On January 24, 2025, NWLC joined an amicus brief led by the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund to the U.S. Supreme Court in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services.

In this case, the plaintiff is claiming that her employer denied her a promotion for being heterosexual. She is asking the Supreme Court to interpret federal employment-discrimination law—Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—in a way that ignores the realities of this country’s persisting legacy of discrimination in evaluating claims like hers.

Our brief explains that, while the lower court made an error when addressing certain legal principles in the case, it reached the correct result in ruling that the plaintiff had not presented sufficient evidence of discrimination. We urge the Supreme Court to reaffirm the importance of Title VII’s protections for all employees and reject any rule that would prevent courts from considering the realities of how discrimination tends to operate in our society.