice.


--
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

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