West Virginia Supreme Court justices changed their minds about a ruling they made in an age discrimination case in July and issued a new decision last week, which reverses a lower court and adheres to precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last July, justices issued a unanimous memorandum decision upholding a ruling by Taylor County Circuit Judge Alan Moats, which dismissed a lawsuit alleging age discrimination filed by a 65-year-old woman against her former employer, Grafton City Hospital.
In return, Allan Karlin, an attorney for Martha Knotts, petitioned the court for a rehearing. AARP, the United Mine Workers of America, the state Employment Lawyers Association and others filed amicus briefs also urging justices to reconsider the case.
The court reconsidered and, on Thursday, issued a unanimous decision ruling the opposite way.
The decision last week also overrules a 2010 case about age discrimination.
In the 2010 case, the state Supreme Court applied a rule that a person who was over the age of 40 couldn't allege they had been discriminated on the basis of age if the person they were replaced by was also over age 40. Moats applied that law to Knotts' case and granted the hospital summary judgment.
In her appeal, Knotts asserted that the judge didn't consider the "substantially younger" comparison recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in O'Connor v Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., a 1996 case. After a second look, state justices agreed.
In the O'Connor case, a 56-year-old employee sued over age discrimination after he was fired and replaced by a younger employee. The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the employee had failed to prove a case of age discrimination because the employee who replaced him was in the same protected class as the plaintiff, also over age 40.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the appeals court's ruling, however, finding that the focus of an age discrimination case should be whether the plaintiff was discriminated against on the basis of age, not on whether the plaintiff was replaced by someone outside the protected class.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the unanimous opinion finding that a determination about whether a replacement is substantially younger than a plaintiff is a far more reliable indicator of age discrimination.
"We conclude that the better and more legally sound approach is to follow the 'substantially younger' rule announced by Justice Scalia in O'Connor," wrote Chief West Virginia Justice Menis Ketchum.
What qualifies as "substantially younger" must be decided on a case-by-case basis, Ketchum wrote, but age differences of 10 or more years are generally held to be sufficient.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.