[This is a guest post by Jwalika Balaji.]
On 5 June 2025, the United States Supreme Court delivered a unanimous opinion in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, reaffirming an identity-blind approach to equality under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ruling has significant implications for how US courts conceptualise discrimination. By holding that a heterosexual woman claiming workplace discrimination need not satisfy an additional burden to establish a prima facie case, the Court reinforced a view of equality in the US that treats all identities—and all claims of discrimination—as legally symmetrical. This development reopens long-standing debates about the structure of equality law: Should it treat identity as irrelevant, or attend to the context and power relations in which discrimination occurs?
This piece examines the SCOTUS’ ruling in Ames, its jurisprudential lineage, and the equality theory it embodies. It then contrasts this with Indian constitutional law, which adopts a model of substantive equality that recognises historical disadvantage and the need for differential treatment. Drawing on the anti-classification/anti-subordination distinction, the article argues that an identity-blind approach risks flattening structural inequality and undermines the very purpose of equality law. It concludes by reflecting on what the Ames decision reveals about the competing futures of constitutional equality.
The Facts and the Holding in Ames
Lori Ames, a long-serving employee of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, alleged that she was denied a promotion because of her heterosexual orientation. She filed a Title VII suit claiming sex-based discrimination. The first step in a private, non-class action complaint under Title VII claiming disparate treatment is for the complainant to establish a prima facie case, as set out in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973). The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Ames’ case, interpreted the prima facie test in a particular way. They added another prong to it, since the petitioner was from a majority group (heterosexual orientation). The Sixth Circuit held that the petitioner had to prove “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” This would mean showing that the employer was one of the rare kinds that discriminated against members of dominant groups.
The “background circumstances” approach created an asymmetry: members of traditionally subordinated groups (such as Black or female plaintiffs) faced a relatively low bar in establishing a prima facie case under the McDonnell Douglas framework, while majority-group plaintiffs had to establish an additional prong. The Supreme Court in Ames unanimously struck down this asymmetry. Writing for the Court, Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson emphasised that Title VII does not differentiate between types of plaintiffs: “Our case law thus makes clear that 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. The “background circumstances” rule flouts that basic principle.” The Court stressed that the “prima facie case” under McDonnell Douglas was “not onerous,” and that importing additional background requirements for some plaintiffs but not others violated the neutral terms of the statute. In doing so, the Court reaffirmed a core feature of American equality law: the insistence that the law must be “blind” to group identity. The focus ought to be on individual harm, not on the social location of the harmed individual.
Anti-Classification and the Identity-Blind State
The Ames ruling continues a well-established line of American constitutional reasoning that emphasises on formal equality and prioritises anti-classification over anti-subordination. The anti-classification view holds that any use of race, gender, or other identity categories by the state—whether to harm or help—is suspect. From this perspective, the equal protection clause and Title VII aim to eliminate all forms of differential treatment based on identity. The remedy for discrimination is not differential treatment for the disadvantaged, but the gradual cessation of identity-based classifications altogether.
This anti-classification ethic is woven deeply into Title VII jurisprudence. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Court declared that “discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed.” In McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. (1976), it reiterated that Title VII “prohibit[ed] racial discrimination against the white petitioners in this case upon the same standards” as would be applicable were they non-whites. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2019), the Supreme Court reaffirmed these precedents and confirmed that Title VII worked “to protect individuals of both sexes from discrimination, and [did] so equally.” Thus, there is no contextual analysis of the power dynamics between different groups when it comes to applying the non-discrimination protections located in various legal sites in the United States.
This logic has underpinned several recent decisions of the US Supreme Court. Even in the field of education, the jurisprudence over the years has moved admission decisions in the direction of doing away with race-conscious selection. Justice Powell’s solitary opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) became “the touchstone for constitutional analysis of race-conscious admissions policies,” accepting student-body diversity as a legitimate objective but stressing that “racial and ethnic distinctions of any sort are inherently suspect”. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Court struck down race-conscious admissions in higher education, rejecting the view that racial classifications could be used to promote diversity or remedy structural inequality. This has entrenched an identity-neutral approach within the discrimination law jurisprudence, where both advantages and disadvantages to individuals based on their identity are treated as suspect, and therefore, unconstitutional.
The Ames judgment, although related to employment, fits squarely within this jurisprudential development. It held that discrimination against a member of a dominant group is as actionable—and as suspect—as that against a historically excluded one. Thus, any hierarchy of claims or consideration of social context was rendered impermissible.
The Risks of Erasing Context
The identity-blind model of equality has some, albeit constrained, normative appeal: it promises neutral application of the law, avoids moral judgments about which group deserves redress, and treats all citizens as formally equal. Yet this promise comes at a cost. When the law refuses to differentiate between dominant and subordinated groups, it effaces the social structures that make discrimination meaningful in the first place.
As Sandra Fredman and Tarunabh Khaitan have argued, the purpose of equality law is not merely to prevent individual unfairness, but to dismantle patterns of relative group disadvantage. In this framework of substantive equality, equal treatment does not mean identical treatment. Rather, it requires that the law be sensitive to the histories, institutions, and material conditions that shape people’s lives.
The Ames ruling undermines this goal. By allowing members of dominant groups to claim discrimination without regard to social context, it enables a flattening of claims that can be weaponised against diversity efforts. Worse, simply unrelated patterns of hiring or decision-making which place members from minority groups in positions of power may be questioned. Employers may exercise self-restraint, become more reluctant to promote or retain members of historically excluded groups in leadership positions, fearing legal liability for “reverse discrimination.” Faced with that symmetric liability, rational actors may gravitate toward the least legally contentious path: preserving the demographic status quo. Promoting a Black woman, appointing an openly queer executive, or even creating a mentorship programme targeted at first-generation professionals may now carry a heightened cost in potential litigation. A single disgruntled co-worker may invoke Ames to argue that the initiative “treated him worse” because of his identity, forcing the organisation to defend its decision without being able to invoke wider social context as a justification.
The chilling effect is amplified by the Court’s earlier warning in Ricci v. DeStefano (2009) that discarding or adjusting a selection device to advance diversity can itself be disparate treatment, unless there is lawful justification. Ames eliminates even the modest procedural buffer that the Sixth Circuit had reiterated for majority-group claims, thereby narrowing the space in which voluntary affirmative-action or diversity measures can operate. The long-term consequence is a legal environment that rewards passivity and retains status quo, possibly entrenching patterns of occupational segregation that Title VII was enacted to dismantle.
The Indian Constitutional Commitment to Substantive Equality
Indian constitutional law provides a counterpoint to the American trajectory. While Article 14 guarantees “equality before the law” and “equal protection of the laws,” this has never been read as mandating identity-blindness. Instead, Indian courts have consistently held that treating unequals equally violates the principle of equality itself.
This is most evident in the Court’s interpretation of Article 16. Article 16(1) guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment. Article 16(4) allows the state to make reservations for “backward classes” that are underrepresented in public services. The Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) held that this was not an exception to Article 16(1), but rather a means to fulfil its promise. Formal equality, it reasoned, could not produce real opportunity unless social disadvantage was recognised and remedied.
This vision is aligned with an anti-subordination approach. It accepts that caste, gender, religion, and class are not merely individual attributes but sites of structural oppression. Legal equality, therefore, must include differential treatment where necessary to equalise outcomes and dismantle historical barriers. Khaitan thus argues that Indian equality law is correct in legally guarding and advancing the rights of historically disadvantaged ‘protected groups’ (example, women, sexual minorities, members of the SC and ST communities) in relation to their ‘cognate groups’ (men, heterosexual persons, and upper-caste persons). This identity-conscious approach allows for positive measures and affirmative action to be legally and politically exercised in favour of those who deserve and require the same.
Conclusion
The contrast between Ames and Indian jurisprudence reflects two fundamentally different models of equality. The former views equality as a matter of formal neutrality; the latter, as a project of social transformation rooted in substantive equality. The former sees the state as constrained from classifying individuals; the latter sees the state as obligated to differentiate between groups to address historical injustices.
This divergence is not merely academic. Around the world, affirmative action measures are under challenge from litigants who argue that any form of identity-based redress is discriminatory. The Ames ruling may be invoked to support claims that diversity policies and any forms of positive measures are unconstitutional because they do not treat all identities equally. India, however, must remain vigilant. The anti-subordination principle has always required a delicate balance between the recognition of group disadvantage and the prevention of new forms of exclusion. But that balance must not be used as a pretext to abandon the constitutional vision of equality altogether. Equality must always be differentiated from neutrality, and the state must therefore be alive to the attendant context in which equality operates.