The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to enact new protections against age discrimination in the workplace, approving a bill that supporters say will give older workers the same safeguards other protected groups enjoy.
The House voted 261 to 155 to approve a bill known as the Protect Older Workers Against Discrimination Act. Every Democratic representative who cast a vote supported the bill, joined by 34 Republicans. It now heads to a Senate embroiled in the Trump impeachment trial.
Supporters say the bill would restore protections older workers lost in a 2009 Supreme Court ruling, which established that older workers must demonstrate that age was the decisive factor – not just a contributing factor – when suing for age discrimination.
That’s a higher standard than what is required for discrimination based on race, gender or disabilities, and higher than Congress intended when it established protections against age discrimination in 1967, supporters say.
“I’ve heard from workers, many in the technology industry, who believe they have been dismissed or denied employment because of their age,” Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Beaverton, said on the House floor Wednesday.
A longtime advocate of strengthening age-discrimination protections, Bonamici said the burden of proof for complaints filed with the EEOC makes the outcome of such cases highly uncertain.
“This bipartisan bill simply returns the burden of proof to what it was for decades” before the Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling, Bonamici said.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in December on numerous obstacles older workers face when seeking redress for age discrimination, including the higher standard of proof.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is also dismissing more age discrimination cases with “no reasonable cause” than at any point in the past two decades. And the amount of money the EEOC is recovering for complainants is at its lowest point since 2008.
The EEOC is in its fifth year of investigating age discrimination complaints against Intel following mass layoffs at the chipmaker in 2015 and 2016.
Investigations by The Oregonian/OregonLive found Intel laid off workers over 40 at double the rate of younger workers in 2016. Employees over 60 were eight times more likely to face layoffs that year than those under 30.
The EEOC has given no indication of how long its Intel investigation will continue or what kind of resolution complainants can expect.
Supporters hope a new law will make it easier for workers to resolve their discrimination claims. The bill wouldn’t address past allegations of age discrimination but could remove obstacles to workers making their case in the future.
First, though, the bill has to pass the Senate and win the president’s signature.
With the House in Democratic hands and the Senate controlled by Republicans, the current Congress has been famously unproductive. There was a modicum of bipartisanship in Wednesday’s vote, though, suggesting there might be an opening to move the bill forward. The bill has a Republican co-sponsor in the Senate, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley.
Oregon lawmakers considered similar legislation in 2019 with a bill that would outlaw employment practices that “caused a disproportionate, adverse impact on a class of persons who are protected from unlawful discrimination.”
The bill didn’t get a vote last session and backers don’t plan to try again until 2021. During next month’s short session, though, advocates are hoping to pass legislation that would convene employers, older workers and lawmakers in a task force to study new protections.