Supreme Court Raises the Bar for Age-Discrimination Lawsuits

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, workers who sue their employers for age discrimination must prove that their age was not just a motivating factor in the discrimination, but was in fact the decisive factor for the negative job action.

The nation’s highest court, in a sharply divided 5-4 ruling issued Thursday, held that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act requires the stricter proof of workplace discrimination in order for plaintiffs to prevail in court. For now, workers who allege that their age and other factors contributed to motivate their employer’s discrimination will be out of luck.

Ruling Hinges on Two Words

The court based its ruling in large part on the use of the words “because of” in the federal age-discrimination law. The law states that it bars discrimination “because of” a worker’s age, so the court majority held that those two words require the worker to prove that age, and no other factor, caused the employer to act in a discriminatory way.

“To establish a disparate treatment claim under the plain language of the ADEA, therefore, a plaintiff must prove that age was the ‘but-for’ cause of the employer’s adverse decision,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito Jr.

‘Surprising’ Ruling Decried by Critics

Critics of the ruling were swift in accusing the Supreme Court of misinterpreting the intent of the federal law and taking away the legal rights of workers.

“In the Supreme Court’s decision (on June 18), five justices acted to disregard precedent and ignore the plain reading and common understanding of the statute that Congress passed to protect Americans from discrimination based on their age,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “It is even more troubling that these five justices decided to go further than the question presented to the Court.”

Some legal experts were “surprised” by the court’s ruling on the ADEA because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allows mixed-motive cases to go forward, and in the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that other key precedents from Title VII cases also applied to the ADEA.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who dissented in the court ruling, wrote that in his opinion, the court had overstepped its legal boundaries.

“I disagree not only with the Court’s interpretation of the statute, but also with its decision to engage in unnecessary lawmaking,” Stevens wrote.

Gross v. FBL Financial Services

The landmark court ruling came in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, a case the high court agreed to hear in order to decide whether a plaintiff alleging age-based bias must present direct evidence of age discrimination in a mixed-motives case in order to shift the burden of persuasion to the employer, who must then prove that it would have taken the same action for a reason other than the worker’s age.

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