Opinion ID: 203902
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Lowered Retirement Age of Law 181 and the ADEA

Text: Plaintiffs maintain that the 1986 and 1996 amendments to the ADEA, which created the exemption for age-based termination of public safety personnel, prohibit the reduction of a mandatory retirement age that was applicable on March 3, 1983. They contend that § 623(j) permits enactment of new age limits only in States and localities that had no mandatory retirement law in effect at that time. Because Puerto Rico's mandatory retirement age for police officers was sixty-five in March 1983, plaintiffs assert that Law 181, with its lowered age limit, must be invalidated as inconsistent with the federal law. [10] In construing a statute, we begin with its plain meaning, and [i]f the meaning of the text is unambiguous our task ends there as well. United States v. Godin, 534 F.3d 51, 56 (1st Cir.2008). A statute is not ambiguous unless `it admits of more than one reasonable interpretation.' Id. (quoting Gen. Motors Corp. v. Darling's, 444 F.3d 98, 108 (1st Cir.2006)). The language of § 623(j), as amended in 1996, does not support plaintiffs' proposed interpretation of the safe-harbor provision. The statute explicitly provides that States or their subdivisions may discharge a law enforcement officer or firefighter pursuant to a mandatory retirement plan that either was in effect on March 3, 1983 or was enacted after September 30, 1996. The only age-related limitation on the latter option is that the discharge occur no earlier than age fifty-five. 29 U.S.C. § 623(j)(1)(B)(ii). Nothing in the language of the provision even suggests that governments that had mandatory retirement laws in place as of March 3, 1983 could not enact new laws with lower retirement ages after September 30, 1996. Plaintiffs rest their argument in part on an explanatory Rule of Construction contained in the background information that follows § 623(j) in the United States Code. The note, as it appeared in the 1996 legislation, states: CONSTRUCTION.Nothing in the repeal, reenactment, and amendment made by subsections (a) and (b) shall be construed to make lawful the failure or refusal to hire, or the discharge of, an individual pursuant to a law that (1) was enacted after March 3, 1983 and before the date of enactment of the Age Discrimination in Employment Amendments of 1996; and (2) lowered the age of hiring or retirement, respectively, for firefighters or law enforcement officers that was in effect under applicable State or local law on March 3, 1983. Pub.L. No. 104-208 § 119(1), 110 Stat. 3009, 3009-24 (1996). Plaintiffs argue that this note eliminates any ambiguity in the language of the ADEA amendments and shows that the Commonwealth was prohibited from lowering the mandatory retirement age for firefighters and law enforcement officers that was in effect as of March 3, 1983. By its terms, however, the note applies only to laws that were enacted between March 3, 1983 and the date of enactment of the 1996 ADEA amendments, which was September 30, 1996. Law 181 was enacted on August 15, 2003outside the time frame to which the note refers. Thus, rather than supporting plaintiffs' view that Law 181 violated the ADEA, this note is strong evidence to the contrary. If the prohibition were meant to extend to a law passed after the excluded period of time, the end date in the phrase would have been unnecessary. Thus, the only plausible interpretation of the note is that States and localities were permitted to enact laws lowering the mandatory retirement age for police officers and firefighters after passage of the 1996 amendment, so long as they complied with the requirements set out in the amendment. Plaintiffs' reliance on our decision in Gately, 2 F.3d 1221, where we invalidated a lowered retirement age, is equally misplaced. The mandatory retirement law at issue there was enacted in 1991 in connection with the consolidation of four Massachusetts police forces. Id. at 1224. Before the consolidation, officers in three of the forces had been subject to retirement at age sixty-five and officers serving on the fourth force had been subject to retirement at age fifty. Id. The 1991 state legislation imposed mandatory retirement at age fifty-five on all members of the consolidated force. Id. We held that the 1986 amendment to the ADEA did not permit Massachusetts to lower the retirement age to fifty-five for the group of officers who, in 1983, were subject to retirement at sixty-five. Before adoption of the 1996 amendments, a mandatory retirement scheme enacted after March 3, 1983, imposing new or lowered age limits on employment, was permissible only if it qualified under the narrow BFOQ exception. See id. at 1225-26 (describing the ADEA `escape clause' that allows all employers some limited flexibility to take age into consideration in business decisions). Unlike Gately, this case is not governed by the 1986 amendment and, as we have explained, a state statute lowering the retirement age for public safety personnel is permitted by the 1996 amendment so long as the amendment's other requirements are met. See Feldman v. Nassau County, 434 F.3d 177, 182 (2d Cir.2006) ([T]he exception can absolve a state or local government of liability under the ADEA for an age limit in law enforcement hiring regardless of whether that age limit was in existence pursuant to local law at the time Wyoming was decided or whether it was enacted after the 1996 ADEA amendments that reinstated the law enforcement exception.) (citations omitted). [11] Law 181 is therefore not invalid as a result of its lower triggering age. [12]