News of the Day: Age bias should be bipartisan concern

Jack Gross never meant to be the face of civil rights legislation, but that was before he was demoted simply because of his age.

[Mr. Gross] left [Farm Bureau] for a while before coming back and working his way up to claims administration vice president. He was getting regular raises and great job reviews. He was highly valued.

Then one day in 2003, Gross said he and just about every other 50-or-older supervisor or higher-level worker in the claims department - and nobody younger than 50 - was demoted. It was a kick in the gut.

"For years, I couldn't have been more loyal," he said. "I was always proud to say I worked for the Farm Bureau."

He had no idea he'd become the invisible man. "I went from having a great job to, literally, not doing much of anything."

This year, he's been doing mostly clerical work, "taking numbers from one report and posting them onto another."

Mr. Gross sued his employer for age discrimination and won $47,000 in damages. The award was appealed and the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Mr. Gross had to show that age had to be the deciding factor, rather than a motivating factor. That is much is harder to prove.

In today's New York Times editorial, Preventing Age Discrimination, the editorial board highlights the efforts by Senator Harkin and Rep. Miller to overturn this ruling by the Supreme Court and to clarify that all workers regardless of age, race, sex, national origin or religion shall not be discriminated against.

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative George Miller of California, the Democratic chairmen of two powerful committees, recently introduced bills to reverse the court’s age ruling. They would make the standard for proving age discrimination equivalent to the standard for proving discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.

When older workers lose their jobs, according to the advocacy group AARP, it takes them longer than other workers to get new ones. Age-discrimination complaints have been rising. In 2008, the number of age cases filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was up 29 percent from the year earlier.

Congress made clear four decades ago that it wants to protect older workers from discrimination, but the Supreme Court has tried to interfere with that effort. It is up to Congress to put the teeth back into the law.

Watch Mr. Gross and Chairman Miller at the press conference accompanying the introduction of the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act.

Learn more about the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act.