News & Information

LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW — 8/6/08

Postal worker’s age bias suit goes back to the district court

Following the US Supreme Court’s instructions, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated its grant of summary judgment in favor of the Postal Service and remanded a 45-year-old postal worker’s reprisal claim to the district court. In Gomez-Perez v Potter (91 EPD ¶43,196), the Supreme Court unequivocally concluded that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects federal employees from retaliation for filing age bias complaints, even though the Act’s federal sector provision (§633a(a)) does not include explicit protections against retaliation like it does for private employees (found in §623(d) of the Act). Because the Supreme Court expressed no view as to the First Circuit’s holding (89 EPD ¶42,690) that sovereign immunity did not present a bar to the worker’s suit (the Postal Reorganization Act generally “waived the immunity of the Postal Service from suit by giving it the power ‘to sue and be sued’ in its official name”), the circuit court remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion and the sovereign immunity portion of its decision. (Gomez-Perez v Potter, 1stCir, 91 EPD ¶43,255)

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