March 30, 2005 |
Posted By Diane Pfadenhauer |
Finally... the Supreme Court Recognizes Disparate Impact Theory in Age Discrimination Cases
For what seems like decades the Supreme Court has dodged the question of whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act recognizes discrimination cases brought under a disparate impact theory. Unfortunately, I've been a tad busy the last few days with little time to blog, and several of my fellow bloggers have beaten me to the punch on this one. Specifically,
- Ross Runkel in LawMemo has a good summary of the law and the decision,
- Janell Grenier in Benefits Blog as a link to the actual decision,
In addition, almost every newspaper has a story on it - USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc. I've been following this issue for years and until today, the question always lingered - did the ADEA only apply to disparate treatment discrimination not disparate impact discrimination? Now we know the answer is NO.