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Supreme Court will decide benefit plan age discrimination case
September 25, 2007 by Ross Runkel at LawMemo
Kentucky Retirement Systems v. EEOC (certiorari granted 09/25/2007)
Details: http://www.lawmemo.com/supreme/Kentucky/
EEOC sued claiming that a disability-retirement-benefits plan for state and county employees violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).
The trial court granted summary judgment for defendants on the ground that EEOC did not establish a prima facie case; the 6th Circuit, en banc 10-4, reversed.
The KRS disability-retirement-benefits plan disqualifies employees who are still working from receiving disability-retirement benefits if they have already reached normal retirement-benefit age at the time they become disabled. The plan also calculates disability retirement benefits in such a way that an older employee who is eligible to receive disability benefits receives fewer benefits - in the form of lower monthly benefit payments - than a younger disabled employee receiving disability-retirement benefits who is similar to the older disabled employee in every relevant factor other than age.
The 6th Circuit held that (1) EEOC established a prima facie case because the plan is facially discriminatory on the basis of age and (2) when a plan is facially discriminatory a plaintiff does not need additional proof of discriminatory animus to establish a prima facie claim of disparate treatment.
The US Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the 6th Circuit's judgment.
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