Posted on 03/30/2005 10:42:10 AM PST by Crackingham
Workers 40 or older can sue their employers for practices that favor younger workers even if there was no intentional bias, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an important age discrimination case.
The decision upheld the reach of the 1967 federal law that bars discrimination based on age and covers an estimated 75 million workers 40 or older, who account for about half the U.S. civilian labor force.
By a 5-3 vote, the justices ruled the law did cover policies that have a "disparate impact" on older workers, even if the employer was not motivated by intentional discrimination.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the main opinion that a federal appeals court was wrong to hold that such claims never could be brought under the law.
Business groups had warned they could face expensive lawsuits in arguing for a narrow interpretation of the age bias law while AARP, the advocacy group for those 50 or older, had supported allowing workers to sue for such claims.
"This is a major boost for the fight to eliminate age discrimination in the workplace," said Laurie McCann, a senior attorney for AARP, in calling the high court's decision "enormously significant."
Use it or lose it at the end of the year.
Don't get sick in January, eh?
I was j/k. I thought it was a funny explanation for his vote in support of this lawsuit.
It's called disparate impact, and has been used for years to prove discrimination with regard to sex and race - this just rightly expands it to age. Let me give you an (admittedly out-there) example. A hotel owner is tired of long hair clogging up his maid's vacuums, so he decides to no longer rent rooms to people with long hair. However, women are much more likely to have long hair than men. Even though he is not intending to, the hotel owner is discriminating against women.
Did they change the law? I know that was what was in the original bill. The best part of that would be the advantage to young people.
LOL :D
The old (and still around) Flexible Spending Accounts are use it or lose it, the new Medical Savings Accounts (which I think are tied to high deductible health insurance policies) are not "use it or lose it".
Aha. That would explain it. The FSAs never made any sense to me with their balances evaporating at the end of the year. MSAs make much more sense from this employee's perspective.
This employee never cared for the FSA's either. I'd like to go the MSA route though.
Why should they be required to do that?
The fact of the matter is that all employers discriminate on the basis of their standards for qualification for the job. Do they post all of those so that you can decide if they are "fair". No they don't. And....they are not fair. The discriminate in favor of those that have better education and against those who don't. They discriminate in favor of those that have experience and against those who don't. They discriminate mostly in favor of who will deliver the most bang (do the best job) for the buck (work for the lowest wage.)
Life isn't particularly fair. But it is great fun.
So if an 80 year old woman applied to be a stripper, she could sue if not given the job?
So what? Americans can sue anyone for any reason. As for the likelyhood of their success on the merits, that's another story.
If they are going to discriminate against someone because of their sex, race, or religion. They should be required to divuldge it right on their application, or better yet post it on the front door so other that people won't waste their time applying.
Your policy of overt discrimination is patently dishonest. If it's going to be overt then make it overt. IE. Tell people your not willing to hire Jews, Catholics, women or blacks, for example. You favor a policy by which an employer can hide his or her odious bigotry and ostensibly appear to be an Equal Opportunity employer, because it would cost them customers, while wasting everyone's time in the process.
Furthermore, your advocate allowing discrimination for any reason then defend your point by using educational qualifications as an example, instead of race, sex, religion, or age, attributes that obviously cannot be changed.
I actually don't see anything wrong with someone deciding he or she will only hire Italians to work in their Italian restaurant. That's discrimination. So what? What about only hiring Jews as waitresses in my Deli. If that's what I want to do. Why not. And I don't need to post it for the world to see. If the world wants me to post it then they can tell me so or stop coming to my Deli if they don't like the waitresses. That's fine. The Government telling me to do so is not fine.
I repeat: the government has no role in deciding who or why employers hire or fire.
I agree with you.
I can identify, since we were born the the same year. Enjoy it! Over the hill are senior discounts and AARP junk mail! And soon you'll be able to sue just like a senior!
Good News! My husband was let go from Dell Computer after 16 yrs because "he couldn't take us to the next level." Translated to he made too much money and they hired a young Indian in his place that could barely speak English. My husband was 57 yrs old and had never even had a bad report. You could begin to see them start to build their case 6 months before when suddenly he could do nothing right. To the day they walked him out the door other departments at dell wanted to hire him. They even made him sign a paper that he could never work for Dell again or any of it's company's. He had to sign that he would never sue them and they would give him his two months severance package. We had to start paying $800.00 a month for our insurance and he had people calling 20 times a day for interviews but as soon as they found out his age they didn't call again. All the people let go at Dell around the same time were all over 50. Believe me your time will come and it is not pretty and believe me it is age discrimination.
How does it favor one group or the other to say you can't dicriminate in hiring based on race, sex, or religion?
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