March 31, 2005

Supreme Court expands age bias protections
Posted by deisenhart@bostonworks.com">Douglas Eisenhart at 10:30 AM -

A ruling from the US Supreme Court yesterday expanded protection for older workers:

The Supreme Court made it easier to sue for age discrimination on the job yesterday, ruling that older workers may take their employers to federal court even in cases where the alleged adverse impact on them was not intentional.
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Advocates for the elderly said the court's ruling means employers will have to take greater care to show that policies such as pay-scale adjustments or layoffs do not unreasonably affect older members of their workforces.

The ruling is a clarification of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which defines older workers as those over the age of 40.

So employers need to be on their toes more than ever. Any behavior which could be construed as age discriminatory, intentional or not, is open to question.

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