Supreme Court to Hear Reverse Age Bias Case
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.