Texas Roadhouse, a nationwide steakhouse chain, has a practice, according to officials, of discriminating against potential employees over forty and rejecting them for jobs where the customers will be in contact with them. This particular suit, which resides in a Boston federal district court, is the first its kind for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—which is responsible for enforcing job discrimination laws—because for the first time, it has conducted its own investigations and filed suit rather than waiting for individuals to complain and giving them permission to sue on their own. Age bias cases remain less clear, as the idea of pitting the young against the old has been notoriously unpopular with juries and society. The EEOC has presented several pieces of evidence in its directed investigation that show company officials have continuously discriminated on the basis of age in their hiring practices. On the other hand, the restaurant’s argument hinges on the 25-year-long reading of the ADEA that has shifted age discrimination from being categorically compared to race and gender to being of lesser consequence with a greater legal burden to prove. With closing arguments aside, a jury verdict will soon come down and, perhaps with it, new grounds for age discrimination or even new barriers.
See Peter Gosselin, Federal Court May Decide if Employers Can Reject Older Job Seekers to Protect ‘Image’, Pro Publica, January 31, 2017.
Special thanks to Naomi Cahn (Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.
