Court Support

A recent Supreme Court ruling will allow a group of disgruntled Federal Aviation Administration employees to continue with their administrative complaint against the agency for age discrimination.

In fact, the decision might lower the burden of proof that the employees need to show in order to prove their case against the FAA.

On March 30, the Supreme Court, in a suit involving workers in Jackson, Miss., ruled that workers over 40 do not need to show proof of discriminatory intent when they bring an age discrimination complaint or lawsuit under the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In the FAA complaint, a group of more than 800 employees claim that the agency's pay banding policies have unjustly frozen the salaries of older employees, costing them thousands of dollars in compensation, retirement benefits and locality pay increases.

On March 23, the group officially filed their complaint against the FAA. Under the agency's pay-for-performance system, the employees have reached the top of their pay bands and cannot receive base salary increases, but are eligible for annual lump sum awards based on good performance. At the same time, thousands of other FAA employees are not affected by the salary freezing because of union agreements, or they already were above the maximum pay limit when the rule on pay caps went into effect. The dissatisfied employees claim that the policy unfairly affects employees over 40 because they are more likely to have reached the top of their pay bands.

Sarah J. Starrett, an attorney who is representing the employees, said the Supreme Court ruling will allow the FAA case to proceed.

The Supreme Court case, Smith v. City of Jackson, dealt with local government pay issues. In that case, the city of Jackson, Miss., revised its pay plan for the Police and Fire Departments-granting proportionately higher raises to workers with less than five years of experience. The Supreme Court found that a policy developed without a malicious intent still can have a disparate impact on older employees. The court also found, however, that the Smith V. City of Jackson case was weakened by ambiguity.

"Turning to the case before us, we initially note that petitioners have done little more than point out that the pay plan at issue is relatively less generous to older workers," the court's majority opinion said. "It is not simply enough to allege that there is a disparate impact on workers, or point to a generalized policy that leads to such an impact."

The court ruled that the employees are responsible for "isolating and identifying the specific employment practices" that account for disparities in compensation.