The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) is a federal law prohibiting employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of their age. Pursuant to the ADEA, most American employers with 20 or more employees are forbidden from discriminating against employees who are 40 years or older, based upon their age, in the following type of decisions.
- Hiring
- Firing
- Promotion
- Layoff
- Training
In addition to being protected by the ADEA, most employees may also seek relief from age discrimination in their place of employment under state law. Nearly all states provide workers protection from employment discrimination on the basis of age. These states generally include age as a protected category in their fair employment practices laws.
Age Requirements
Most of these states mirror the federal law's 40-year-old minimum age requirement, although several states allow employees who are 18 years of age or older to file age discrimination claims. Such statutes may allow workers to file claims of discrimination based upon a young age, as opposed solely to the typical age discrimination claim involving advanced age. Some fair employment practices statutes also prescribe a cutoff age of 70 for filing age discrimination claims, although the ADEA no longer has an age ceiling. For those states that provide no specific age parameters, courts have been inclined to interpret the statutes more broadly than the ADEA.
Minimum Number of Employees
Although the ADEA applies only to employers with at least 20 employees, most state age discrimination laws have a much lower threshold with respect to number of employees required for coverage. Several states' age discrimination provisions apply to employers with fewer than five employees.
Interpretation of State Statutes
State courts often look to federal ADEA decisions to interpret the age provisions in their fair employment practices laws. Most state courts, for example, have adopted the federal courts' burden of proof and shifting of proof standards developed through years of employment discrimination litigation. Thus, under state law, plaintiffs generally have the same requirements to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination as they would under federal law.
Although federal ADEA law is not controlling in state law cases, it is viewed very persuasively by state courts interpreting state fair employment practices laws. Copyright 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. |