Kentucky Retirement Systems v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Kentucky (defendant) established a retirement benefit plan for employees, such as law-enforcement officers and firefighters, who were in hazardous jobs. Employees became eligible for benefits in two ways: (1) after 20 years of service or (2) after five years of service and reaching the age of 55. The plan calculated benefits for both methods by multiplying final pay before retirement and years of service by 2.5 percent. There was also a special method of eligibility for employees who became disabled before being eligible under the two regular methods. Under the special method, if an employee became disabled before he was eligible for benefits, the plan would impute the years of service until the employee would be eligible. An employee with 18 years of service became disabled at age 61. The plan imputed no additional years of service in calculating the employee’s benefits because the employee had already become eligible for benefits at the time of his disability. The employee brought the matter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) (plaintiff), which sued Kentucky. The EEOC claimed that because the employee would have been imputed additional years of service (thus increasing his retirement benefits) had he become disabled before the age of 55, the plan violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA).