Age discrimination simply put is discrimination against someone because of their age. Now what the law protects is discrimination against someone who is 40 years or older. If you’re younger than 40, sorry you don’t have protection for age discrimination. And age discrimination is actually the most common form of discrimination. However, it can be difficult to prove at times because the natural march in the workplace is that older employees retire and have moved out and younger employees take their place. But there’s a lot of code words for age discrimination. Sometimes we see things like they’re getting a little long in the tooth, we need some fresh blood around here, we need some new ideas, and often that is associated with younger people. So, what we see if someone is replaced by someone who is substantially younger or even just younger. There’s a possibility that it’s age discrimination. One other factor we see with age discrimination a lot is an employer replacing higher paid older employees with younger lower paid employees. And it used to be the law that that was not age discrimination, now that can actually be a proxy, or a marker, or a sign that it is age discrimination when an older hire paid employee is replaced with the younger lower paid employee. Age discrimination while sometimes difficult to prove is not impossible, and in fact we’ve had many substantial victories in the age discrimination area. The best evidence is what’s known as direct evidence. Evidence that someone was expressly terminated because of their age. ‘I’m sorry Bob we just need to go with someone who’s a little more hip, a little more with it, and has a better sense of what our younger market needs. And then, you you’ve been doing this a long time, isn’t it time for you to start thinking about retirement?’
