Don’t Care About Gun Control, Women’s Rights or Climate Change?
Here’s a Supreme Court ruling about age discrimination that applies to you and your future, whether you like it or not!
You carry a gun, so what’s the big deal? You don’t have to worry about getting raped or having an abortion, so why care? You think climate change is, at best, an exaggeration; it’s the price of progress and soon we’ll colonize space. So why limit industry’s ability to poison the environment?
Let’s say you are that person. Let’s say you’re not angry and aching when you contemplate your children’s and grandchildren’s future. Let’s say you’re happy with the Supreme Court justices who are rolling back the rights of people who don’t think like you. You probably see gay marriage as an affront to the sacred covenant of marriage, so why not abolish that, as well? Maybe you’d like to get rid of Loving v. Virginia, too?
Well, here’s a story that even you might care about — or at least you should:
Age Discrimination is Okay by SCOTUS
Gross v. FBL Financial Group, the case in which the 2009 Supreme Court found in favor of the company, not the 54-year-old employee who claimed he was treated unfairly after a company merger. Will Harrison notes in a 2021 piece that the decision…
…eviscerated age discrimination protections in employment and made it easier for employers to fire or demote an employee because of their age. Gross and subsequent cases also show the tangible effects that conservative judicial rulings have on the rights of everyday Americans.
Thirteen years ago, the court was split 5–4, with the conservative judges arguing that age discrimination should have a higher burden than race and sex discrimination. In other words, be careful about denying a job to a women or person of color, but the old folks…no problem.
The 2009 ruling chipped away at the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which was designed to protect workers and job applicants 40 and older from unfair treatment. (Pause here to reflect: this particular definition of “old” is forty!)
The 2009 decision was not under the radar and, according to Harrison, led to “widespread outcry.”
Law Professor Michael Foreman wrote that the decision “immediately impacted older workers, relegating them to second-class status among victims of discrimination . . . .” A bipartisan group of Senators introduced legislation to correct the Supreme Court’s decision and clarify that age discrimination should be decided under a less burdensome standard. Lawmakers had just taken similar action by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to correct a different Supreme Court decision that had made it harder to sue over discriminatory wages.
Apparently, the outcry was neither widespread nor loud enough.
The Gross decision, Harrison notes, has since been used by lower courts to reject age-discrimination cases.
One of those cases was recently decided by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2019, all four of President Trump’s appointees to the Seventh Circuit (covering Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin), including future Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, cast the deciding votes in a case that further limited protections for older Americans in the workplace.
Sound familiar? Just substitute the words older Americans workers with other recently attacked groups and causes — and, may the Force be with us — more to come.
So Why Should You Care?
- It’s wrong. Think about the implication of making the rights of an older person less important than the rights of those who are of a particular race or gender or religious group. Age is a class that eventually everyone joins. It’s the great equalizer. And yet it is treated like a step-child among the marginalized. We’ll get to you later.
- You’re “it.” Whether you like it or not, you — yes, I’m talking to you young whippersnappers, too — will someday become an “older American.” Someday, you’ll feel the slings and arrows of ageism aimed at you. In the eyes of current law, old happens when you’re forty. That is, if you’re lucky enough to become old and discover it’s a lot different from what you imagined.
- One-dimensional ideologies offer no protection. Regardless of where you get your news, who you know, or even how brilliant you are, if you’re old, you’re out. If your boss decides to put you out to pasture, or relegate you to a lesser position, you’re out of luck. And it won’t matter who you voted for. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to watch another channel, open your mind and admit that we’re in troubling, complex times not given to easy answers.
So if you’re sitting around with friends celebrating the recent Supreme Court decisions that have nothing to do with you…know that soon they’re coming for you, too!
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