Telling Your Employees to “Look Younger” Is Probably Age Discrimination

Under U.S. law, and the laws of most states, it is illegal for employers to discriminate against employees on the basis of age. These laws are meant to protect older workers, applying only to workers over the age of 40.

It’s pretty rare these days for employers to deliberately engage in unlawful discrimination. However, there are still employers who implement policies that have a discriminatory effect on some groups. In some cases, this can also be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit.

One interesting case (also seen here) has appeared out of Texas: a woman is suing her former employer because she claims that she was fired after she refused to dye her gray hair a darker color, and wear “younger fancy suits.”

Her argument is that this effectively amounts to age discrimination. And if her allegations are true (and she’s able to prove it), she probably has a good case. In general, employers are allowed to regulate the appearance of their employees: obviously, requiring employees to be presentable on the job is a perfectly reasonable policy. Likewise, if the employer requires employees to wear some kind of uniform, that’s generally fine, and does not run afoul of any discrimination laws.

However, there are times when requirements related to appearance can have a disproportionate effect on certain groups of people, and may unduly exclude them from their jobs. For example, suppose a company prohibits its employees from wearing any type of hats on the job. On its face, this rule doesn’t appear to discriminate against anyone. However, some religions (e.g. Sikhism and some denominations of Judaism) require adherents to don certain types of headwear, for religious purposes.

So, such a rule, although it does not appear to target any particular protected class, would have the practical effect of excluding some qualified employees solely because of their religion. This would be grounds for a lawsuit against the employer for religious discrimination, and it’s also why the vast majority of employers that have “no hats” policies also have an exception to the policy for religious headwear.

If the allegations in this case are true, the reasoning for finding that unlawful discrimination has occurred would be similar, though if an employer actually had a policy against gray hair and “old-looking” clothes, the fact that this could result in an age discrimination lawsuit is far more obvious than the example above.

And that’s why I have to wonder what an employer would have to be thinking in order to come to the conclusion that having such a policy is a good idea. After all, it’s plainly obvious how such a rule could disproportionately exclude employees based on their age.

The employee also alleges that, after she was fired, she was replaced by another female employee who was 10 years younger. While none of this is proof-positive that the employer intended to discriminate against older employees, none of it exactly bodes well for them. On top of that, the employer had not given her any warnings about her performance, and it did not contest her application for unemployment benefits. But again, it all depends on whether or not these allegations are actually true.

After all, it’s not exactly unheard of for a disgruntled employee to file a discrimination lawsuit against their employer, simply for the purpose of making the employer’s life more difficult. However, these cases are pretty rare, since an unsuccessful lawsuit might also be very costly and time consuming for the plaintiff.

Age discrimination in employment tends to get far less public attention than race, gender, and religious discrimination. Because of this, cases of age discrimination often fly under the radar.

However, age discrimination remains an issue. And while new college graduates who are strapped for jobs may be a little irked that older employees who don’t want to (or can’t afford to) retire appear to have their positions protected by law, the aims of laws against age discrimination are noble ones, and, in general, I think that they should be vigorously enforced.