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PricewaterhouseCoopers urged a California federal judge at a hearing Thursday to throw out a putative class action alleging the accounting firm doesn't consider older job applicants, arguing that disparate impact claims under federal age discrimination law can only be brought by existing employees, not prospective ones. * * * But Daniel B. Kohrman of AARP Foundation Litigation said the Gross decision worked in his favor, arguing that if you can’t take the language of one statute and apply it to another, then you can’t assume any meaning from the presence of “job applicants” in one statute and...

If you’re an over-40 job hunter and not getting offers, you may be wondering if you’re being turned down due to your age. And, if so, whether that’s against the 50-year-old law, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. One pending class-action suit against Pricewaterhouse Coopers and another against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (that the Supreme Court may soon hear) make this concern especially timely. There’s a good chance that age will hurt your job chances, especially if you’re in your 50s or older, based on a recent Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study. Researchers created realistic, but...

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP must defend against claims by a proposed class of rejected 40-and-over job seekers, a federal judge in California ruled. The applicants say the accounting giant’s hiring and other employment practices inadvertently favor younger applicants and deter older ones ( Rabin v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP , 2017 BL 49868, N.D. Cal., No. 16-cv-02276, 2/17/17 ). The decision rejects an opposing conclusion reached in October by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit but embraces the view of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It also signals a potential...

The case has been brought in a California court by Steve Rabin, a 53-year-old certified public accountant, who is alleging violations of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. According to the complaint: ‘PwC's culture and practice has distributed the benefits of its enormous success unequally – systematically favouring younger applicants at the expense of their older counterparts.’ The lawsuit asserts that the number of workers 40 years of age and older in entry-level and lower to mid-level positions at PwC is ‘stunningly...