General Discussion

As a textual matter, Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. Rather, the provision makes it unlawful “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(a)(1). The “law’s focus on individuals rather than groups [is] anything but academic.” . . . By establishing the same protections for every “individual”—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group—Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.

The “background circumstances” rule disregards this admonition by uniformly subjecting all majority-group plaintiffs to the same, highly specific evidentiary standard in every case. As the Sixth Circuit observed, the rule effectively requires majority-group plaintiffs (and only majority group plaintiffs) to produce certain types of evidence—such as statistical proof or information about the relevant decisionmaker’s protected traits—that would not otherwise be required to make out a prima facie case. This Court has long rejected such “inflexible formulation[s]” of the prima facie standard in disparate-treatment cases.