10th Circuit Rejects Age Bias Claims Against Spirit AeroSystems

Takeaway: Employers should ensure careful consideration of protected characteristics such as age in selecting employees for group terminations and reductions in force. 

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s decision finding that workers impacted by a 2013 Spirit AeroSystems Inc. reduction in force (RIF) totaling 271 firings did not show that the RIF was evidence of a pattern or practice of group age discrimination by Spirit.

Toolkit: Employing Older Workers

The former Spirit employees relied on documentary evidence and testimony in efforts to meet their burden to show that unlawful age discrimination was Spirit’s standard operating procedure through its actions and an alleged desire to axe its older workers in favor of younger employees. In support of their claims, the workers relied on Spirit presentation slides addressing tenure and health care costs, planning documents and policies, statements by Spirit executives and employees, and training materials. 

While the court agreed that some of the evidence might support a finding of age discrimination by individual Spirit managers and executives, it ruled that the evidence did not create a reasonable inference of a “standard operating procedure to shed older employees.” 

The court did warn that alleged statements that HR pressured managers to give poor ratings to older workers and Spirit lowering ratings for some older employees “could suggest discrimination against some employees,” but not a standard operating procedure.       

The court found that although slides discussing health care expenses and salaries arguably related to age, because older employees might generally incur higher health care costs and earn higher salaries, that relationship did not necessarily reflect age discrimination. The court differentiated this case from a different case in which an employer asked a health care insurer to reduce a premium because the company had already done its “best” by firing the “oldest and sickest employees,” and it held that no similar evidence was introduced here.

The workers argued that demographic evidence showed Spirit targeted older workers, citing an email showing the average age of the workforce in 2011 and the anticipated younger average in 2017 as well as a slide showing the evolving retirement risk, length of service, and average age of the workforce.  

Toolkit: Managing Equal Employment Opportunity

The court agreed with Spirit that these aggregate age documents were used to innocuously project potential retirements, particularly in the absence of evidence that Spirit managers were ever told about them. The court also sided with Spirit’s explanation that its exemption of new hires from RIF eligibility wasn’t ageist because Spirit was trying to preserve recruitment sources — an “age-neutral justification.”  

The court distinguished between tenure and age in connection with Spirit’s use of the former in the mechanics of its RIF decision-making process and held that an employer does not necessarily commit age discrimination by removing some previously existing advantages for senior employees.

Spirit executives’ statements that young people were “key” and represented “the future of the company” did not show evidence of favoritism toward younger workers over older workers and statements made after the RIF were not read to reasonably infer ageism without evidence tying them to the firings, according to the court.   

Statements made by Spirit employees did not show a “standard operating procedure of ageism” and statements potentially made by individual managers rather than executives could not be used to infer a companywide policy of changing performance assessments of older workers to allegedly attempt to oust them, the court determined.

The court found that “individually or collectively, the former employees’ evidence doesn’t support an inference of an ageist operating procedure” by Spirit. 

The court also was not persuaded by the workers’ expert testimony, finding that its comparison of retention rates and performance ratings for older workers at various times was not comparing apples to apples and that the workers failed to consider Spirit’s age-neutral explanations and justifications for statistical disparities in its expert reports.  

Finally, the workers failed to create an issue –of fact on Spirit’s alleged refusal to rehire older workers after the RIF. In agreeing with the district court, the 10th Circuit found that Spirit told all terminated employees they’d need to reapply online (not just workers 40 and older). 

Spirit repeatedly pointed to legitimate business reasons for its policies, statements, and other evidence countering the employees’ claims of group age discrimination, though the court acknowledged potential issues based on individual manager statements and actions.

Raymond v. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., 10th Cir., No. 23-3126 (Jan. 7, 2025), petition for rehearing and petition for rehearing en banc denied (March 17, 2025).

Gregory Slotnick is an attorney in the New York City office of Duane Morris LLP.