Opinion ID: 712933
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: individual liability under the adea

Text: 7 The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Burmaster on plaintiffs' age discrimination claims, holding that the ADEA provides no basis for relief against supervisory personnel in their individual capacities. The plaintiffs contend that this holding was in error. We disagree. 8 The ADEA makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an individual on the basis of age. 29 U.S.C. § 623(a). Under the ADEA, the term employer means a person engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has twenty or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.... 29 U.S.C. § 630(b). Employer also includes any agent of such a person.... Id. The plaintiffs argue that the inclusion of the employer's agents in the definition of employer indicates that Congress intended to allow claims against supervisory personnel, like Burmaster, in their individual capacities. 9 The Fourth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit have already considered and rejected this argument. Birkbeck v. Marvel Lighting Corp., 30 F.3d 507, 510-11 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 666, 130 L.Ed.2d 600 (1994); Miller v. Maxwell's International Inc., 991 F.2d 583, 587-88 (9th Cir.1993), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1049, 127 L.Ed.2d 372 (1994). The Fourth Circuit noted that [s]uch personal liability would place a heavy burden on those who routinely make personnel decisions for enterprises employing twenty or more persons, and we do not read the statute as imposing it. Instead, we read § 630(b) as an unremarkable expression of respondeat superior--that discriminatory personnel actions taken by an employer's agent may create liability for the employer. Birkbeck, 30 F.3d at 510. The Ninth Circuit observed that 10 [t]he statutory scheme itself indicates that congress did not intend to impose individual liability on employees. Title VII limits liability to employers with fifteen or more employees, and the ADEA limits liability to employers with twenty or more employees, in part because Congress did not want to burden small entities with the costs associated with litigating discrimination claims. If Congress decided to protect small entities with limited resources from liability, it is inconceivable that Congress intended to allow civil liability to run against individual employees. 11 Miller, 991 F.2d at 587. 12 Rejecting a similar argument, this court recently held that an individual supervisor who does not otherwise qualify as an employer cannot be held liable for a violation of Title VII. Grant v. Lone Star Co., 21 F.3d 649, 651-53 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 574, 130 L.Ed.2d 491 (1994). In doing so, we cited for support the Ninth Circuit's reasoning in Miller. 21 F.3d at 652. The statutory scheme of Title VII at issue in Grant is virtually identical to the statutory scheme of the ADEA at issue here. Both acts limit liability to employers with more than a minimum number of employees, and both define employer to include agents of the employer. The plaintiffs have directed us to no salient distinction between the ADEA and its closest statutory kin, and we have found none. Therefore, we find that this Court's reasoning in Grant applies with equal force in the present context and hold that the ADEA provides no basis for individual liability for supervisory employees. 13