In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-3665

AARON CARSON, et al.,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

and

RONALD PAULSIN,

Intervenor-Appellant,

v.

LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.

No. 2:14-CV-117-PRC — Paul R. Cherry, Magistrate Judge.

____________________

ARGUED APRIL 5, 2017 — DECIDED JULY 26, 2017

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. During the recession of the late 

2000s, Lake County, Indiana, experienced an emergency cash 

shortage. The County’s positive cash flow declined from $51 
2 No. 16-3665

million in 2007 to $9.9 million in 2008. By 2009, the County 

was operating at a deficit, and by 2013 its general fund was 

more than $1 million in the red. During that same period, the 

County’s self-insurance fund, which it used to cover employee healthcare costs, foundered. The fund had a balance of 

over $10 million in 2007; that balance was wiped out by 2013.

Something had to be done. In an attempt to stanch its financial bleeding, the County offered retirement incentives to 

employees age 65 or older. With one incentive package, retirees were entitled to five years of supplemental health insurance (secondary to Medicare coverage) through Aetna. Retirees who selected this package were also permitted to return 

to work on a part-time basis, though their employment remained at-will.

The incentive package was attractive, and a number of employees took advantage of it. But the County had miscalculated. In 2013, Aetna informed the County that current employees were ineligible for the supplemental insurance coverage. If retirees who had been rehired as part-time employees 

remained on the plan, the plan would no longer qualify for 

special exemptions under federal law. In that case, the 

County’s insurance costs would skyrocket. The County was in 

no position to absorb those added costs. It therefore notified 

all rehired retirees who were covered by both Medicare and 

the Aetna supplement that their employment would end effective October 1, 2013. 

A group of rehired retirees who were fired in October 2013 

filed this suit alleging that the County had discriminated 

against them on the basis of their age in violation of the Age

Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. 
No. 16-3665 3

§§ 621 et seq., and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The district court granted summary judgment to 

the County.

We affirm. We see no evidence that the County engaged in 

unlawful age discrimination. Age was a necessary but insufficient factor in the County’s decision-making process. The 

key criterion that distinguished the terminated employees 

from all other County employees was not their age but rather 

their participation in the Aetna plan. The equal protection 

claim fails because the undisputed facts show that the 

County’s action was rationally related to a legitimate state interest: preserving supplemental insurance coverage for its retirees while avoiding further financial hardship.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

A. Lake County’s Supplemental Insurance Debacle

Although plaintiffs’ claims arise under the ADEA and the 

Equal Protection Clause, those claims (and the County’s actions that precipitated the claims) cannot be analyzed 

properly without understanding some basics of health insurance law. Federal law requires group health insurance plans 

such as those sponsored by employers to comply with a host 

of terms governing portability, coverage, rating, renewability, 

and non-discrimination. Many of these requirements were 

put in place as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable 

Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (2010). Others 

were imposed earlier under the Health Insurance Portability 

and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Pub. L. No. 104-191, 

110 Stat. 1936, or prior legislation.

Federal law also carves out exemptions for special types 

of health insurance, including so-called “retiree-only” plans. 
4 No. 16-3665

These plans pay benefits secondary to Medicare and are exempt from many of the requirements of HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act that apply to primary policies. Retiree-only 

plans help Medicare recipients manage their out-of-pocket 

costs, including co-insurance and deductibles. For retirees, especially those living on modest or fixed incomes, supplemental coverage helps ensure access to essential care.

In 2008 and 2010, Lake County offered early retirement incentives to all Medicare-eligible employees who had at least 

five years of continuous service and who were age 65 or older. 

These employees could select either a lump-sum payment or 

five years of supplemental health insurance at the same relatively low premium that full-time County employees paid for 

their health insurance. Retirees who selected the insurance 

package had a further choice: they could return to work on a 

part-time basis or receive a small monthly stipend.

The record on appeal does not show how many County 

employees chose each option, but some of the plaintiffs in this 

case selected the insurance and part-time re-employment 

package. Other plaintiffs, apparently, selected the lump-sum 

package or retired through the normal retirement process but 

were later rehired on a part-time basis. The salient point is 

that each plaintiff at the time of termination was employed 

part-time and was covered by both Medicare and Aetna supplemental insurance.

According to Thomas Dabertin, the County’s human resources consultant, in 2013 Aetna informed the County that 

current employees (including rehired retirees) could not participate in the supplemental insurance plan. At the time, the 

County believed this prohibition was a consequence of the Af-
No. 16-3665 5

fordable Care Act. However, the statutory language that authorizes retiree-only plans actually predates the Affordable 

Care Act. As best we can tell, the County’s arrangement of 

providing its rehired retirees with supplemental insurance 

(secondary to Medicare) that did not conform to group health 

plan requirements under federal law was impermissible even 

before the Affordable Care Act took effect. See 26 U.S.C. 

§ 9831(a) (“The requirements of this chapter shall not apply to 

... (2) any group health plan for any plan year if, on the first 

day of such plan year, such plan has less than 2 participants who 

are current employees.”) (emphasis added); 29 U.S.C. § 1191a(a) 

(“The requirements of this part ... shall not apply to any 

group health plan ... for any plan year if, on the first day of 

such plan year, such plan has less than 2 participants who are 

current employees.”) (emphasis added).1

Regardless of the prior legality of the County’s insurance 

arrangement, one thing was clear when Aetna raised the issue 

in 2013: if the County did not act quickly, it risked either forfeiting its supplemental insurance coverage altogether or incurring substantial costs to bring the plan into compliance 

with federal rules and regulations governing group health insurance. Neither scenario was acceptable for a local government still struggling to regain its financial footing.

Shortly after receiving the bad news from Aetna, the 

County retained Larry Grudzien, an attorney specializing in 

 1 At oral argument, we asked the parties to explain whether the 

County’s health insurance arrangement was legitimate under federal law 

as it existed prior to the Affordable Care Act, and if so, the statutory or 

regulatory support for the arrangement. Neither party could offer any 

such explanation, reinforcing our doubts about whether the arrangement 

was ever lawful.
6 No. 16-3665

employee benefits. Grudzien confirmed Aetna’s position, 

writing that a “retiree who is rehired as an employee ... 

should be treated as a current employee that counts against 

retiree only plan status and should be covered under the 

ERISA plan maintained for purposes of current (i.e., active) 

employees immediately upon rehire.” Grudzien advised the 

County “not to rehire any retirees,” or, alternatively, to rehire 

them full-time and offer them regular benefits.

In light of Aetna’s warning and Grudzien’s recommendation, the County decided to terminate its rehired retirees. In 

letters dated August 21 and September 12, 2013, the County 

informed a group of twenty-eight employees that their employment would end effective October 1, 2013. As the County 

explained in its letters, these employees were selected because 

they met each of four criteria: (1) they had retired from 

County service and were later rehired part-time; (2) they were 

age 65 or older; (3) they were receiving Medicare as their primary insurance; and (4) they were enrolled in the Aetna supplement.2

A much larger group of employees age 65 or older who 

were not enrolled in the Aetna supplement continued their 

employment with the County. As of November 2015, between 

150 and 200 active employees, or roughly ten percent of the 

total County workforce, were age 65 or older.

 

2 Plaintiffs observe that there is some disagreement among County 

officials as to who was responsible for selecting the four termination criteria. This dispute is immaterial. There is no evidence that any County official harbored any age-based animus leading to plaintiffs’ terminations. Instead, the evidence shows that the County acted to preserve affordable 

supplemental insurance for all of its retirees, a group that includes those 

affected by the termination decision but also many others.
No. 16-3665 7

B. Procedural History

Plaintiffs, a subset of the twenty-eight part-time employees who were terminated in 2013, brought this suit in federal 

court accusing the County of age discrimination in violation 

of the ADEA and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Following discovery, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.

The district court denied plaintiffs’ motion and granted 

the County’s motion. Carson v. Lake County, No. 2:14-CV-117-

PRC, 2016 WL 4798965 (N.D. Ind. Sept. 14, 2016). The court 

concluded that plaintiffs had come forward with insufficient 

direct or circumstantial evidence of age discrimination to support their ADEA claim. As the court explained, “being age 

sixty-five or older was a necessary but insufficient factor to 

become a member of the affected group,” as only those employees who met all four criteria (including participation in 

the Aetna plan) were terminated. Id. at *11. Plaintiffs’ equal 

protection claim likewise failed. Given the dilemma facing the 

County if it retained plaintiffs on its payroll—i.e., loss of supplemental insurance or a dramatic rate hike—the County’s action was rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest. Id. at *17. The district court entered final judgment for the 

County. Plaintiffs have appealed.

II. Analysis

We review de novo the district court’s decision granting the 

County’s motion for summary judgment, viewing all facts 

and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiffs. O’Regan v. Arbitration Forums, Inc., 246 F.3d 975, 983 (7th 

Cir. 2001).
8 No. 16-3665

A. Age Discrimination in Employment Act

1. Legal Framework

Congress enacted the ADEA in 1967 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.” 29 

U.S.C. § 621(b). The statute, which extends protection to 

workers age 40 or older, § 631(a), makes it unlawful for an 

employer, among other things, “to fail or refuse to hire or to 

discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against 

any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age,” § 623(a)(1).

By its terms the ADEA proscribes disparate treatment, 

where “liability depends on whether the protected trait ... actually motivated the employer’s [adverse] decision.” Hazen 

Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 610 (1993). The Supreme 

Court has held that disparate impact claims are also cognizable under the ADEA. See Smith v. City of Jackson, 544 U.S. 228, 

240 (2005). “Claims of disparate treatment may be distinguished from claims that stress ‘disparate impact’” in that the 

“latter involve employment practices that are facially neutral 

in their treatment of different groups but that ... fall more 

harshly on one group than another and cannot be justified by 

business necessity.” Int’l Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United 

States, 431 U.S. 324, 335 n.15 (1977).3

 3 Plaintiffs proceed primarily under a disparate treatment theory but 

argue (summarily) that they may also prove their claim under a disparate 

impact theory. We address both theories.
No. 16-3665 9

2. Disparate Treatment

A plaintiff seeking to recover for disparate treatment under the ADEA must “prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the ‘but-for’ cause of the challenged adverse employment action.” Gross v. FBL Financial Servs., Inc., 

557 U.S. 167, 180 (2009); Fleishman v. Continental Casualty Co., 

698 F.3d 598, 603 (7th Cir. 2012). In this respect, the ADEA is 

narrower than Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as Title 

VII also protects against mixed-motive discrimination. See 

Hossack v. Floor Covering Assocs. of Joliet, Inc., 492 F.3d 853, 860 

(7th Cir. 2007).

An ADEA plaintiff may proceed by introducing direct or 

circumstantial evidence that her employer took an adverse action against her because of her age. See Cerutti v. BASF Corp., 

349 F.3d 1055, 1061 (7th Cir. 2003), overruled in part on other 

grounds by Ortiz v. Werner Enterprises, Inc., 834 F.3d 760 (7th 

Cir. 2016). Alternatively, a plaintiff may proceed through the 

burden-shifting framework adapted from McDonnell Douglas 

Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). Under the burden-shifting 

approach, the plaintiff must come forward with evidence 

showing that “(1) she is a member of a protected class, (2) she 

was meeting the defendant’s legitimate expectations, (3) she 

suffered an adverse employment action, and (4) similarly situated employees who were not members of her protected

class were treated more favorably.” Simpson v. Franciscan Alliance, Inc., 827 F.3d 656, 661 (7th Cir. 2016). If the plaintiff has 

established this prima facie case, the burden shifts “to the defendant to ‘articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason 

for the adverse employment action, at which point the burden 

shifts back to the plaintiff to submit evidence that the employer’s explanation is pretextual.’” Id. (citation omitted).
10 No. 16-3665

However the plaintiff chooses to proceed, at the summary 

judgment stage the court must consider all admissible evidence to decide whether a reasonable jury could find that the 

plaintiff suffered an adverse action because of her age. See 

Ortiz, 834 F.3d at 765 (“Th[e] legal standard ... is simply 

whether the evidence would permit a reasonable factfinder to 

conclude that the plaintiff’s [age] caused the discharge or 

other adverse employment action. Evidence must be considered as a whole ... .”).4

a. Facially Discriminatory Action

Plaintiffs view this case as straightforward. They argue

that the County’s termination decision was discriminatory on 

its face. Since all part-time employees who were terminated 

on October 1, 2013 were age 65 or older, and since age was one 

of the criteria listed in the termination letter, plaintiffs assert 

that “age was a but-for cause, as their age was a necessary 

condition for the defendant’s decision to terminate them.”

The problem is that age over 65, while a characteristic 

common to all terminated employees, was not the impetus for 

the County’s decision. It is true, as plaintiffs observe, that an 

ADEA plaintiff alleging disparate treatment need not prove 

that age was the sole motivation underlying an adverse action. But the plaintiff must show that age was a “‘determining 

 4 The plaintiff in Ortiz brought employment discrimination claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and Illinois law. However, the principle that a district 

court assessing an employment discrimination claim must consider all admissible evidence at the summary judgment stage applies with equal force 

to age discrimination claims under the ADEA.
No. 16-3665 11

factor’ or a ‘but for’ element in the decision.” Miller v. American Airlines, Inc., 525 F.3d 520, 523 (7th Cir. 2008) (citation 

omitted). Plaintiffs have not made that showing here.

The employees affected by the County’s decision shared 

four characteristics: they were (1) age 65 or older and (2) enrolled in Medicare for their primary health insurance coverage, but also were (3) rehired retirees and (4) most important, 

enrolled in the Aetna supplemental policy. The County did 

not terminate these employees because of their ages. It terminated them because they were enrolled in a retiree-only insurance plan in which current employees could not participate. 

If these rehired retirees had kept their jobs and remained on 

the Aetna supplemental health insurance plan in violation of 

federal law and the County’s insurance contract, they would 

have—in attorney Larry Grudzien’s words—blown the plan 

apart. 

Plaintiffs argue, however, that Medicare eligibility (and, 

presumably, enrollment in a Medicare supplement like the 

Aetna plan) may function as a proxy for age, such that an employer’s decision to terminate an employee based on such insurance coverage is a form of implicit age discrimination.

The Supreme Court considered an analogous argument in 

Hazen Paper. There, the Court rejected an ADEA claim 

brought by a plaintiff who was fired shortly before the expiration of the ten-year vesting period for his pension benefits. 

The Court reasoned that because “age and years of service are 

analytically distinct, an employer can take account of one 

while ignoring the other, and thus it is incorrect to say that a 

decision based on years of service is necessarily ‘age based.’” 

507 U.S. at 611. Nevertheless, the Court left open the possibility that an employer could violate the ADEA if the employer 
12 No. 16-3665

treated pension status as a proxy for age, “in the sense that 

the employer may suppose a correlation between the two factors and act accordingly.” Id. at 613. In such a situation, the 

employer might indirectly invoke the disparaging stereotypes 

(“Older employees are likely to be ___”) that Congress sought 

to prohibit. Id. at 612.

There is no evidence that the County engaged in any prohibited stereotyping. It did not “suppose a correlation” between plaintiffs’ Medicare status and age and “act accordingly.” Id. at 613. Rather, it fired only those employees who 

were enrolled in the Aetna supplement, leaving unaffected a 

large number of employees age 65 or older who had not enrolled in the supplement. The combination of current employment and supplemental insurance participation—not age—

was the decisive factor that distinguished the population of 

terminated employees from the larger County workforce. 

And the undisputed facts show that economic and regulatory 

pressures—not generalizations about the capabilities of elderly employees—drove the County’s decision.5

Even a government policy that affects different age groups 

differently may not necessarily discriminate because of age. 

 

5 Cf. Tramp v. Associated Underwriters, Inc., 768 F.3d 793 (8th Cir. 2014) 

(where former employee refused employer’s request that she use Medicare instead of company health plan, and where—shortly after firing employee—employer asked insurance carrier about rate decrease now that 

“oldest and sickest” employees were no longer employed, reasonable jury 

could conclude that employer drew a correlation between healthcare costs 

and plaintiff’s age and acted accordingly); Erie County Retirees Ass’n v. 

County of Erie, 220 F.3d 193 (3d Cir. 2000) (policy that provided all Medicare-eligible retirees with allegedly inferior insurance option as compared 

with non-Medicare-eligible retirees could trigger ADEA liability).
No. 16-3665 13

The question is fact-sensitive. In Kentucky Retirement Systems 

v. EEOC, 554 U.S. 135 (2008), the EEOC challenged a state retirement scheme for employees in hazardous occupations. 

Under the scheme, an employee could ordinarily retire after 

twenty years of service or after just five years of service if the 

employee was at least 55. If, however, the employee became 

disabled under qualifying circumstances, the employee could 

retire immediately. In that situation, the employee’s retirement benefits would be calculated in part on the basis of “imputed” years, that is, the number of years it otherwise would 

have taken for the employee to become eligible for retirement 

benefits. Given the two routes to ordinary retirement eligibility (the twenty-year route for most workers and the five-year 

route for older workers), a younger worker disabled on the 

job would often receive more imputed years than would an 

older worker. Id. at 139–40.

The Supreme Court held that this scheme did “not, on its 

face, create treatment differences that [we]re ‘actually motivated’ by age.” Id. at 147. The Court relied on a series of factors, several of which are instructive here. For instance, the 

Court noted that “as a matter of pure logic, age and pension 

status remain ‘analytically distinct’ concepts.” Id. at 143 (citation omitted). Likewise, age and insurance eligibility are analytically distinct. In both Kentucky Retirement Systems and this 

case, there was no evidence of stereotypical assumptions, the 

likes of which Congress sought to suppress through the 

ADEA. Id. at 146. Rather, in both cases the defendant asserted 

a “clear non-age-related rationale” for its policy: in Kentucky 

Retirement Systems, an effort to ensure that disabled workers 

had access to retirement benefits, id. at 144–45, and in this 

case, an effort to preserve affordable health insurance for retirees.
14 No. 16-3665

We recognize that one of the Kentucky Retirement Systems

factors seems to tilt (slightly) in plaintiffs’ favor. The Court in 

that case was skeptical about the chances of “finding a remedy that [could] both correct the disparity and achieve the ... 

legitimate objective.” Id. at 147. The problem was thorny; the 

state devised a scheme that was reasonable under the circumstances. In this case, the County believed it faced a dilemma 

in the fall of 2013: it could either (1) terminate the rehired retirees enrolled in the Aetna insurance or (2) risk forfeiting the 

insurance (or paying a much higher premium) for all retirees 

covered by the supplemental policy. However, the County 

might have had a third option. It might have explained its predicament to the small group of affected part-timers and then 

offered each a choice between continued insurance or continued employment. That alternative approach might have been 

more respectful of plaintiffs’ individual preferences.

The fact that the County might have opted for a more sensitive solution to its problem does not change the bottom-line 

result in this ADEA case, though. The County could not fire 

its employees because of their age, but we see no evidence of 

such disparate treatment in the record. As a thought experiment, consider a scenario in which the “65 or older” criterion 

was eliminated and there was no evidence that any County 

official took account of the ages of plaintiffs. The outcome in 

this scenario would be unchanged. Exactly the same group of 

rehired retirees would be terminated. The plaintiffs were fired 

not because of their age but because they were impermissibly 

enrolled in a retiree-only Medicare supplement while also 

working part-time. Other employees of a similar age who 

were not enrolled in the Aetna supplement kept their jobs.
No. 16-3665 15

We agree with the district court that “being age sixty-five 

or older was a necessary but insufficient factor to become a 

member of the affected group.” Carson, 2016 WL 4798965, at 

*11. The County did not violate the ADEA.

b. McDonnell Douglas Burden-Shifting

Though plaintiffs rely primarily on what they characterize 

as direct evidence of a facially discriminatory policy, they propose in the alternative to prove their disparate treatment 

claim through the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. Under McDonnell Douglas, where a plaintiff establishes 

a prima facie case for discrimination, the burden shifts to the 

employer to offer a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for 

the challenged employment action. If the employer does so, 

the burden shifts back to the plaintiff to prove pretext. Simpson, 827 F.3d at 661.

We need not concern ourselves in this case with burdenshifting or pretext because plaintiffs have not established a 

prima facie case. Plaintiffs must show they were treated less 

favorably than similarly situated employees outside their protected class, that is, younger employees. Plaintiffs have not 

done so. Plaintiffs were among the small group of rehired retirees who were employed part-time and insured under Medicare and the Aetna supplement. All such employees were 

fired. All employees (regardless of age) who remain employed by the County are not enrolled in the Aetna supplement. All retirees who benefit from the supplement are no 

longer employed by the County. Without an appropriate comparator group, plaintiffs cannot make out a prima facie case 

for discrimination and cannot prevail under the McDonnell 

Douglas framework.
16 No. 16-3665

3. Disparate Impact

Next, plaintiffs suggest that they may prove age discrimination under a theory of disparate impact. While the ADEA 

authorizes recovery in disparate impact cases, Smith, 544 U.S. 

at 232, disparate impact is a poor fit for plaintiffs’ age-discrimination claim.

The crux of plaintiffs’ claim is that they were the victims 

of an impermissibly discriminatory policy. (They were not, as 

we have explained above.) But to state a claim for disparate 

impact, plaintiffs would have to show that a “specific, facially

neutral employment practice caused a significantly disproportionate adverse impact based on age.” Karlo v. Pittsburgh Glass 

Works, LLC, 849 F.3d 61, 68 (3d Cir. 2017) (emphasis added). 

Plaintiffs would have to “proffer statistical evidence that the 

policy caused a significant age-based disparity,” id. at 69,

which they have not done. On the contrary, plaintiffs devote 

just two paragraphs of their appellate briefs to their conclusory disparate impact theory.

Even if plaintiffs could put together a prima facie case for 

disparate impact, the County would easily survive summary 

judgment under the “reasonable factors other than age” defense. See 29 U.S.C. § 623(f) (“It shall not be unlawful for an 

employer ... (1) to take any action otherwise prohibited ... 

where the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other

than age[.]”). Here, the undisputed facts show that the 

County took an adverse action against a subset of older workers not because of their age but because it wished to preserve 

its supplemental insurance plan and to comply with federal 

law. Those reasonable factors amply support the County’s decision.
No. 16-3665 17

B. Equal Protection

Plaintiffs also argue that their terminations violated the 

Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and 

they seek relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Plaintiffs’ equal protection argument fails for essentially the same reason that 

their McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting argument fails: they 

have not identified a suitable comparator group. See Whitaker 

ex rel. Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of 

Education, 858 F.3d 1034, 1050 (7th Cir. 2017) (“The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘is essentially a 

direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated 

alike.’”) (citation omitted); Alston v. City of Madison, 853 F.3d 

901, 906 (7th Cir. 2017) (“To prove discriminatory effect, 

[plaintiff] must show that he was a member of a protected 

class and that he was treated differently from a similarly situated member of an unprotected class.”).

Even if plaintiffs could surmount that hurdle, the Equal 

Protection Clause subjects age-based distinctions to rationalbasis review, the most deferential form of judicial scrutiny. See 

City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 440–41 

(1985) (“The general rule is that legislation is presumed to be 

valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn ... is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. ... We have declined ... to extend heightened review to differential treatment based on age[.]”); Levin v. Madigan, 692 F.3d 607, 619 (7th 

Cir. 2012) (same). The County chose to terminate a group of 

at-will part-time employees whose continued employment 

would have imperiled the County’s already fragile financial 

situation or jeopardized an insurance plan that benefited 

plaintiffs and many other retirees. The County’s choice preserved plaintiffs’ eligibility for the supplemental insurance 
18 No. 16-3665

under the Aetna plan. That choice was rational; the Constitution requires nothing more.

AFFIRMED.