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GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. V. CLINE (02-1080)
Web-accessible at:
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-1080.ZS.html
Argued November 12, 2003 -- Decided February 24, 2004
Opinion author: Souter
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A collective-bargaining agreement between petitioner
company and a union eliminated the company's obligation to
provide health benefits to subsequently retired employees,
except as to then-current workers at least 50 years old.
Respondent employees (collectively, Cline)--who were then at
least 40 and thus protected by the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), but under 50 and so without
promise of the benefits--claimed before the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that the agreement violated
the ADEA because it "discriminate[d against them] ...
because of [their] age," 29 U.S.C. sect. 623(a)(1). The EEOC
agreed, and invited the company and the union to settle
informally with Cline. When they failed, Cline brought this
action under the ADEA and state law. The District Court
dismissed, calling the federal claim one of "reverse age
discrimination" upon which no court had ever granted relief
under the ADEA, and relying on a Seventh Circuit decision
holding that the ADEA does not protect younger workers
against older workers. The Sixth Circuit reversed, reasoning
that sect.623(a)(1)'s prohibition of discrimination is so
clear on its face that if Congress had meant to limit its
coverage to protect only the older worker against the
younger, it would have said so. The court acknowledged that
its ruling conflicted with earlier cases, but criticized
those decisions for paying too much attention to the general
language of Congress's ADEA findings. The court also drew
support from the EEOC's position in an interpretive
regulation.
Held: The ADEA's text, structure, purpose, history, and
relationship to other federal statutes show that the statute
does not mean to stop an employer from favoring an older
employee over a younger one. Pp. 3-17.
1. The ADEA's prohibition covers "discriminat[ion] ...
because of [an] individual's age" that helps the younger by
hurting the older. In the abstract, that phrase is open to
the broader construction that it also prohibits favor for
the old over the young, since sect.623(a)(1)'s reference to
"age" carries no express modifier, and the word could be
read to look two ways. This more expansive possible
understanding does not, however, square with the natural
reading of the whole provision prohibiting discrimination.
In fact Congress's interpretive clues speak almost
unanimously to an understanding of discrimination as
directed against workers who are older than the ones getting
treated better. The ADEA's prefatory finding and purpose
provisions and their legislative history make a case to this
effect that is beyond reasonable doubt. Nor is it
remarkable that the record is devoid of any evidence that
younger workers were suffering at their elders' expense, let
alone that a social problem required a federal statute to
place a younger worker in parity with an older one. The
ADEA's restriction of the protected class to those 40 and
above confirms this interpretation. If Congress had been
worrying about protecting the younger against the older, it
would not likely have ignored everyone under 40. The federal
case reports are as replete with decisions taking this
position as they are nearly devoid of decisions like the one
under review. While none of this Court's cases directly
addresses the question presented here, all of them show the
Court's consistent understanding that the text, structure,
and history point to the ADEA as a remedy for unfair
preference based on relative youth, leaving complaints of
the relatively young outside the statutory concern. See,
e.g., Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 610. The
very strength of this consensus is enough to rule out any
serious claim of ambiguity, and congressional silence after
years of judicial interpretation supports adherence to that
view. Pp. 3-11.
2. This Court rejects the three rejoinders proffered by
Cline and amicus EEOC in favor of their view that the
statutory age discrimination prohibition works both ways.
Pp. 11-18.
(a) The argument that, because other instances of "age"
in the ADEA are not limited to old age, sect.623(a)(1)'s
"discriminat[ion] ... because of [an] individual's age"
phrase means treatment that would not have occurred if the
individual's span of years had been either longer or
shorter, rests on two mistakes. First, it erroneously
assumes that the word "age" has the same meaning wherever
the ADEA uses it. The presumption that identical words in
different parts of the same Act are intended to have the
same meaning, see, e.g., Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v.
United States, 286 U.S. 427, 433, is not rigid and readily
yields where, as here, there is such variation in the
connection in which the words are used as reasonably to
warrant the conclusion that they were employed in different
parts of the Act with different intent, e.g., ibid. Second,
the argument for uniform usage ignores the cardinal rule
that statutory language must be read in context since a
phrase gathers meaning from the words around it. E.g.,
Jones v. United States, 527 U.S. 373, 389. Social history
emphatically reveals an understanding of age discrimination
as aimed against the old, and the statutory reference to age
discrimination in this idiomatic sense is confirmed by
legislative history. For the very reason that reference to
context shows that "age" means "old age" when teamed with
"discrimination," sect.623(f)'s provision of an affirmative
defense when age is a bona fide occupational qualification
readily shows that "age" as a qualification means
comparative youth. As context shows that "age" means one
thing in sect.623(a)(1) and another in sect.623(f), so it
also demonstrates that the presumption of uniformity cannot
sensibly operate here. Pp. 12-15.
(b) Cline's and the EEOC's second argument--that their
view is supported by a colloquy on the Senate floor
involving an ADEA sponsor--has more substance than the
first, but is still not enough to unsettle this Court's
holding. Senator Yarborough's view is the o
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