The Supreme Court will review a case in which officers sued the city of Jackson, Mississippi over a pay plan that they claimed was unfair to employees over age 40. The 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects people over the age of forty from age bias at work. The Supreme Court will consider whether the law permits lawsuits on the grounds that an employer's policy has a disproportionate impact on older workers. If the Court finds in favor of the officers, older workers would be given rights similar to minorities who are allowed to claim disproportionate impact under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on a worker's sex, religion or race.
See "Court to Examine Age Bias in Workplace", The New York Times, March 28, 2004