I suspect that “reverse discrimination” plaintiffs are in for a big win in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If recent oral arguments in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services are any indication, the justices are poised to sweep away the procedural barriers that several federal courts have erected in the path of members of majority groups who claim to have been discriminated against by their employers.

The facts of the case can be simply stated: Marlean Ames, who is heterosexual, alleges that she was first denied a promotion and later demoted because of her sexual orientation.

There’s been no trial. The case was dismissed because Ames is heterosexual — and must, therefore, jump through additional hoops that a minority plaintiff would not. In particular, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, she must show “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

Let’s be clear: It’s already the law that employers cannot discriminate against white or male or straight employees. The civil rights laws are read to protect everyone against particular forms of classification. The issue before the court now in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services is whether some plaintiffs should have an easier time proving their cases than others.

The question is somewhat technical, so let’s strip away the frills. In a 1973 decision called McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, the Supreme Court set forth the elements that a plaintiff must show to make a prima facie case of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Once the prima facie case has been made, the employer can still prevail if able to justify the challenged action on a permissible ground.) Later, when reverse discrimination lawsuits proliferated, some federal courts decided that majority plaintiffs (white or heterosexual, for example) had to jump through more procedural hoops than plaintiffs from minority groups. (As I’ve noted before, I am not a fan of the term “reverse discrimination”; but I use it nevertheless for the sake of clarity.)

That’s it. That’s what the case is about — whether a majority plaintiff should face additional obstacles before the employer has to produce a justification for hiring or promoting someone else. And if the oral arguments are any guide, the justices will answer with a resounding “no.”

When I was a much younger scholar, I took the position that civil rights laws (including the protections in the Constitution) were generally adopted not to establish high-sounding neutral principles but to protect a subject race against forms of oppression prevalent in the days of their passage. My point was not that civil rights laws offer no protection to groups who have not historically been oppressed but that the protection might plausibly be described as different in degree. That’s why, for example, I continue to believe that affirmative action programs should be permissible.

But that vision has been legally and perhaps culturally rejected. One has to be realistic. After all, the Biden administration filed an amicus brief on behalf of Marlean Ames. The centerpiece is quite consonant with the current cultural moment.

“Just as Title VII applies equally to all plaintiffs, the McDonnell Douglas framework’s evidentiary standards do not vary depending on a plaintiff ‘s race, sex (including sexual orientation), or other protected characteristics.”

No matter my views, I can hardly call this proposition unreasonable, and I’d be surprised if the Supreme Court held anything else. It’s true that a handful of federal courts have placed procedural obstacles in the path of the reverse-discrimination plaintiff that the employee alleging the usual kind need not meet. But the likelihood that most of the justices will agree that Ames should be held to a higher standard is arbitrarily close to zero.

The court might even be unanimous.

The oral argument in the Ames case hardly suggested the usual potential division in civil rights cases. Put aside the Republican-appointed majority. Justice Elena Kagan framed the issue as whether, to proceed with a pattern-or-practice suit, “a straight person has to show more than a gay person.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, far from rejecting the plaintiff’s claim, sought principally to clarify that clearing what’s known as “step 1” in the McDonnell Douglas approach is “a low bar.” And in a colloquy with Ohio Solicitor General T. Elliot Gaiser, who argued for Ames’ employer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that the facts, as stated, “certainly can give rise to an inference of discrimination.”

It’s true that anything can happen once the members of the court are behind closed doors, but not a single justice seemed to reject Ames’ argument.

Would a ruling for Ames open the floodgates for lawsuits by every white, male or heterosexual employee who’s denied a promotion? Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked that question of Xiao Wang, the University of Virginia law professor who represented Ames. Wang responded with a reminder of how difficult the Congress that first enacted Title VII a bit over 60 years ago made it for an employee to get a complaint into court. Among the procedural roadblocks is the requirement of first filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and working through that process. (Justice Neil Gorsuch wondered whether the process itself is too complex and whether, perhaps, the McDonnell Douglas test might be passé.)

What we should expect in May or June is a ruling, unanimous or nearly so, that since the protections of Title VII (and presumably other civil rights provisions) apply equally to everyone, the courts should not impose stricter requirements upon members of groups not historically subjected to discrimination. Thus, we will see the triumph of the view that civil rights laws don’t protect particular groups; rather, they protect everyone against particular forms of classification.

That’s not a bad thing in and of itself. I just hope it leaves room for the occasional tiny press of a thumb on the scales that the achievement of true democracy will sometimes demand.

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

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