Majority-Group Plaintiffs After Ames
How courts are unwinding the "background circumstances" rule after Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services — the uniform prima facie standard for majority-group plaintiffs, its extension to state anti-discrimination statutes, and the defenses that survive.
Reverse-Discrimination Claims After Ames
Ames erased the circuit-made asymmetry: the "‘background circumstances’ rule—which requires members of a majority group to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard to prevail on a Title VII claim—cannot be squared with the text of Title VII or the Court’s precedents." The reasoning is textual — "the text of Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs," barring discrimination against "any individual" — and doctrinal: "the standard for proving disparate treatment under Title VII does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group." Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, 605 U.S. 303 (2025). The Court also faulted the rule for "uniformly subjecting all majority-group plaintiffs to the same, highly specific evidentiary standard in every case," contrary to its instruction that the prima facie case was "never intended to be rigid, mechanized, or ritualistic."
The Third Circuit has already carried Ames into state law. In a failure-to-promote case brought by a white police captain, Christopher Massey v. Borough of Bergenfield, No. 24-2761 (3d Cir. Mar 6, 2026) predicted "that the [Supreme Court of New Jersey] would rely on Ames to conclude that the State’s Background Circumstances Rule no longer has a permissible role to play in litigation under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination" — because the NJLAD’s operative text "is identical to the pertinent language from Title VII" and "extend[s] protections to ‘any’—and, therefore, all—individuals." Stripped of the rule, the prima facie case reverts to the ordinary three showings: qualification, denial, and award of the position "to an applicant with similar or lesser qualifications." Summary judgment for the borough was reversed.
But Ames is not a reset button for cases lost on other grounds. Koehler v. Infosys Technologies Limited Incorporated, No. 2:13-cv-00885 (E.D. Wis. Jun 30, 2025) declined to disturb summary judgment for the employer after Ames: "Because the court did not base its ruling solely on the (now-invalidated) background circumstances rule when granting summary judgment for the defendants, the Ames decision does not compel a different result." Even with a prima facie case assumed, the claim failed because the employer "had a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason not to hire her and Koehler could not establish that that reason was pretextual." The pretext stage of McDonnell Douglas is where these cases are still won and lost.
Two practice notes round out the landscape. First, the concurrences in Ames invite a bigger fight: Justice Thomas wrote that "the McDonnell Douglas framework lacks any basis in the text of Title VII and has proved difficult for courts to apply," and would consider whether it "is a workable and useful evidentiary tool" in a case that presents the question — an argument now preserved in defense and plaintiff briefs alike. Second, for DEI-related claims the uniform standard cuts both ways: majority-group plaintiffs no longer need statistical proof or decisionmaker demographics at step one, but they inherit the same burden every plaintiff carries — evidence that the stated reason is pretext for a decision made because of a protected trait.