What happened
The Supreme Court yesterday made it easier to bring "reverse discrimination" workplace lawsuits, ruling unanimously in favor of a white woman in Ohio who claimed she lost two promotions to less-qualified gay employees. The majority opinion, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act leaves "no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs" in discrimination suits.

Who said what
The ruling affects 20 states and the District of Columbia, where, "until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law," The Associated Press said.

The plaintiff, Marlean Ames (pictured above), had an "unusual set of allies in the case," drawing support from both the Biden administration and Stephen Miller's far-right America First Legal organization, The Washington Post said. Justice Clarence Thomas quoted the America First brief in his concurring opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, to assert that U.S. employers "have long been 'obsessed'" with DEI and "affirmative action."

What next?
Ames will now get a second chance to prove her discrimination claims in federal court. The broader effect of yesterday's ruling, The New York Times said, is putting "further pressure on employers and others to eliminate affirmative action and other initiatives that seek to provide opportunities to members of historically disadvantaged groups."

What happened
The most effective way of reducing the widespread poaching of rhinoceroses is cutting off their horns, conservationists and researchers reported yesterday in the journal Science. The study, covering seven years at 11 nature reserves in Southern Africa, found that dehorning reduced rhino poaching by 78% while other, more expensive efforts had no measurable impact. 

Who said what
Rhino horns fetch tens of thousands of dollars in Asia, where they are "falsely believed to be effective at treating fevers, pain and a low sex drive in traditional medicine," said The Guardian. Dehorning rhinos — sedating the animals and cutting off their keratin horns with a chainsaw — is believed to be painless and has been used to combat poaching in Africa for decades. But until this study, there wasn't much hard data on whether it works. 

Some previous studies have found that dehorning makes critically endangered black rhinos more timid and reduces their home range, but it doesn't have an adverse effect on rhino breeding or mortality rates. "It is a big part of what a rhino is, having a horn," Tim Kuiper, a biodiversity scientist at South Africa's Nelson Mandela University who led the new study, said to The Associated Press. "So having to remove it is kind of a necessary evil, if I can put it that way. But it's very effective. There's no doubt it saved hundreds of rhinos' lives."

What next?
Some poachers still kill rhinos for stubs or partially regrown horns, and "dehorning is not a long-term solution" or a "silver bullet," Kuiper said. But "it's a small thing that can be done to hopefully buy time for the broader work that needs to happen."