NT Lakis lawyers have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in an important case examining the scope of an employer’s liability for disparate impact discrimination under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and whether a disparate impact claim can be brought by a job applicant.
Our brief to the full appeals court in Villarreal v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company urges reversal of a divided three-judge panel decision finding that applicants can bring such claims, arguing that the ADEA prohibits this on both legal and practical grounds.
The brief also addresses a separate issue pending before the court in this case regarding whether the panel should have allowed the plaintiff’s untimely claim to go forward based on “equitable” grounds. We argue that because the plaintiff did not exercise any diligence to discover that possible discrimination had occurred or to show that extraordinary circumstances existed to justify his late filing, he was not entitled to equitable relief.
A copy of our brief is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.