Risk Management

Baltimore County to pay $5.4M to settle pension suit

Judy Greenwald

April 27, 2020 Reprints

Regulation Employment Practices More + Less -

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Friday said Baltimore County will pay about $5.4 million to more than 2,000 county employees to resolve a 13-year-old age discrimination lawsuit filed against it by the agency.

The EEOC said in its lawsuit that Baltimore County maintains a defined benefit pension plan based in part on employee contributions deducted from each paycheck.

Under the county code, employee contribution rates were based on age at entry into the retirement system, with older employees paying higher rates than younger members for the same benefits.

The EEOC filed suit in the case in 2007, charging the county had violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act with this policy. It became one of the longest-running lawsuits on the EEOC’s docket, with several court rulings, it said.

The EEOC said under terms of the consent order resolving the lawsuit, the $5.4 million will fully compensate all individuals who meet class eligibility criteria established by the court, and who paid a higher contribution rate than they would have paid had age not been a factor in determining employee contribution rates.

EEOC Assistant General Counsel Christopher Lage said in the statement, “This case was important for the EEOC to bring. Only the EEOC can sue state and local governments under the ADEA, and thus this violation would have gone without remedy absent the EEOC’s lawsuit.

“The case also confirmed the important principle that back pay is a mandatory legal remedy under the ADEA.”

Baltimore county’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

In September, a Brooklyn jury awarded two fired employees of a beverage distribution company, who were the firm’s two oldest salesmen, a total of $458,000 in an age discrimination case the EEIC had filed on their behalf.