Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court makes age-bias suits harder to win
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With workplace age-discrimination claims rising rapidly, the Supreme Court made it much harder Thursday for older workers to win in court.
The Los Angeles Times reports today on the Supreme Court's decision in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., which will make it very difficult for older workers to prove age discrimination claims:
With workplace age-discrimination claims rising rapidly, the Supreme Court made it much harder Thursday for older workers to win in court.
The 5-4 decision reversed a long-standing rule. Many federal appellate courts had decided that if a worker could show age was one of the factors in a layoff or demotion, then the employer was required to prove it had a legitimate reason for its action apart from age.
The court's conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, threw out this two-step approach. Instead, the court said, workers bear the full burden of proving that age was the deciding factor in their dismissal or demotion.
Because workers claiming such discrimination almost certainly will not be present while their employers discuss laying them off or demoting them, analysts said, it will be extremely difficult to obtain hard evidence that age was the key factor.
NSCLC and several other advocacy groups have criticized the decision.
Paul Nathanson, NSCLC Executive Director, said, “This decision presents many older workers with a cruel double-whammy – forced to work longer than they once anticipated by the shrinkage of their retirement assets, they now have to face the threat, uncertainty, and too often the reality of workplace age discrimination without the legal protection on which they have relied since Congress passed the ADEA in 1967.”
Read the full Los Angeles Times article>>
Read NSCLC's Statement about the case>>
