In this interview with Scripps News, Attorney Andrew Lieb discusses the protections for older workers from discrimination under Federal and New York State laws. 

Key points include:

• Individuals aged 40-69 are fully protected and cannot be forced out of their positions due to age.
• Executives over 65 can be required to retire if they meet certain payment standards.
• In New York, everyone 18 and older has these protections and more.
• Companies can mandate physical or mental tests for employees if they are relevant to the job's essential functions and uniformly applied.

On June 6, 2024, the New York State Senate passed Bill S4467, to clarify the state’s anti-discrimination law, the New York State Human Rights Law (“NYSHRL”). 

Under the law, a plaintiff only needs to prove that unlawful motivation was a motivating factor and not "the sole motivating factor" or a "but-for cause" of the challenged treatment. 

This clarification allows mixed-motive claims to succeed by showing that discrimination was one motive driving a negative work-related decision. 

This Bill addresses an issue with age discrimination where it was unclear if New York mirrored the standard from federal law, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which requires sole motivating factor. Clearly, the legislature knows that all victims of discrimination in New York need to be treated the same with the same standards. 

This clarification will go into effect immediately once passed by the New York State Assembly and signed by the Governor. 

If you’d like to read more, click here. 

To contact an Associate Attorney see below.

The Supreme Court just adopted The Simple Injury Standard to identify discriminatory terms and conditions of employment when it ruled unanimously that an employer's act of transferring an employee "from one job to another because she is a woman" (or another protracted trait) is actionable discrimination under Title VII.

The case, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, states that discrimination is actionable so long as the employee can identify "some harm" regardless if that harm is "significant" because to “discriminate against” refers to “differences in treatment that injure” employees. Specifically, in Muldrow, the plaintiff sued because her "terms [or] conditions" of employment were changed, even though her "rank and pay remained the same," because her new position changed her "responsibilities, perks, and schedule," based on who she was. SCOTUS explained that this "meet[s] that test with room to spare" in overturning the lower court's dismissal based on the now extinct "materially significant disadvantage" standard.  

In Muldrow, the simple injuries experienced that support a discrimination claim were:

1. "She was moved from a plainclothes job in a prestigious specialized division giving her substantial responsibility over priority investigations and frequent opportunity to work with police commanders." 
2. "She was moved to a uniformed job supervising one district’s patrol officers, in which she was less involved in high-visibility matters and primarily performed administrative work." 
3. Her schedule became less regular, often requiring her to work weekends; and she lost her take-home car."

Specifically, SCOTUS held that "[a]lthough an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test." That is the new test, resolving a split in the Circuit Courts, as to the definition of an adverse employment action for an employment discrimination claim. 

NYS' Senate passed a bill, S345, on February 28, 2024, that would change the look-back period (a/k/a, statute of limitations) for employment discrimination in the State from 3 years to 6 years. 

Under Title VII, federally, employees only have 300 days to bring claims so moving the deadline for state claims from 3 years to 6 years would be huge.

How long is the right period that employees should be able to sue for employment discrimination? 

Do you think the Assembly should pass this bill or let it die like they did last time around?