Age discrimination: What should the Supreme Court do?

The current Supreme Court in a group photo.

The Associated Press

The high court will weigh in on age discrimination.

Featured Topic | Posted 28 weeks 6 days ago

Age discrimination: What should the Supreme Court do?

The Supreme Court, whose youngest member is 53 and oldest member is 87, has five age discrimination cases on the docket this term. While the sheer number of cases probably can be explained away as coincidence, the topic is one of growing importance as more people work longer because of economic necessity or by choice. The court is scheduled to hear arguments in one of the cases, Gomez-Perez v. Potter.

Is the federal law against age discrimination useful or even necessary? Do older workers need more legal protections in the workplace? Or should employers have more flexibility with hiring and firing?

Ben likes: Equal rights nonsense

Roger Clegg/The Wall Street Journal

The threat of such lawsuits not only decreases productivity by pressuring private (and public) entities to abandon perfectly legitimate selection criteria, but also encourages the use of surreptitious quotas. Both of these outcomes, needless to say, are perfectly fine with the civil rights lobby and its lawyers.

Joel likes: The Freedmen's remedy

Emily Bazleton/Slate

In last year's Supreme Court sleeper case, a woman named Lily Ledbetter lost her right to sue because she didn't go to court the first time her paycheck was docked because of sex discrimination, as opposed to when she later realized she was being shortchanged. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a new employment discrimination case that could also shake up the law of the land and leave the court's liberal dissenters apoplectic. This one may not only prune back employees' rights under the particular statute at issue, but also help the Supreme Court's conservatives rein in discrimination suits more generally.