holding that an employer’s remarks about the general need to lower average age of workforce and stray comment that “the older people should go, bring in some new blood” made years before employees’ terminations, were not direct evidence of unlawful age bias
How later courts described this case
- holding that an employer’s remarks about the general need to lower average age of workforce and stray comment that “the older people should go, bring in some new blood” made years before employees’ terminations, were not direct evidence of unlawful age bias
- holding that “average-age statements” related to a concern for upcoming workforce retirements do not demonstrate that a decision to terminate specific plaintiffs was connected to their age thereby negating the employer’s legitimate nondiscriminatory reason
- finding that statements from management about “the general need to lower the average age of [the company’s] workforce” cannot be directly tied to the decision to fire plaintiffs and so do not constitute age discrimination
- finding that statement made referencing the average age of workers was made in the context of a legitimate concern about approaching retirements and, consequently, did not constitute direct evidence of discrimination
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
FEIKENS, District Judge.
I concur with the result that the Court reaches in this case.
I write separately to state that I fully agree with the Court’s statement that the evidence in this case “indicates that the concern for the average age of the work force in the plant was entirely motivated by the findings of the Chiles Commission ...” I conclude from this that the statements related to the average age of the work force are not suspicious and therefore do not make out a prima facie case of discrimination. Therefore, I would affirm the District Court on its conclusion in this regard.