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After 40 Years, Age Discrimination Still Gets Second-Class Treatment

The New York Times, 11/6/09

Abstract:

After working for a vending machine company for more than 20 years, James O’Connor was replaced with someone younger. He sued. He testified that his boss had disparaged older workers, including saying — two weeks before he was fired — “O’Connor, you are too damn old for this kind of work.” A federal court was unmoved, ruling in 1995 that he had not connected the bigoted comments to his firing.

When two older supervisors at a light bulb company were fired and sued, their claim of age discrimination was denied. A federal appeals court ruled in 1994 that the statement by the company’s vice president that “there comes a time when we have to make way for younger people” was “irrelevant.” It was simply a “fact of life,” the court said, with “no disparaging undertones.”

Age discrimination is illegal. But when compared with discrimination against racial minorities and women, it is a second-class civil rights issue. The Supreme Court drove its inferiority home again in June of this year, ruling that older workers must show that age was the decisive factor in their firing — not merely a contributing factor, which can be enough for a race or sex claim.

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