Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Lab.

Knolls Atomic Power Lab. (defendant) had to lay off around 30 employees amid post-Cold War cutbacks and scored remaining workers on performance, flexibility, and critical skills plus years of service; 30 of the 31 employees ultimately let go were 40 or older. Twenty-eight of them (plaintiffs) sued under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act for disparate-treatment and disparate-impact discrimination, relying on expert testimony that such an extreme statistical skew was unlikely to be coincidental and was most closely tied to managers' discretionary scoring; a jury found for the plaintiffs on the disparate-impact claim only, and after several appeals the case reached the Supreme Court.