High court ruling seen favoring older workers
Deliberate bias not needed to win age-discrimination suits
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:54 a.m. ET March 30, 2005
WASHINGTON - 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.
The unanimous ruling sides with older police officers in saying they do not
have to prove that the city of Jackson, Miss., deliberately tried to
discriminate against them, just show that the policies disproportionately
harmed them. Nevertheless, the high court dismissed the suit, saying
officers did not demonstrate that.
The ruling means that workers age 40 and over — about half the nation’s
work
force — now have less of a burden to raise their claim in court when
suing
under federal law.
The Supreme Court already has said the so-called disparate impact claims are
allowed under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans
discrimination based on sex, religion or race. On Wednesday, justices said
it should be no different for age discrimination, although it ruled the
scope of liability is narrower. “Congress’ decision to limit the
coverage” of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ... “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, the court’s oldest justice, wrote for the
majority.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist did not participate in the decision,
which was heard in November when he was being treated to thyroid cancer.
At issue was workplace polices that appear neutral but actually
disproportionately hurt older workers. 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.”
But 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; but at the same time, it permits 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.
AT&T sued over pension plan
Workers say changes rushed through
By Brian Tumulty, Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON - The legal assault against employers that have converted
their traditional pension plans to cash balance plans is taking a new
twist in a federal class-action lawsuit involving 45,600 midlevel managers
at AT&T Corp.
In court papers filed earlier this month, employees say AT&T executives
rushed to make pension plan changes Jan. 1, 1998, without fully informing
their board of directors.
And they waited almost three years after the pension changes took
effect to disclose them in a public document dated October 2000 that
should have been filed with federal agencies before the revisions took
effect.
"They didn't actually have the amendments in place before they
started implementing these rules," said Stephen Bruce, who represents
AT&T middle managers in the federal lawsuit. "The employees
couldn't check things before the fact and the board (of directors)
wasn't really told."
A federal judge handling the case has not ruled on the allegation,
which is based on internal AT&T documents the company was forced
to turn over to attorneys representing the employees.
Jane Banfield, a former sales executive at AT&T's Florham Park
office who left the company in 2002 with 22 years of service, said
the company has never admitted to employees that the changes resulted
in a reduction in future retirement benefits.
"The thing that struck me the most is that the board really didn't
know what was happening to their employees and they didn't tell us," Banfield
said. "If you worked for the company, you thought Ma Bell would
never do anything to intentionally hurt you."
One court exhibit shows that the AT&T board of directors' decision
to change the traditional pension plan in April 1997 was stamped as
confidential instead of being filed with federal agencies.
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