Dayton v. Oakton Community College

Federal 7th Circuit Court
Civil Court
Employment Discrimination
Citation
Case Number: 
No. 18-1668
Decision Date: 
October 11, 2018
Federal District: 
N.D. Ill., E. Div.
Holding: 
Affirmed

Dist. Ct. did not err in granting defendant-employer’s motion for summary judgment in plaintiffs-employees’ action under ADEA, alleging that defendant’s adoption of policy that it would no longer employ retired state employees if they were also beneficiaries of State University Retirement System (SURS) constituted impermissible age discrimination. Relevant statute provided that defendant must pay large penalty to SURS if it paid SURS pension annuitants certain amount of money, and that defendant had made mistake in monitoring said annuitants, which caused defendant to pay $75,000 penalty. As such, defendant changed policy so as to preclude employment of any SURS pension annuitant, regardless of whether he or she was likely to meet penalty threshold. While plaintiffs argued that change in policy had disparate impact on older employees, defendant established that change in policy was based on “reasonable factor other than age,” i.e., avoiding risk of future SURS penalty. Fact that blanket ban on employing SURS annuitants was not only option available to defendant did not require different result.