Raytheon Accused of Age Bias in Job Ads Targeting Recent Grads

RTX Corp., formerly known as Raytheon Technologies Corp., was hit with a proposed class action alleging that its practice of reserving job roles exclusively for recent college graduates discriminates against older workers.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, says the aerospace giant violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by requiring job applicants to have a college degree and less than one to two years of experience. The practice also violated Massachusetts and Virginia state law, the lawsuit argued.

Job postings dated back at least to 2018 and appeared on the company’s job board, as well as common job ad sites, according to the complaint.

The case is one of several age discrimination suits filed against the country’s biggest tech companies in recent years. International Business Machines Corp, Intel Corp, and Google LLC have all been sued by older workers, with mixed results.

Recent resolutions of age bias litigation include a $2.4 million settlement between Eli Lilly and Co. and the EEOC in 2023, an $11.6 million settlement between PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and prospective hires in 2021, and an $11 million settlement between Google and older applicants in 2019.

Attorneys representing the proposed class of older Raytheon applicants said companies should not unlawfully decide who can apply to entry-level positions.

“Age discrimination sadly remains all too common in employment,” said William Rivera, senior vice president for litigation at the AARP Foundation, which represents the plaintiffs. “We are hoping to not only end this kind of practice with Raytheon but also send a signal to other employers that these kinds of practices that are discriminatory and exclude older job candidates are unlawful and should be stopped.”

Mark Goldstein, the named plaintiff in the case, is a 67-year-old from Virginia who said he applied to many entry-level positions at Raytheon and hasn’t been considered, despite relevant experience.

Goldstein filed a discrimination charge against Raytheon with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2019, and the agency determined there was reasonable cause to believe that Raytheon discriminated against him, the complaint said.

In addition to language in job postings, the lawsuit alleges that the company collects college graduation dates from applicants, effectively approximating their ages.

Peter Romer-Friedman of Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC, who’s serving as co-counsel on the suit, said the most analogous case occurred in the 1990s, when the EEOC sued the Arizona Department of Administration over job postings that required applicants to have graduated college within the past year.

Raytheon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Outten & Golden LLP is also representing the proposed class.

The case is Goldstein v. RTX Corp., D. Mass., No. 24-cv-11525, complaint filed 6/11/24.