Opinion ID: 397198
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the city's failure to pay for accrued sick leave

Text: 38 The district court also held that the City's refusal to pay Alford and Nierlich for their ninety days of accrued sick leave violated the ADEA. 484 F.Supp. 1004-05. We agree. The section 4(f)(2) exemption for bona fide employee benefit plans, discussed at length in Part I(A), supra, does not shield the City's discriminatory policy of withholding accrued sick leave pay from employees hired after age fifty and thus ineligible for retirement under the TMRS plan. The City's sick leave policy forms no part of the TMRS pension plan. 9 The City has undertaken to make eligibility for sick leave pay contingent upon unrelated eligibility for TMRS. This discriminatory administration of a simple fringe benefit cannot by this means be brought under the protection of section 4(f)(2). 39 The City has defended its position by urging us to consider its sick pay provision as just another part of its employee benefit plan, even though that provision is not contained in the TMRS and is functionally irrelevant to any retirement, pension, or insurance plan. We decline to interpret section 4(f)(2) so expansively. True, we have stated before that the key phrase of section 4(f)(2) is employee benefit plan and that (t)he words, 'retirement, pension, or insurance,' are added in a clearly descriptive sense, not excluding other kinds of employee benefit plans if, conceivably, there could be any. Brennan v. Taft Broadcasting Co., 500 F.2d 212, 215 (5th Cir. 1974). 10 However, we do not believe that Congress, in developing the ADEA exemption for employee benefit plans, see Part I(A), supra, meant to countenance the discriminatory dispensation of all fringe benefits whether or not they are part of a specific and established benefit plan. 40 As we have undertaken to explain in detail in Part I(A), supra, Congress devised section 4(f)(2) in order to postpone any disruptive effects upon the many complicated pension plans already in force at that time until it could tackle the issue in more considered and comprehensive legislation. The multifaceted TMRS retirement program is, we have held, just such a plan; the City's policy of paying a retiring employee for up to ninety days of unused sick leave-a simple fringe benefit administered in a single, easily calculated payment-is not. Rather, the payment for unused sick leave is akin to the other extra-TMRS fringe benefits that the City voluntarily pays its employees regardless of the age at which they are hired. 11 Lacking the protection of section 4(f)(2), the City's denial of well-earned payment for unused sick leave to this class of older employees violates section 4(a)(1) of the ADEA, 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1). 12 We affirm the district court's judgment awarding Alford and Nierlich payment for their accrued sick leave as of December 31, 1977, with appropriate interest. 41 Having resolved this issue in favor of appellees under the ADEA, we need not address the City's argument that its denial of sick leave payments did not violate the equal protection clause.