The other big news (and thankfully good news) from yesterday
James Hickman

It turns out that “Liberty and Justice for all” might just still exist in the Land of the Free.

While most of the news yesterday was focused on the nuclear Twitter war between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in favor of common sense.

The story began in 2019, when Marlean Ames—a heterosexual woman who had been working at the Ohio Department of Youth Services since 2004—applied for a newly created management position.

She was passed over, and the role went instead to a lesbian woman. Fine, no big deal.

But not long after, Ames was removed from her role as a program administrator—effectively demoted back to the secretarial position she had held 15 years earlier.

Her higher-ups at the agency (including the new lesbian supervisor) hired a gay man to fill Ames’s old position; meanwhile Ames had to take a huge pay cut.

Over time, Ames began to notice a pattern: the agency’s hiring decisions increasingly seemed to favor LGBT candidates over heterosexual candidates.

Eventually she filed a lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, alleging she was denied a promotion and subsequently demoted because of her sexual orientation—specifically, for being heterosexual.

Now, the core issue here isn’t even whether Ames was actually discriminated against. Maybe she was terrible at her job. Maybe the successful job candidates really were the most qualified, and it just happened that they were gay.

But that’s not the point.

What truly matters is that both the federal district court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to let Ames even make her case. Because Ames is heterosexual, i.e. a “majority”, both courts summarily dismissed her case.

In other words, she wasn’t allowed to have her day in court. Crazy.

(It’s noteworthy that the district court judge who first threw out her case was inducted into The Ohio State University Office of Diversity and Inclusion Hall of Fame…)

The Supreme Court yesterday overturned the lower courts… and the justices were unanimous in their ruling.

Even more ironic was that the person who wrote the Court’s opinion was none other than Ketanji Brown Jackson—who was nominated by Joe Biden because she is a black woman.

But even Jackson thinks that reverse-discrimination is absurd. She wrote:

“Ames was qualified, had been denied a promotion in favor of a gay candidate, and was later demoted in favor of another gay candidate,” and yet the lower courts refused to allow her lawsuit to proceed “because of her sexual orientation”.

In terms of protecting people from discrimination, this “misses the mark by a mile.”

In a separate, concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas eviscerated the lower courts.

He pointed out the obvious: the Civil Rights Act is supposed to protect “any individual” from discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination, whether it’s against gay or straight, white or non-white. Thomas argues that holding certain groups to different standards is, by definition, discrimination.

He also questions the entire premise of defining “majority” and “minority” groups.

Women, for instance, are a very slight majority nationwide. Does that make men a minority? By what percentage must a group be outnumbered to be considered a minority?

Women are also dominant in fields like teaching and nursing, but a tiny fraction of truck drivers. So should male schoolteachers AND female truckers both receive special protections? If so, shouldn’t those special protections be the same?

He even cited a 2024 Census report showing that black people make up the majority of the labor force in Detroit. So should white workers people be given special treatment in discrimination lawsuits there?

This sort of logic “has befuddled courts” for decades, Justice Thomas wrote, and the court’s decision yesterday eliminates “the need for [judges] to engage in the sordid business of divvying us up by race or any other protected trait.”

Neil Gorsuch, the Court’s most libertarian justice, added, “attempts to divide us all up into a handful of groups have become only more incoherent with time.”

We couldn’t agree more.

America is on the ropes. The national debt is skyrocketing, foreign investors are abandoning the dollar, and the economy has reached a tipping point. Not to mention two of the most powerful guys in the world are at each others’ throats.

The last thing America needs is more useless division.

We wanted to put this out today because, in light of the ongoing, embarrassing, and distracting feud between Elon and Trump, it’s heartening to see that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of common sense.

Simon Black, as James Hickman is more commonly known, is the Founder of Sovereign Man. 

He is an international investor, entrepreneur, and a free man. His daily e-letter, Sovereign Letters, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity.

Hickman is a lifelong entrepreneur and investor that’s traveled to more than 120 countries on all seven continents. In addition, he’s started, invested in, or acquired businesses all over the world. 

He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the US Army as an intelligence officer during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Hickman founded a South America-based agriculture company that has become one of the leading producers in its industry. A few years ago, he acquired a prominent retail brand in Australia, purchasing the business from the former 1980s era rock star who founded it. 

His other business ventures have included starting a boutique, private investment bank that boasts some of the highest levels of liquidity and solvency in the world, and investing in companies from Colombia to Uzbekistan. He also serves on numerous Boards of Directors, and previously served as Chairman of company listed on a major stock exchange. 

Writing under the pen name Simon Black, he has also written extensively on business incorporation and tax residency establishment in Puerto Rico, and is a proponent of investing in gold and silver as a hedge against inflation.

He is a also a prolific writer on topics ranging from second residency and citizenship, Golden Visas and portfolio diversification, to estate and retirement planning, asset protection, tax optimization and US Opportunity Zones.

 

www.schiffsovereign.com