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PrintHigh Court Rejects Reverse-Discrimination Claim
By John Scorza, CCH Washington Staff Writer
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) does not prohibit an employer from providing better benefits to older workers than to younger ones, even when the younger workers are within the class of employees protected under the act, the Supreme Court ruled on February 24, 2004.
The case arose when General Dynamics and the United Auto Workers negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement to provide retiree health benefits to workers who retired after 30 years on the job and who were 50 years of age and older. A group of workers who were 40 years of age and older but not yet 50 sued. They claimed the agreement was a violation of the ADEA, which prohibits companies from discriminating against workers who are 40 and over, except in certain instances.
In ruling against the younger workers, the Supreme Court concluded that age discrimination "is naturally understood to refer to discrimination against the older." Congress wrote the ADEA, the court said, with the understanding that age discrimination involves bias against older workers. As a result, the statute leaves the complaints of the relatively young "outside the statutory concern."
The court, in its opinion on General Dynamics Land Systems Inc. v. Cline, dismissed a regulation from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that appeared to support the younger workers who brought the suit. The regulation said in effect that an employer cannot discriminate based on age in employment decisions involving two members of a protected class, one who is younger and one who is older. The court concluded that the EEOC "is clearly wrong."
"We see the text, structure, purpose, and history of the ADEA, along with its relationship to other federal statutes, as showing that the statute does not mean to stop an employer from favoring an older employee over a younger one," the court ruled.
In a dissenting opinion Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, "The plain language of the ADEA clearly allows for suits brought by the relatively young when discriminated against in favor of the relatively old." Thomas, a former chairman of the EEOC, said the plain language of the statute, the relevant legislative history and the EEOC's interpretation of the ADEA all support his conclusion. He criticized the majority for creating a "'social history' analysis" to interpreting antidiscrimination statutes.
Justice David H. Souter wrote the majority opinion, in which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist joined, along with Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven G. Breyer. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy signed on to Thomas's dissent. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate dissenting opinion.
