Rehabilitate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act: Resuscitate the “Reasonable Factors Other than Age” Defense and the Disparate Impact Theory

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) promised to protect older workers from discriminatory exclusion from the workforce, but recent studies show that older workers are being cut from the workforce and are unable to find employment. In a 1995 article, I warned of the potential dangers of construing the ADEA to allow employment decisions based on age-correlated criteria. Most courts have failed to heed these warnings and now approve employer practices, such as terminating employees based on higher salaries and refusing to hire workers with too much experience. These practices may explain the difficulty older workers are having retaining current employment and obtaining new employment, which is exactly what the ADEA was designed to prevent.