WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Supreme Court made it easier Wednesday for any worker over 40 to allege age discrimination, ruling that employers can be held liable even if they never intended any harm.
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The ruling by the Court was brought about by a Jackson, Miss., case in which 30 older police officers sued the Jackson Police Department over pay scale adjustments that gave larger raises to workers under age 40. While the Supreme Court unanimously threw out the Mississippi suit saying the officers did not demonstrate that the police department’s policies were disproportionately harmful to older workers, the Court did rule on “disparate impact claims.”
In a 5 to 3 vote, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist absent during thyroid cancer treatment, the Court ruled that in some cases workers over age 40 do not need to show deliberate bias to win age-discrimination suits. The Court had already said that so-called disparate imact claims are allowed under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on sex, race or religion. On Wednesday, the justices said it should be no different for age discrimination, although it ruled the scope of liability is narrower.
“Congress’s decision to limit the coverage” of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)… “is consistent with the fact that age, unlike race or other classifications protected by Title VII, not uncommonly has relevance to an individual’s capacity to engage in certain types of employment,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The ruling means that workers age 40 and over – about half of the nation’s workforce – now have less of a burden to raise their claim in court when suing under federal law.
Advocates for the aging say few employers would ever be up front about intentionally favoring younger workers, making age bias claims hard to win absent the rare “smoking gun.” However, employers say allowing disparate impact claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act would hinder their ability to make necessary decisions based on age-neutral factors, such as training or performance, even if the impact happens to be greater on older workers.
The ruling in some ways strikes a compromise between the two.
On the one hand, it allows older workers to make a disparate impact claim under the ADEA regardless of intent, while simultaneously permitting an employer to cite “reasonable” factors, such as cost-cutting, to justify a practice that penalizes older workers so it prevails at trial.
Because older workers tend to be long-time employees with higher pay, a business could not cut expenses without violating the law even if no ill intent was involved, Stevens wrote in the opinion.
Bloomberg's Greg Stohr contributed to this report.