Today, the Supreme Court made it easier for white people to claim “reverse discrimination” any time an employer hires or promotes anybody who is not a heterosexual white person. And the court did so unanimously. And the person who wrote the unanimous opinion for the court was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I will now walk into the ocean.

What makes the whole situation even more galling to me is that it’s probably the correct decision. It’s right in terms of the law—even though the underlying facts in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services are a case study in white fragility in the modern age.

The plaintiff in this case is Marlean Ames, a straight white woman who worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services. Ames applied for a promotion, but didn’t get it. Instead, the promotion went to a man, and that man happened to be gay. That’s all I know about him from the court record, but I promise you that if the man happened to be a heterosexual white guy, this never would have reached the Supreme Court.

Ames claimed that hiring a gay man over her was an instance of “reverse” discrimination. She argued that the government (and remember we’re talking about the government of the state of JD Vance’s Ohio here) discriminated against her because she is straight. She filed a lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination.

Ames had every right to sue. Anybody, regardless of their race, gender, or sexual orientation can sue under the Civil Rights Act, because anybody can be discriminated against in certain circumstances.

Ohio, however, is still governed by a rather archaic rule regarding workplace discrimination lawsuits. It requires people who are in the “majority” group (white people generally, or straight people in this case) to show that there are “background circumstances” at their place of work that suggest a pattern of discrimination against them. It places a “heightened burden” of evidence on members of the majority when they bring discrimination suits.

I think the rule makes sense. No matter what Stephen Miller or Chris Rufo tell you, white people have not been historically discriminated against in this country, and they are not now. Neither are straight people. It’s not too much to ask people in the majority to meet a heightened evidentiary standard before claiming that, all of a sudden, everybody hates them. They still can bring a claim, and win, but they should be forced to show something more than “OMG, they hired a gay man, a gay man, can you believe it? I am a victim of the gay agenda.”

Of course, I’m not white, and I’m not homophobic. Asking straight white people to acknowledge that they’ve had every advantage this world has to offer is not something we are allowed to do in this country. Instead, we live in a world where every time a white person doesn’t get something they think they’re entitled to, we’re supposed to assume they’ve been treated unfairly.

I did not expect the Supreme Court to buck the prevailing trend in this case. I predicted that this case would come down 9–0 in favor of Ames, as it has. At oral arguments, the conservatives were predictably incensed at the notion that white people should have to meet a heightened standard because of their privilege and power in this society, while the liberals were suspiciously silent.

In her unanimous opinion for the court, Justice Jackson analyzed the case in a conservative, textualist manner. She said (correctly) that Title VII makes no mention of special burdens or heightened standards based on one’s classification as a “majority” person. Congress could have written Title VII to include a heightened burden for white folks, but it didn’t. It could have amended Title VII to include an additional burden if it felt “reverse” discrimination claims were getting out of hand, but it hasn’t.