Opinion ID: 614206
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Significantly Younger Recruiters

Text: The district court concluded that because employee 36082 turned 40 during the relevant time period, and thus came within the protected class under FEHA, Nielsen's failure to terminate him refutes rather than supports Earl's claim of age discrimination. Further, Nielsen notes on appeal that employee 46432 was 42 when he committed the policy violations and therefore cannot be a proper comparator as a matter of law. In an age discrimination case, comparison with younger employees within the protected class is not improper as a matter of law. Rigid insistence that a comparator be outside the protected class overlooks a key difference between age and other forms of discrimination. Whereas sex and race discrimination rely on an individual's membership in a particular class, age discrimination is relative. The proper inquiry is not whether the other recruiters are outside the protected class, but whether they are significantly younger than Earl. As the Supreme Court explained in O'Connor v. Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) does not ban discrimination against employees because they are aged 40 or older; it bans discrimination against employees because of their age. 517 U.S. 308, 312, 116 S.Ct. 1307, 134 L.Ed.2d 433 (1996). The Court wrote, there can be no greater inference of age discrimination . . . when a 40-year-old is replaced by a 39-year-old than when a 56-year-old is replaced by a 40-year-old. Id. [T]he fact that a replacement is substantially younger than the plaintiff is a far more reliable indicator of age discrimination than is the fact that the plaintiff was replaced by someone outside the protected class. Id. at 313, 116 S.Ct. 1307; see also Begnal v. Canfield & Assocs., Inc., 78 Cal. App.4th 66, 73, 92 Cal.Rptr.2d 611 (2000) (citing federal and California cases that a plaintiff may establish a prima facie case of age discrimination by submitting evidence of replacement by a substantially younger person). In O'Connor, the Supreme Court addressed age discrimination at the first step of the McDonnell Douglas framework, where a prima facie case is at issue, rather than at the third step, where pretext is at issue. But neither Nielsen nor the district court offered any reason why the logic of O'Connor should not apply with equal force to pretext. Both relied on a sex discrimination case, Beck v. United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 99, 506 F.3d 874, 883 (9th Cir.2007), rather than an age discrimination case for their conclusion that a similarly situated employee must be outside the protected class for the purposes of pretext. Earl was 59 years old when she was terminated. She compares her treatment to other Nielsen recruiters between the ages of 36 and 42. The district court recognized that Earl's temporary replacement by a 42-year-old could establish a prima facie case of age discrimination because the other recruiter was significantly younger. Applying the same logic, Earl can also show evidence of pretext by comparing her treatment to significantly younger recruiters, even if they are within the protected class.