December 15, 1967 – The US Age Discrimination Employment Act Becomes Public Law

On this day in history, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) (Pub. L. 90-202) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The ADEA prevents age discrimination and provides equal employment opportunity under conditions that were not explicitly covered in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also applies to the standards for pensions and benefits provided by employers, and requires that information concerning the needs of older workers be provided to the general public.

Specifically, the purpose of the legislation was to prohibit employment discrimination against persons over the age of 40, and “to promote employment of older persons based on their ability rather than age; to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment; [and] to help employers and workers find ways of meeting problems arising from the impact of age on employment.”

LBJ signing the Age Discrimination Employment Act in 1967

An AARP attorney reported:

Prior to passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA or the Act), approximately half of all private-sector job openings explicitly barred applicants over age fifty-five, and one quarter barred those over forty-five. ‘Help Wanted’ ads could state that only workers under thirty-five need apply, and employers had unbridled authority to retire older workers based solely on age. Not surprisingly, twenty-seven percent of unemployed workers, and forty percent of the long-term unemployed, were forty-five and older.”

The ADEA applies to employers who have “twenty or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.” In this way it also differs from the Civil Rights Act which applies in situations of 15 or more employees. Both acts do, however, only apply to employers in industries affecting interstate commerce. The 20 employees can include overseas employees.

After it was enacted, the ADEA went through a series of amendments to strengthen and expand its coverage of older employees. Originally, the ADEA only covered employees between the ages of 40 and 65. Eventually the upper age limit was extended to age 70, and then eliminated altogether. In 1978, enforcement authority of the ADEA was transferred from the Department of Labor to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The text of the act as amended is here.

A number of cases have been brought to the Supreme Court to test and define the limits of the act, including Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Lab, 2008, Gomez-Perez v. Potter, 2008, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 2009, and most recently Babb v. Wilkie, 2020. Babb v. Wilkie changed the standard of proof in age discrimination cases filed against federal employers, holding that a federal employee or applicant may establish that an adverse personnel action took place by showing that their age was simply a “motivating factor” in the federal employer’s decision.