Becton Unit Court Win Sets Job Seeker Age Bias Precedent (2)

A Becton Dickinson subsidiary doesn’t have to face a lawsuit alleging it inadvertently violated federal law by rejecting an older applicant for an in-house lawyer job because he had too much experience, a federal appeals court said in a ruling that pares back anti-bias protections.

The 8-4 decision by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago changes course from an April opinion by a three-judge panel of the court and avoids creating a circuit split with the Eleventh Circuit over the scope of federal age discrimination law.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act doesn’t protect ...