patrick.net

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/proudly-saturday-june-7-2025-c-and

The case involved Marlean Ames, a straight woman from Ohio passed over for a promotion by her openly gay boss, who instead handed the job to a lesbian colleague. Lower courts had applied the long-standing “background circumstances” doctrine — a judicial speed bump requiring majority plaintiffs to show extra proof that discrimination was plausible, even before they could even get discovery. The Supreme Court just unanimously demolished that roadblock.

CNN drily observed, “The ruling will make it easier to win such suits.”

Writing for the entire Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (!!) nuked the patently unfair double standard: federal anti-discrimination laws, she wrote, “do not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.” She explained the so-called “background circumstances” test “flouts that basic principle.”

It was more bad news for corporate DEI holdouts. Justice Clarence Thomas sharpened the point in his concurrence: America’s biggest employers, he wrote, have been “obsessed” with DEI and affirmative action for decades — and those obsessions have planted “overt discrimination” right inside corporate HR departments where it is growing like a Pride bouquet.

Any corporation still clinging to DEI —whatever euphemism they wrap it in, from “belonging” to “inclusive excellence”— must now tiptoe through the litigious tulips. Ames blows open the courthouse gates. Companies can no longer shield their discriminatory policies behind feel-good slogans and ESG talking points.

With the Court’s unanimous ruling, any employee—straight, white, male, Christian, or otherwise “non-diverse”— can now drag DEI into the courtroom spotlight, demanding to know why skin color, pronouns, or political activism are being weighed more heavily than color-blind merit. Ames hands trial lawyers a gold-plated roadmap: if a company’s DEI program touches race, gender, sexual identity, religion, or any other protected category, it’s now fair game for federal litigation.

Good luck to HR in designing new DEI policies that don’t even mention any of those characteristics.

Where companies once feared not appearing biased, they must now fear being sued for being biased. The pendulum didn’t just swing so much as it unanimously crashed right into corporate compliance offices. It’s a big deal and reverses decades of pretzel-like logic propping up ‘affirmative action.’ Today I’m proud of the Supreme Court.

Wow even Ketanji got this one right. Nice!

mell says

Wow even Ketanji got this one right. Nice!

Which only begs the question: Why da fuq wasn't this ruled back in the 1970s?

These top down legal decisions have been made before and ignored (Bakke etc.) A few litigants might make some money, but financed outside subversion has clearly won the day in lieu of 'law' with the endless bales of fiat money in local jurisdictions and institutions so far. These have to be removed extra judicially by citizens and elections (good luck with that in captured fake elections to boot). How many are going to spend a million a case grinding this shit through court against either taxpayer Guv supported adversaries or well funded private sources?

Trump of course does this by pulling the financial rugs out from under them resulting in much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the balefully financed. It goes back to the Rothschild braggadocio that they don't care what the laws are if they control the money.

It also doesn't mean the the local 'discretion' of judges and officials will ever follow the 'law' if they are Soros fecal impaction types. It just forces more lawfare burden on the abused and misused. We are in the status where 'legal' aka endless expensive procedure roadblocks trump the 'lawful'.