Protecting older workers

Monday, Feb. 25, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

In 1974, Congress amended the nation’s age discrimination law to offer protection to federal employees.

But now the Supreme Court is considering whether federal workers’ right to file age-discrimination complaints includes protection from retaliation for making the allegations.

The case heard last week involves a U.S. Postal Service worker who says that because of her age, her supervisor in 2003 refused to transfer her from a part-time position to the full-time post she had held at another post office. The worker was 45 at the time, and federal age discrimination laws apply to workers who are 40 and older.

According to documents filed with the court, the worker says that after filing her discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, her hours were drastically reduced, co-workers mocked her and someone even defaced Postal Service sexual harassment information posters and scrawled her name on them.

The worker’s attorney asserted to the court Tuesday that protection from retaliation is implied by the “plain language” of the law, which says personnel actions involving workers 40 and older “shall be free from any discrimination based on age.”

But Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia said the phrase does not mention retaliation — a protection that the law specifically mentions in age discrimination complaints filed by workers in the private sector.

However, The Washington Post reports that in 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that retaliation was a form of discrimination prohibited by the Title IX gender discrimination law.

This will be an important decision, as the potential for age discrimination likely will rise as our population ages.

Retaliating against an employee who files discrimination charges is, indeed, as wrong as discriminating against that person in the first place. It should not be allowed or tolerated. If the Supreme Court decides the law’s language does not protect federal workers from such retaliation, then Congress should rewrite the law.