Opinion ID: 3015223
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Facially discriminatory classifications:

Text: “Proxy” theory Consistent with the focus on language rather than a showing of discriminatory animus in evaluating facially discriminatory classification claims, courts have developed a “proxy” theory for such claims, recognizing that a regulation or policy cannot “use a technically neutral classification as a proxy to evade the prohibition of intentional discrimination,” such as classifications based on gray hair (as a proxy for age) or service 19 dogs or wheelchairs (as proxies for handicapped status). McWright v. Alexander, 982 F.2d 222, 228 (7th Cir. 1992). For example, in Erie County Retirees Ass’n v. County of Erie, we concluded that an employer violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) by offering Medicare-eligible retirees different health coverage from that offered to non-Medicare-eligible retirees because “Medicare status is a direct proxy for age,” as eligibility “‘follow[s] ineluctably upon attaining age 65.’” 220 F.3d 193, 211 (3d Cir. 2000) (alteration in original) (quoting Erie County Retirees Ass’n v. County of Erie, 91 F. Supp. 2d 860, 867 (W.D. Pa. 1999)). Such a situation was, we explained, distinguishable from the situation in Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, where an employer’s termination of an employee a few weeks prior to attaining ten years of service required for the vesting of pension benefits was held by the Supreme Court not to be disparate treatment under the ADEA because, although age and years of service may “correlate,” they are “analytically distinct . . . and thus it is incorrect to say that a decision based on years of service is necessarily ‘age based.’” 507 U.S. 604, 611 (1993). Our conclusion in Erie County that Medicare status is “an age-based criterion” was consistent with the reasoning of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Johnson v. New York, 49 F.3d 75 (2d Cir. 1995). There, the court held that an air base’s termination of a security guard when the guard attained age 60 and could not maintain active status in the Air National Guard due to forced resignation in that organization violated the ADEA because the plaintiff’s “age and termination [we]re 20 inextricably linked” and the sole cause of plaintiff’s loss of dual status and his consequent termination was his age. Id. at 79-80.6