Can U.S. Courts Discriminate Against Whites And Heterosexuals?

Five federal circuit courts require straight and/or white victims of discrimination to meet a higher standard to avoid having their cases dismissed. The U.S. Supreme Court will review the issue.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

The nation’s premier civil rights law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, bars employers from “discriminating against any individual… because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.”

How could this be any clearer?

Race means race.

Sex = sex.

Yet, five federal courts of appeals have adopted a requirement that straight and/or white victims of employment discrimination must prove “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the [employer] is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” This added burden makes it almost impossible for straight and/or white victims of discrimination to prevail.

U.S. Courts of Appeal that have adopted the “background circumstances” rule are the D.C. (Washington), Sixth (Cincinnati, OH), Seventh (Chicago, IL), Eighth (St. Louis, MO) and Tenth (Denver, CO) Circuits. Two federal circuits have expressly rejected it: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third (Philadelphia, PA) and Eleventh (Atlanta, GA) circuits. Several other federal circuit courts are straddling the fence.

Citing a conflict among the circuits, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether federal courts can essentially discriminate against straight / white plaintiffs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1981 was the first to apply the heightened “background circumstances” rule in a case where a white male complained he was not hired for the job of locomotive firefighter because illegal preferences were given to black and female applicants. The judge said that “it defied common sense to suggest that the promotion of a black employee justifies an inference of prejudice against white co-workers in our present society.”

The kind of gross hiring discrimination that existed in past decades to justify the “background circumstances” rule simply does not exist today. Therefore, the burden the rule imposes on straight and/or white discrimination victims is hard to justify.

Citing a conflict among the circuits, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last week to take up the case this term.

Straight White Female

The case before the Court was brought by Marlean A. Ames, who had the apparent misfortune of being a straight white woman.