Opinion ID: 203902
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Subterfuge Requirement

Text: Plaintiffs argue that the enactment of Law 181 was a subterfuge to evade the requirements of the ADEA because the defendants discriminated in a manner forbidden by the Act when they lowered the mandatory retirement age from sixty-five to fifty-five. Plaintiffs emphasize that defendants acted with discriminatory animus, deliberately seeking to replace them with younger officers, and they assert that this discriminatory motive connotes an impermissible scheme to bypass defendants' obligations under the ADEA. In effect, plaintiffs allege that Law 181 was a subterfuge to evade the ADEA because it was the product of intentional age discrimination. Using age as a basis for requiring retirement is precisely what section 623(j)(2) entitles the Commonwealth to do, however, and we thus join the Second and Seventh Circuits in rejecting an interpretation of subterfuge that would effectively nullify the exemption. See Feldman, 434 F.3d at 184 (There is nothing deceptive about the state legislature doing exactly what Congress provided it the authority to do ...); Minch, 363 F.3d at 629 ([D]oing something that the statute expressly permits does not evade its prohibitions.). In its analysis of the subterfuge limitation in Minch, the Seventh Circuit relied on the Supreme Court's decision in Public Employees Retirement System v. Betts, 492 U.S. 158, 109 S.Ct. 2854, 106 L.Ed.2d 134 (1989). Minch, 363 F.3d at 623-29; see also Feldman, 434 F.3d at 184 (adopting the reasoning in Minch ). The Court in Betts had considered another provision of the ADEAsection 623(f)(2)that also contained a subterfuge exception to an exemption from liability. Minch, 363 F.3d at 624. Section 623(f)(2) protected age-based employment decisions from the prohibitions of the ADEA if they were taken pursuant to the terms of a bona fide benefit plan and ifin the same language that appears in section 623(j)the plan was not a subterfuge to evade the purposes of the Act. Id. In interpreting the not a subterfuge language in section 623(f), the Supreme Court rejected the notion that age-based differences in employee benefits would be inconsistent with the ADEA unless the employer could offer a cost justification for the differential treatment. Betts, 492 U.S. at 170-72, 109 S.Ct. 2854. The Court concluded that, to avoid a self-defeating interpretation of the exception, id. at 178, the not a subterfuge criterion could not invalidate the very age-based line-drawing that the exemption allowed. Id. at 177-80; see also Minch, 363 F.3d at 625. The Seventh Circuit applied that reasoning in the context of section 623(j): The ADEA does not forbid [a State or locality] from making age-based retirement decisions as to its police and firefighting personnel; it expressly allows state and local governments to make such decisions so long as they act within the parameters set forth in section 623(j)(1).... The statute does not condition the validity of such retirement programs on proof that the public employer has adopted the program genuinely believing that it is justified in the interest of public safety. Instead, recognizing that there was not yet any national consensus as to the relationship between age and one's fitness to serve as a police officer or firefighter, Congress opted simply to restore the status quo ante, permitting states and cities to continue imposing age limits on these positions as they had been able to do prior to the ADEA's extension to state and municipal employers and Wyoming 's 1983 holding sustaining that extension. Minch, 363 F.3d at 629. Thus, proof that an employer imposes mandatory retirement for police officers and firefighters based on the view that older individuals are not up to the rigors of law enforcement or firefighting and should make room for younger, `fresher' replacements ... will not establish subterfuge because it does not reveal a kind of discriminatory conduct that the ADEA by its very terms forbids. Id. As both the Supreme Court in Betts and the Seventh Circuit in Minch emphasized, this understanding does not strip the subterfuge provision of all meaning. Instead, a plaintiff asserting subterfuge must show that the employer is using the exemption as a way to evade another substantive provision of the act in other words, that the employer is commit[ting] some other type of age discrimination forbidden by the ADEA. Minch, 363 F.3d at 629-30; see also Betts, 492 U.S. at 180, 109 S.Ct. 2854; Feldman, 434 F.3d at 184. The Seventh Circuit offered two examples of viable claims of subterfuge in the context of section 623(j): (1) if an employer adopted or reinstated age limits in order to retaliate against an employee who had protested practices made unlawful by the ADEA, [17] or (2) if the employer adopted age limits for police and firefighting personnel at the same time that it created a new, lower-paying position unrestricted by age, and invited the newly retired officers to apply, allowing the inference that the mandatory retirement scheme was a subterfuge for wage discrimination against older employees. Minch, 363 F.3d at 630 (citing Betts, 492 U.S. at 180, 109 S.Ct. 2854). As we have described, the plaintiffs here offer only accusations of age-based animus to support their subterfuge contention, alleging in their complaint that the governor and police superintendent agreed to get rid ... of a group of old timers with the purpose of replacing them by younger officers. Even if that allegation fairly describes the defendants' motivation, the fact remains that the ADEA permits government employers who are concerned about the effectiveness of older public safety officers to impose mandatory retirement at age fifty-five. Plaintiffs have thus offered no theory of subterfuge that can withstand a motion to dismiss, and they have therefore failed to state a viable claim under the ADEA.