Companies face growing risks for age-bias lawsuits in their pursuit of younger hires, in no small part due to language they use in recruitment that plaintiffs can construe as discriminatory even when it’s “coded.”
The EEOC brought the latest major lawsuit along these lines last week, accusing Lilly USA of violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act after the biopharma giant’s executives allegedly pledged to add more “early career” professionals to the company to the detriment of older workers.
Age bias appears to be a ripe area for claims from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and private plaintiffs, with US workers retiring later than they once did. Nearly 80% of older workers say they’ve seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, according to a 2021 survey by AARP.
Though age discrimination claims can be hard to prove, statements from company leadership like those allegedly made in the Lilly USA case are often what get companies in trouble.
Workers at International Business Machines Corp. settled a similar age-bias lawsuit in August that had revealed emails from executives calling older workers“Dinobabies” who should be made an “extinct species.”
“That’s the kind of fact pattern we often see in these cases,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based attorney who represents the IBM workers in several age-discrimination suits. “...
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