Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc.
The Supreme Court ruled that workers suing under the federal age discrimination law must prove that age was the actual deciding reason for the employer's action, not merely one factor among several that influenced the decision.
The ruling rejects a more worker-friendly standard borrowed from race and sex discrimination law under Title VII, making it harder for older workers to win age-bias claims when other, non-discriminatory reasons were also in play.
How it got here: A jury found for Gross after a "mixed-motives" instruction; the Eighth Circuit reversed and ordered a new trial, and Gross asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Jack Gross worked for FBL Financial Group for over 30 years. In 2003, at age 54, he was reassigned from his director position to a lesser role, and many of his duties were given to a younger colleague in her early forties. Gross sued, claiming the reassignment amounted to age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, while FBL said the change was part of a legitimate corporate restructuring.
The question before the Court
Under the federal law banning age discrimination at work, must a worker prove that age was the actual deciding reason for an employer's decision, or is it enough to show age was just one factor among several?
Why it matters
Older workers bringing age discrimination lawsuits now face a tougher legal standard than workers alleging race, sex, or religious discrimination under Title VII. Employers gain a real advantage: even if age played some role in a firing or demotion, they cannot be held liable as long as they can point to another reason that, standing alone, would have led to the same decision.
What changes now
The case was sent back to the lower courts for further proceedings under the new but-for standard, meaning Jack Gross's original jury verdict cannot stand and any retrial must apply the tougher causation rule. The ruling is a final decision on the legal standard, not a temporary order, and it governs all future age discrimination lawsuits brought under this federal law unless Congress amends the statute.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether a worker needs "direct" evidence (as opposed to circumstantial evidence) to prove discrimination — it said that question is moot once the but-for standard applies to everyone. It also does not address discrimination claims brought under Title VII or other civil rights laws, which remain governed by their own rules.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Stevens
“The most natural reading of this statutory text prohibits adverse employment actions motivated in whole or in part by the age of the employee.”Stevens's central objection that the majority misread the phrase "because of" in the age discrimination law.
Justice Stevens argued the Court should not have even reached the but-for causation question, since it wasn't the issue the Court agreed to decide. He contended the age discrimination law's 'because of' language, like the identical phrase in Title VII, should be read to cover cases where age was merely a motivating factor, and would have held that direct evidence is not required for a mixed-motives instruction.
Dissent — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with Stevens but wrote separately to argue that but-for causation is especially hard to apply to questions of motive, as opposed to physical causation, because it requires speculating about what an employer would have done under different circumstances. He found the trial court's original jury instructions fair and would have upheld them.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began by asking whether the burden-shifting framework from Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins — a Title VII case allowing a 'mixed-motives' instruction that shifts blame to the employer once a worker shows discrimination was a motivating factor — applies to age discrimination claims at all.
- The Court found Title VII and the age discrimination law meaningfully different: Congress amended Title VII in 1991 to explicitly allow claims based on discrimination being merely 'a motivating factor,' but never added the same language to the age discrimination law, even though it amended that law in other ways around the same time. Because Congress treated the two laws differently on purpose, the Court declined to import Title VII's rule into the age law.
- Turning to the text of the age discrimination law itself, the Court read the phrase 'because of such individual's age' to mean that age must have been the actual, 'but-for' reason for the employer's action — the outcome would have been different without it — not merely a contributing factor.
- Because the statute does not spell out who carries the burden of proof, the Court applied the ordinary default rule that the person suing bears the burden of proving every element of the claim, including that but-for causation.
- The Court concluded that a worker suing for age discrimination must prove but-for causation by a preponderance of the evidence, and the burden never shifts to the employer to disprove the claim, even after the worker shows age played some role.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (490 U. S. 228)
Held that this Title VII mixed-motives framework does not carry over to age discrimination claims because the two laws differ.
Distinguishes Desert Palace, Inc. v. Costa (539 U. S. 90)
Found this Title VII ruling on evidence requirements inapplicable to age discrimination claims under the different statute.