A newly filed lawsuit accuses pharmaceutical behemoth Lilly USA, LLC, of violating federal law banning age bias by making a conscious effort to reduce the number of older people it employed as pharmaceutical sales representatives.
The suit’s allegations raise important questions for HR pros about when – if ever – it is appropriate to make hiring and other employment decisions based on age.
The short answer: It can be OK to make decisions based on age in some situations, as explained below. But employers who do so have the burden of showing that an age limitation is justified, and it is critically important to tread very carefully in this area.
The new suit says Lilly, which is based in Indianapolis, engaged in unlawful age discrimination on a nationwide scale. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed the suit in an Indiana federal district court, alleges that at a leadership town hall in 2017, the company’s senior vice president for human resources and diversity recognized that its workforce was composed of older workers. According to the suit, the senior vice president further announced a company goal of adding more millennials to the workforce.
The company then executed its plan by changing its hiring preferences and intentionally favoring younger candidates for sales representative positions.
That alleged conduct, if proven, violates the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which protects applicants and employees...
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