Thirty-six years after Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to protect workers over forty against age-discrimination on the job, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a reverse age-discrimination case for the first time yesterday. Brought by a group of workers between the ages of forty and forty-nine, the suit alleges that their employer General Dynamics discriminated against them by restricting eligibility for full retirement health benefits to workers over fifty. Although the plaintiffs won a 2-1 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals last year, no other court has upheld a reverse discrimination claim brought under the ADEA and the implications the suit could have for health care and pension plans are enormous.
See DAVID G. SAVAGE, Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2003