GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. v. CLINE et al.

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GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. v.
CLINE et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the sixth circuit
No. 02–1080. Argued November 12, 2003—Decided February 24, 2004
A collective-bargaining agreement between petitioner company and a
union eliminated the company’s obligation to provide health benefits to
subsequently retired employees, except as to then-current workers at
least 50 years old. Respondent employees (collectively, Cline)—who
were then at least 40 and thus protected by the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), but under 50 and so without promise
of the benefits—claimed before the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) that the agreement violated the ADEA because it
“discriminate[d against them] . . . because of [their] age,” 29 U. S. C.
§ 623(a)(1). The EEOC agreed, and invited the company and the union
to settle informally with Cline. When they failed, Cline brought this
action under the ADEA and state law. The District Court dismissed,
calling the federal claim one of “reverse age discrimination” upon which
no court had ever granted relief under the ADEA, and relying on a
Seventh Circuit decision holding that the ADEA does not protect
younger workers against older workers. The Sixth Circuit reversed,
reasoning that § 623(a)(1)’s prohibition of discrimination is so clear on its
face that if Congress had meant to limit its coverage to protect only the
older worker against the younger, it would have said so. The court
acknowledged that its ruling conflicted with earlier cases, but criticized
those decisions for paying too much attention to the general language
of Congress’s ADEA findings. The court also drew support from the
EEOC’s position in an interpretive regulation.
Held: The ADEA’s text, structure, purpose, history, and relationship
to other federal statutes show that the statute does not mean to stop
an employer from favoring an older employee over a younger one.
Pp. 586–600.
1. The ADEA’s prohibition covers “discriminat[ion] . . . because of [an]
individual’s age” that helps the younger by hurting the older. In the
abstract, that phrase is open to the broader construction that it also
prohibits favor for the old over the young, since § 623(a)(1)’s reference
to “age” carries no express modifier, and the word could be read to
look two ways. This more expansive possible understanding does not,
however, square with the natural reading of the whole provision prohib-

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iting discrimination. In fact Congress’s interpretive clues speak almost
unanimously to an understanding of discrimination as directed against
workers who are older than the ones getting treated better. The
ADEA’s prefatory finding and purpose provisions and their legislative
history make a case to this effect that is beyond reasonable doubt. Nor
is it remarkable that the record is devoid of any evidence that younger
workers were suffering at their elders’ expense, let alone that a social
problem required a federal statute to place a younger worker in parity
with an older one. The ADEA’s restriction of the protected class to
those 40 and above confirms this interpretation. If Congress had been
worrying about protecting the younger against the older, it would not
likely have ignored everyone under 40. The federal case reports are as
replete with decisions taking this position as they are nearly devoid of
decisions like the one under review. While none of this Court’s cases
directly addresses the question presented here, all of them show the
Court’s consistent understanding that the text, structure, and history
point to the ADEA as a remedy for unfair preference based on relative
youth, leaving complaints of the relatively young outside the statutory
concern. See, e. g., Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U. S. 604, 610. The
very strength of this consensus is enough to rule out any serious claim
of ambiguity, and congressional silence after years of judicial interpreta-
tion supports adherence to that view. Pp. 586–594.
2. This Court rejects the three rejoinders proffered by Cline and
amicus EEOC in favor of their view that the statutory age discrimina-
tion prohibition works both ways. Pp. 594–600.
(a) The argument that, because other instances of “age” in the
ADEA are not limited to old age, § 623(a)(1)’s “discriminat[ion] . . . be-
cause of [an] individual’s age” phrase means treatment that would not
have occurred if the individual’s span of years had been either longer or
shorter, rests on two mistakes. First, it erroneously assumes that the
word “age” has the same meaning wherever the ADEA uses it. The
presumption that identical words in different parts of the same Act are
intended to have the same meaning, see, e. g., Atlantic Cleaners &
Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 433, is not rigid and readily
yields where, as here, there is such variation in the connection in which
the words are used as reasonably to warrant the conclusion that they
were employed in different parts of the Act with different intent, e. g.,
ibid. Second, the argument for uniform usage ignores the cardinal rule
that statutory language must be read in context since a phrase gathers
meaning from the words around it. E. g., Jones v. United States, 527
U. S. 373, 389. Social history emphatically reveals an understanding of
age discrimination as aimed against the old, and the statutory reference
to age discrimination in this idiomatic sense is confirmed by legislative

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history. For the very reason that reference to context shows that “age”
means “old age” when teamed with “discrimination,” § 623(f)’s provision
of an affirmative defense when age is a bona fide occupational qualifi-
cation readily shows that “age” as a qualification means comparative
youth. As context shows that “age” means one thing in § 623(a)(1) and
another in § 623(f), so it also demonstrates that the presumption of uni-
formity cannot sensibly operate here. Pp. 594–598.
(b) Cline’s and the EEOC’s second argument—that their view is
supported by a colloquy on the Senate floor involving an ADEA spon-
sor—has more substance than the first, but is still not enough to unsettle
this Court’s holding. Senator Yarborough’s view is the only item in all
the ADEA hearings, reports, and debates that goes against the grain of
the common understanding of age discrimination. Even from a sponsor,
a single outlying statement cannot stand against a tide of context and
history, not to mention 30 years of judicial interpretation producing no
apparent legislative qualms. Pp. 598–599.
(c) Finally, the argument that the Court owes deference to the
EEOC’s contrary reading falls short because the EEOC is clearly
wrong. Even for an agency able to claim all the authority possible
under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.,
467 U. S. 837, deference to its statutory interpretation is called for only
when the devices of judicial construction have been tried and found to
yield no clear sense of congressional intent, e. g., INS v. Cardoza-
Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 446. Here, regular interpretive method leaves
no serious question. The word “age” takes on a definite meaning from
being in the phrase “discriminat[ion] . . . because of such individ-
ual’s age,” occurring as that phrase does in a statute structured and
manifestly intended to protect the older from arbitrary favor for the
younger. Pp. 599–600.
296 F. 3d 466, reversed.
Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist,
C. J., and Stevens, O’Connor, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined.
Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 601. Thomas, J., filed a dis-
senting opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined, post, p. 602.
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., argued the cause for petitioner.
With him on the briefs were Deanne E. Maynard, William
J. Kilberg, and Craig C. Martin.
Mark W. Biggerman argued the cause for respondents.
With him on the brief were Erin Stottlemyer Gold, E. Bruce
Hadden, and Joanne C. Brant.

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Acting Solicitor General Clement argued the cause for
the United States et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance.
With him on the brief were Irving L. Gornstein, Carolyn L.
Wheeler, Lorraine C. Davis, Robert J. Gregory, and Susan
R. Oxford.*
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
(ADEA or Act), 81 Stat. 602, 29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq., forbids
discriminatory preference for the young over the old. The
question in this case is whether it also prohibits favoring the
old over the young. We hold it does not.
I
In 1997, a collective-bargaining agreement between peti-
tioner General Dynamics and the United Auto Workers elim-
inated the company’s obligation to provide health benefits to
subsequently retired employees, except as to then-current
workers at least 50 years old. Respondents (collectively,
Cline) were then at least 40 and thus protected by the Act,
see 29 U. S. C. § 631(a), but under 50 and so without promise
of the benefits. All of them objected to the new terms, al-
though some had retired before the change in order to get
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for AARP by Laurie
A. McCann, Daniel B. Kohrman, and Melvin Radowitz; for the American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations et al. by
Jonathan P. Hiatt, James B. Coppess, Daniel W. Sherrick, Michael F.
Saggau, and Laurence Gold; for the Central States, Southeast and South-
west Areas Health and Welfare Fund by Thomas C. Nyhan, James P.
Condon, and John J. Franczyk, Jr.; for the Equal Employment Advisory
Council et al. by Ann Elizabeth Reesman, Daniel V. Yager, Katherine
Y. K. Cheung, Stephen A. Bokat, Robin S. Conrad, and Ellen Dunham
Bryant; for the ERISA Industry Committee by Caroline M. Brown and
John M. Vine; and for the National Education Association by Robert H.
Chanin, John M. West, and Douglas L. Greenfield.

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the prior advantage, some retired afterwards with no bene-
fit, and some worked on, knowing the new contract would
give them no health coverage when they were through.
Before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC or Commission) they claimed that the agreement vio-
lated the ADEA, because it “discriminate[d against them] . . .
with respect to . . . compensation, terms, conditions, or priv-
ileges of employment, because of [their] age,” § 623(a)(1).
The EEOC agreed, and invited General Dynamics and the
union to settle informally with Cline.
When they failed, Cline brought this action against Gen-
eral Dynamics, combining claims under the ADEA and state
law. The District Court called the federal claim one of “re-
verse age discrimination,” upon which, it observed, no court
had ever granted relief under the ADEA. 98 F. Supp. 2d
846, 848 (ND Ohio 2000). It dismissed in reliance on the
Seventh Circuit’s opinion in Hamilton v. Caterpillar Inc.,
966 F. 2d 1226 (1992), that “the ADEA ‘does not protect . . .
the younger against the older,’ ” id., at 1227 (quoting Karlen
v. City Colleges of Chicago, 837 F. 2d 314, 318 (CA7), cert.
denied sub nom. Teachers v. City Colleges of Chicago, 486
U. S. 1044 (1988)).
A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed, 296 F. 3d
466 (2002), with the majority reasoning that the prohibition
of § 623(a)(1), covering discrimination against “any individual
. . . because of such individual’s age,” is so clear on its face
that if Congress had meant to limit its coverage to protect
only the older worker against the younger, it would have
said so. Id., at 472. The court acknowledged the conflict of
its ruling with earlier cases, including Hamilton and Schuler
v. Polaroid Corp., 848 F. 2d 276 (1988) (opinion of Breyer, J.),
from the First Circuit, but it criticized the cases going the
other way for paying too much attention to the “hortatory,
generalized language” of the congressional findings incorpo-
rated in the ADEA. 296 F. 3d, at 470. The Sixth Circuit

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drew support for its view from the position taken by the
EEOC in an interpretive regulation.1 Id., at 471.
Judge Cole, concurring, saw the issue as one of plain mean-
ing that produced no absurd result, although he acknowl-
edged a degree of tension with O’Connor v. Consolidated
Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U. S. 308 (1996), in which this Court
spoke of age discrimination as giving better treatment to a
“ ‘substantially younger’ ” worker. 296 F. 3d, at 472. Judge
Williams dissented in preference for Hamilton and the con-
sensus of the federal courts, thinking it “obvious that the
older a person is, the greater his or her needs become.” 296
F. 3d, at 476.
We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict among the
Circuits, 538 U. S. 976 (2003), and now reverse.
II
The common ground in this case is the generalization that
the ADEA’s prohibition covers “discriminat[ion] . . . because
of [an] individual’s age,” 29 U. S. C. § 623(a)(1), that helps the
younger by hurting the older. In the abstract, the phrase
is open to an argument for a broader construction, since ref-
erence to “age” carries no express modifier and the word
could be read to look two ways. This more expansive possi-
ble understanding does not, however, square with the natu-
ral reading of the whole provision prohibiting discrimination,
and in fact Congress’s interpretive clues speak almost unani-
mously to an understanding of discrimination as directed
against workers who are older than the ones getting
treated better.
Congress chose not to include age within discrimination
forbidden by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, § 715,
1 29 CFR § 1625.2(a) (2003) (“[I]f two people apply for the same position,
and one is 42 and the other 52, the employer may not lawfully turn down
either one on the basis of age, but must make such decision on the basis
of some other factor”). We discuss this regulation at greater length,
infra, at 599–600.

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78 Stat. 265, being aware that there were legitimate reasons
as well as invidious ones for making employment decisions
on age. Instead it called for a study of the issue by the
Secretary of Labor, ibid., who concluded that age discrimina-
tion was a serious problem, but one different in kind from
discrimination on account of race.2 The Secretary spoke of
disadvantage to older individuals from arbitrary and stereo-
typical employment distinctions (including then-common pol-
icies of age ceilings on hiring), but he examined the problem
in light of rational considerations of increased pension cost
and, in some cases, legitimate concerns about an older per-
son’s ability to do the job. Wirtz Report 2. When the Sec-
retary ultimately took the position that arbitrary discrimina-
tion against older workers was widespread and persistent
enough to call for a federal legislative remedy, id., at 21–22,
he placed his recommendation against the background of
common experience that the potential cost of employing
someone rises with age, so that the older an employee is, the
greater the inducement to prefer a younger substitute. The
report contains no suggestion that reactions to age level off
at some point, and it was devoid of any indication that the
Secretary had noticed unfair advantages accruing to older
employees at the expense of their juniors.
Congress then asked for a specific proposal, Fair Labor
Standards Amendments of 1966, § 606, 80 Stat. 845, which
the Secretary provided in January 1967. 113 Cong. Rec.
1377 (1967); see also Public Papers of the Presidents, Lyndon
2 That report found that “[e]mployment discrimination because of race
is identified . . . with . . . feelings about people entirely unrelated to their
ability to do the job. There is no significant discrimination of this kind
so far as older workers are concerned. The most closely related kind
of discrimination in the non-employment of older workers involves their
rejection because of assumptions about the effect of age on their ability to
do a job when there is in fact no basis for these assumptions.” Report
of the Secretary of Labor, The Older American Worker: Age Discrimina-
tion in Employment 2 (June 1965) (hereinafter Wirtz Report) (emphasis
in original).

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B. Johnson, Vol. 1, Jan. 23, 1967, p. 37 (1968) (message to
Congress urging that “[o]pportunity . . . be opened to the
many Americans over 45 who are qualified and willing to
work”). Extensive House and Senate hearings ensued.
See Age Discrimination in Employment: Hearings on H. R.
3651 et al. before the General Subcommittee on Labor of the
House Committee on Education and Labor, 90th Cong., 1st
Sess. (1967) (hereinafter House Hearings); Age Discrimina-
tion in Employment: Hearings on S. 830 and S. 788 before
the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on
Labor and Public Welfare, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967) (here-
inafter Senate Hearings). See generally EEOC v. Wyo-
ming, 460 U. S. 226, 229–233 (1983).
The testimony at both hearings dwelled on unjustified as-
sumptions about the effect of age on ability to work. See,
e. g., House Hearings 151 (statement of Rep. Joshua Eilberg)
(“At age 40, a worker may find that age restrictions become
common . . . . By age 45, his employment opportunities are
likely to contract sharply; they shrink more severely at age
55 and virtually vanish by age 65”); id., at 422 (statement of
Rep. Claude Pepper) (“We must provide meaningful opportu-
nities for employment to the thousands of workers 45 and
over who are well qualified but nevertheless denied jobs
which they may desperately need because someone has arbi-
trarily decided that they are too old”); Senate Hearings 34
(statement of Sen. George Murphy) (“[A]n older worker often
faces an attitude on the part of some employers that prevents
him from receiving serious consideration or even an inter-
view in his search for employment”).3 The hearings specif-
3 See also House Hearings 449 (statement of Rep. James A. Burke) (“Dis-
crimination arises for [the older job seeker] because of assumptions that
are made about the effects of age on performance”); Senate Hearings 179
(statement of Dr. Harold L. Sheppard) (“[O]ne of the underlying conditions
for this upward trend in unemployment rates for a given group of so-called
older workers over a period of time . . . is related to the barrier of
age discrimination”); id., at 215 (statement of Sen. Harrison A. Williams)

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ically addressed higher pension and benefit costs as heav-
ier drags on hiring workers the older they got. See, e. g.,
House Hearings 45 (statement of Norman Sprague) (Apart
from stereotypes, “labor market conditions, seniority and
promotion-from-within policies, job training costs, pension
and insurance costs, and mandatory retirement policies often
make employers reluctant to hire older workers”). The rec-
ord thus reflects the common facts that an individual’s
chances to find and keep a job get worse over time; as be-
tween any two people, the younger is in the stronger posi-
tion, the older more apt to be tagged with demeaning stereo-
type. Not surprisingly, from the voluminous records of the
hearings, we have found (and Cline has cited) nothing sug-
gesting that any workers were registering complaints about
discrimination in favor of their seniors.
Nor is there any such suggestion in the introductory provi-
sions of the ADEA, 81 Stat. 602, which begins with state-
ments of purpose and findings that mirror the Wirtz Report
and the committee transcripts. Id., § 2. The findings stress
the impediments suffered by “older workers . . . in their
efforts to retain . . . and especially to regain employment,”
id., § 2(a)(1); “the [burdens] of arbitrary age limits regardless
of potential for job performance,” id., § 2(a)(2); the costs of
“otherwise desirable practices [that] may work to the disad-
vantage of older persons,” ibid.; and “the incidence of unem-
ployment, especially long-term unemployment[, which] is,
relative to the younger ages, high among older workers,” id.,
§ 2(a)(3). The statutory objects were “to promote employ-
ment of older persons based on their ability rather than age;
to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment; [and]
(“ ‘Unfavorable beliefs and generalizations about older persons have grown
up and have been translated into restrictive policies and practices in hiring
new employees which bar older jobseekers from employment principally
because of age’ ” (quoting earlier report of Senate Special Committee on
Aging)).

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to help employers and workers find ways of meeting prob-
lems arising from the impact of age on employment.” Id.,
§ 2(b).
In sum, except on one point, all the findings and state-
ments of objectives are either cast in terms of the effects of
age as intensifying over time, or are couched in terms that
refer to “older” workers, explicitly or implicitly relative to
“younger” ones. The single subject on which the statute
speaks less specifically is that of “arbitrary limits” or “arbi-
trary age discrimination.” But these are unmistakable ref-
erences to the Wirtz Report’s finding that “[a]lmost three out
of every five employers covered by [a] 1965 survey have in
effect age limitations (most frequently between 45 and 55)
on new hires which they apply without consideration of
an applicant’s other qualifications.” Wirtz Report 6. The
ADEA’s ban on “arbitrary limits” thus applies to age caps
that exclude older applicants, necessarily to the advantage
of younger ones.
Such is the setting of the ADEA’s core substantive provi-
sion, § 4 (as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 623), prohibiting employ-
ers and certain others from “discriminat[ion] . . . because of
[an] individual’s age,” whenever (as originally enacted) the
individual is “at least forty years of age but less than sixty-
five years of age,” § 12, 81 Stat. 607.4 The prefatory provi-
sions and their legislative history make a case that we think
is beyond reasonable doubt, that the ADEA was concerned
4 In 1978, Congress changed the upper age limit to 70 years, Pub. L.
95–256, § 3(a), 92 Stat. 189, and then struck it entirely in 1986, Pub. L.
99–592, § 2(c)(1), 100 Stat. 3342. The President transferred authority over
the ADEA from the Department of Labor to the EEOC in 1978. Reorg.
Plan No. 1 of 1978, 5 U. S. C. App. § 2, p. 206. Congress has also made
other changes, including extending the ADEA to government employees
(state, local, and federal), Pub. L. 93–259, 88 Stat. 74–75 (amending 29
U. S. C. § 630(b) and adding § 633a), and clarifying that it extends, with
certain exceptions, to employee benefits, Pub. L. 101–433, 104 Stat. 978
(amending among other provisions 29 U. S. C. § 630(l)).

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to protect a relatively old worker from discrimination that
works to the advantage of the relatively young.
Nor is it remarkable that the record is devoid of any evi-
dence that younger workers were suffering at the expense
of their elders, let alone that a social problem required a
federal statute to place a younger worker in parity with an
older one. Common experience is to the contrary, and the
testimony, reports, and congressional findings simply confirm
that Congress used the phrase “discriminat[ion] . . . because
of [an] individual’s age” the same way that ordinary people
in common usage might speak of age discrimination any day
of the week. One commonplace conception of American so-
ciety in recent decades is its character as a “youth culture,”
and in a world where younger is better, talk about discrimi-
nation because of age is naturally understood to refer to dis-
crimination against the older.
This same, idiomatic sense of the statutory phrase is con-
firmed by the statute’s restriction of the protected class to
those 40 and above. If Congress had been worrying about
protecting the younger against the older, it would not likely
have ignored everyone under 40. The youthful deficiencies
of inexperience and unsteadiness invite stereotypical and
discriminatory thinking about those a lot younger than 40,
and prejudice suffered by a 40-year-old is not typically owing
to youth, as 40-year-olds sadly tend to find out. The enemy
of 40 is 30, not 50. See H. R. Rep. No. 805, 90th Cong., 1st
Sess., 6 (1967) (“[T]estimony indicated [40] to be the age at
which age discrimination in employment becomes evident”).
Even so, the 40-year threshold was adopted over the objec-
tion that some discrimination against older people begins at
an even younger age; female flight attendants were not fired
at 32 because they were too young, ibid. See also Senate
Hearings 47 (statement of Sec’y Wirtz) (lowering the mini-
mum age limit “would change the nature of the proposal from
an over-age employment discrimination measure”). Thus,
the 40-year threshold makes sense as identifying a class re-

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quiring protection against preference for their juniors, not
as defining a class that might be threatened by favoritism
toward seniors.5
The federal reports are as replete with cases taking this
position as they are nearly devoid of decisions like the one
reviewed here. To start closest to home, the best example
is Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U. S. 604 (1993), in which
we held there is no violation of the ADEA in firing an em-
ployee because his pension is about to vest, a basis for action
that we took to be analytically distinct from age, even though
it would never occur without advanced years. Id., at 611–
612. We said that “the very essence of age discrimination
[is] for an older employee to be fired because the employer
believes that productivity and competence decline with old
age,” id., at 610, whereas discrimination on the basis of pen-
sion status “would not constitute discriminatory treatment
on the basis of age [because t]he prohibited stereotype [of
5 Justice Thomas, post, at 606–613 (dissenting opinion), charges our
holding with unnaturally limiting a comprehensive prohibition of age dis-
crimination to “the principal evil that Congress targeted,” post, at 607,
which he calls inconsistent with the method of McDonald v. Santa Fe
Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273 (1976) (the Title VII prohibition of discrim-
ination because of race protects whites), and Oncale v. Sundowner Off-
shore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75 (1998) (the Title VII prohibition of
discrimination because of sex protects men from sexual harassment by
other men). His objection is aimed at the wrong place. As we discuss
at greater length infra, at 596–598, we are not dealing here with a prohibi-
tion expressed by the unqualified use of a term without any conventionally
narrow sense (as “race” or “sex” are used in Title VII), and are not nar-
rowing such a prohibition so that it covers only instances of the particular
practice that induced Congress to enact the general prohibition. We hold
that Congress expressed a prohibition by using a term in a commonly
understood, narrow sense (“age” as “relatively old age”). Justice
Thomas may think we are mistaken, post, at 603–606, when we infer that
Congress used “age” as meaning the antithesis of youth rather than mean-
ing any age, but we are not making the particular mistake of confining the
application of terms used in a broad sense to the relatively narrow class
of cases that prompted Congress to address their subject matter.

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the faltering worker] would not have figured in this decision,
and the attendant stigma would not ensue,” id., at 612. And
we have relied on this same reading of the statute in other
cases. See, e. g., O’Connor, 517 U. S., at 313 (“Because the
ADEA prohibits discrimination on the basis of age . . . the
fact that a replacement is substantially younger than the
plaintiff is a . . . reliable indicator of age discrimination”);
Western Air Lines, Inc. v. Criswell, 472 U. S. 400, 409 (1985)
(“[T]he legislative history of the ADEA . . . repeatedly em-
phasize[s that] the process of psychological and physiological
degeneration caused by aging varies with each individual”).
While none of these cases directly addresses the question
presented here, all of them show our consistent understand-
ing that the text, structure, and history point to the ADEA
as a remedy for unfair preference based on relative youth,
leaving complaints of the relatively young outside the statu-
tory concern.
The Courts of Appeals and the District Courts have read
the law the same way, and prior to this case have enjoyed
virtually unanimous accord in understanding the ADEA to
forbid only discrimination preferring young to old. So the
Seventh Circuit held in Hamilton, and the First Circuit said
in Schuler, and so the District Courts have ruled in cases
too numerous for citation here in the text. 6 The very
6 See Lawrence v. Irondequoit, 246 F. Supp. 2d 150, 161 (WDNY 2002)
(following Hamilton); Greer v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 85
FEP Cases 416, 419 (SDNY 2001) (noting unanimity of the courts); Ditt-
man v. General Motors Corp.-Delco Chassis Div., 941 F. Supp. 284, 286–
287 (Conn. 1996) (alternative holding) (following Hamilton); Parker v.
Wakelin, 882 F. Supp. 1131, 1140 (Me. 1995) (“The ADEA has never been
construed to permit younger persons to claim discrimination against them
in favor of older persons”); Wehrly v. American Motors Sales Corp., 678
F. Supp. 1366, 1382 (ND Ind. 1988) (following Karlen v. City Colleges of
Chicago, 837 F. 2d 314, 318 (CA7), cert. denied sub nom. Teachers v. City
Colleges of Chicago, 486 U. S. 1044 (1988)). The only case we have found
arguably to the contrary is Mississippi Power & Light Co. v. Local Union

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strength of this consensus is enough to rule out any serious
claim of ambiguity, and congressional silence after years of
judicial interpretation supports adherence to the traditional
view.7
III
Cline and amicus EEOC proffer three rejoinders in favor
of their competing view that the prohibition works both
ways. First, they say (as does Justice Thomas, post, at
602–605) that the statute’s meaning is plain when the word
“age” receives its natural and ordinary meaning and the stat-
ute is read as a whole giving “age” the same meaning
throughout. And even if the text does not plainly mean
what they say it means, they argue that the soundness of
their version is shown by a colloquy on the floor of the Senate
involving Senator Yarborough, a sponsor of the bill that
became the ADEA. Finally, they fall back to the position
(fortified by Justice Scalia’s dissent) that we should defer
to the EEOC’s reading of the statute. On each point, how-
ever, we think the argument falls short of unsettling our
view of the natural meaning of the phrase speaking of dis-
crimination, read in light of the statute’s manifest purpose.
A
The first response to our reading is the dictionary argu-
ment that “age” means the length of a person’s life, with the
Nos. 605 & 985, IBEW, 945 F. Supp. 980, 985 (SD Miss. 1996), which al-
lowed a claim objecting to a benefit given to individuals between 60 and
65 and denied to those outside that range, without discussing Hamilton
or any of the other authority holding that the plaintiffs under 60 would
lack a cause of action.
7 Congress has not been shy in revising other judicial constructions of
the ADEA. See Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio v. Betts,
492 U. S. 158, 167–168 (1989) (observing that the 1978 amendment to the
ADEA “changed the specific result” of this Court’s earlier case of United
Air Lines, Inc. v. McMann, 434 U. S. 192 (1977)); H. R. Rep. No. 101–664,
pp. 10–11, 34 (1990) (stating that Congress in 1978 had also disapproved
McMann’s reasoning, and that with the 1990 amendments it meant to
overrule Betts as well).

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phrase “because of such individual’s age” stating a simple
test of causation: “discriminat[ion] . . . because of [an] individ-
ual’s age” is treatment that would not have occurred if the
individual’s span of years had been longer or shorter. The
case for this reading calls attention to the other instances of
“age” in the ADEA that are not limited to old age, such as
29 U. S. C. § 623(f), which gives an employer a defense to
charges of age discrimination when “age is a bona fide occu-
pational qualification.” Cline and the EEOC argue that if
“age” meant old age, § 623(f) would then provide a defense
(old age is a bona fide qualification) only for an employer’s
action that on our reading would never clash with the statute
(because preferring the older is not forbidden).
The argument rests on two mistakes. First, it assumes
that the word “age” has the same meaning wherever the
ADEA uses it. But this is not so, and Cline simply misem-
ploys the “presumption that identical words used in different
parts of the same act are intended to have the same mean-
ing.” Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286
U. S. 427, 433 (1932). Cline forgets that “the presumption is
not rigid and readily yields whenever there is such variation
in the connection in which the words are used as reasonably
to warrant the conclusion that they were employed in differ-
ent parts of the act with different intent.” Ibid.; see also
United States v. Cleveland Indians Baseball Co., 532 U. S.
200, 213 (2001) (phrase “wages paid” has different meanings
in different parts of Title 26 U. S. C.); Robinson v. Shell Oil
Co., 519 U. S. 337, 343–344 (1997) (term “employee” has dif-
ferent meanings in different parts of Title VII). The pre-
sumption of uniform usage thus relents 8 when a word used
8 It gets too little credit for relenting, though. “The tendency to assume
that a word which appears in two or more legal rules, and so in connection
with more than one purpose, has and should have precisely the same scope
in all of them, runs all through legal discussions. It has all the tenacity
of original sin and must constantly be guarded against.” Cook, “Sub-
stance” and “Procedure” in the Conflict of Laws, 42 Yale L. J. 333, 337

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has several commonly understood meanings among which a
speaker can alternate in the course of an ordinary conversa-
tion, without being confused or getting confusing.
“Age” is that kind of word. As Justice Thomas (post, at
603) agrees, the word “age” standing alone can be readily
understood either as pointing to any number of years lived,
or as common shorthand for the longer span and concurrent
aches that make youth look good. Which alternative was
probably intended is a matter of context; we understand the
different choices of meaning that lie behind a sentence like
“Age can be shown by a driver’s license,” and the statement,
“Age has left him a shut-in.” So it is easy to understand
that Congress chose different meanings at different places in
the ADEA, as the different settings readily show. Hence
the second flaw in Cline’s argument for uniform usage: it
ignores the cardinal rule that “[s]tatutory language must be
read in context [since] a phrase ‘gathers meaning from the
words around it.’ ” Jones v. United States, 527 U. S. 373, 389
(1999) (quoting Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303,
307 (1961)). The point here is that we are not asking an
abstract question about the meaning of “age”; we are seeking
the meaning of the whole phrase “discriminate . . . because
of such individual’s age,” where it occurs in the ADEA, 29
U. S. C. § 623(a)(1). As we have said, social history emphati-
cally reveals an understanding of age discrimination as
aimed against the old, and the statutory reference to age
discrimination in this idiomatic sense is confirmed by legisla-
tive history. For the very reason that reference to context
shows that “age” means “old age” when teamed with “dis-
crimination,” the provision of an affirmative defense when
age is a bona fide occupational qualification readily shows
that “age” as a qualification means comparative youth. As
(1933). The passage has become a staple of our opinions. See United
States v. Cleveland Indians Baseball Co., 532 U. S. 200, 213 (2001); Na-
tionsBank of N. C., N. A. v. Variable Annuity Life Ins. Co., 513 U. S. 251,
262 (1995); CAB v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 367 U. S. 316, 328 (1961).

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context tells us that “age” means one thing in § 623(a)(1) and
another in § 623(f),9 so it also tells us that the presumption
of uniformity cannot sensibly operate here.10
The comparisons Justice Thomas urges, post, at 608–612,
to McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273
(1976), and Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523
U. S. 75 (1998), serve to clarify our position. Both cases in-
volved Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C.
§ 2000e et seq., and its prohibition on employment discrimina-
tion “because of [an] individual’s race . . . [or] sex,” § 2000e–
2(a)(1) (emphasis added). The term “age” employed by the
ADEA is not, however, comparable to the terms “race” or
“sex” employed by Title VII. “Race” and “sex” are general
terms that in every day usage require modifiers to indicate
9 An even wider contextual enquiry supports our conclusion, for the uni-
formity Cline and the EEOC claim for the uses of “age” within the ADEA
itself would introduce unwelcome discord among the federal statutes on
employee benefit plans. For example, the Tax Code requires an employer
to allow certain employees who reach age 55 to diversify their stock own-
ership plans in part, 26 U. S. C. § 401(a)(28)(B); removes a penalty on early
distributions from retirement plans at age 591⁄ 2, § 72(t)(2)(A)(i); requires an
employer to allow many employees to receive benefits immediately upon
retiring at age 65, § 401(a)(14); and requires an employer to adjust upward
an employee’s pension benefits if that employee continues to work past
age 70 1⁄ 2, § 401(a)(9)(C)(iii). The Employee Retirement Income Security
Act of 1974 makes similar provisions. See, e. g., 29 U. S. C. § 1002(24)
(“normal retirement age” may come at age 65, although the plan specifies
later); § 1053(a) (a plan must pay full benefits to employees who retire at
normal retirement age). Taken one at a time any of these statutory direc-
tives might be viewed as an exception Congress carved out of a generally
recognized principle that employers may not give benefits to older employ-
ees that they withhold from younger ones. Viewed as a whole, however,
they are incoherent with the alleged congressional belief that such a back-
ground principle existed.
10 Essentially the same answer suffices for Cline’s and the EEOC’s sug-
gestion that our reading is at odds with the statute’s ban on employers’
“print[ing] . . . any notice or advertisement relating to employment . . .
indicating any preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination . . .
based on age.” § 623(e).

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any relatively narrow application. We do not commonly un-
derstand “race” to refer only to the black race, or “sex” to
refer only to the female. But the prohibition of age discrim-
ination is readily read more narrowly than analogous provi-
sions dealing with race and sex. That narrower reading is
the more natural one in the textual setting, and it makes
perfect sense because of Congress’s demonstrated concern
with distinctions that hurt older people.
B
The second objection has more substance than the first,
but still not enough. The record of congressional action re-
ports a colloquy on the Senate floor between two of the legis-
lators most active in pushing for the ADEA, Senators Javits
and Yarborough. Senator Javits began the exchange by
raising a concern mentioned by Senator Dominick, that “the
bill might not forbid discrimination between two persons
each of whom would be between the ages of 40 and 65.” 113
Cong. Rec. 31255 (1967). Senator Javits then gave his own
view that, “if two individuals ages 52 and 42 apply for the
same job, and the employer selected the man aged 42 solely
. . . because he is younger than the man 52, then he will
have violated the act,” and asked Senator Yarborough for his
opinion. Ibid. Senator Yarborough answered that “[t]he
law prohibits age being a factor in the decision to hire, as to
one age over the other, whichever way [the] decision went.”
Ibid.
Although in the past we have given weight to Senator
Yarborough’s views on the construction of the ADEA be-
cause he was a sponsor, see, e. g., Public Employees Retire-
ment System of Ohio v. Betts, 492 U. S. 158, 179 (1989), his
side of this exchange is not enough to unsettle our reading
of the statute. It is not merely that the discussion was
prompted by the question mentioned in O’Connor v. Consoli-
dated Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U. S. 308 (1996), the possibil-
ity of a 52-year-old suing over a preference for someone

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Opinion of the Court
younger but in the over-40 protected class. What matters
is that the Senator’s remark, “whichever way [the] decision
went,” is the only item in all the 1967 hearings, reports, and
debates going against the grain of the common understand-
ing of age discrimination.11 Even from a sponsor, a single
outlying statement cannot stand against a tide of context and
history, not to mention 30 years of judicial interpretation
producing no apparent legislative qualms. See Consumer
Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S.
102, 118 (1980) (“[O]rdinarily even the contemporaneous re-
marks of a single legislator who sponsors a bill are not con-
trolling in analyzing legislative history”).
C
The third objection relies on a reading consistent with the
Yarborough comment, adopted by the agency now charged
with enforcing the statute, as set out at 29 CFR § 1625.2(a)
(2003), and quoted in full, n. 1, supra. When the EEOC
adopted § 1625.2(a) in 1981, shortly after assuming adminis-
trative responsibility for the ADEA, it gave no reasons for
the view expressed, beyond noting that the provision was
carried forward from an earlier Department of Labor regula-
tion, see 44 Fed. Reg. 68858 (1979); 46 Fed. Reg. 47724 (1981);
that earlier regulation itself gave no reasons, see 33 Fed.
Reg. 9172 (1968) (reprinting 29 CFR § 860.91, rescinded by
46 Fed. Reg. 47724 (1981)).
11 It is only fair to add, though, that Senator Dominick himself does ap-
pear to have sought clarification on the question presented, asking in a
statement appended to the Committee Report whether “the prospective
employer [is] open to a charge of discrimination if he hires the younger
man and would . . . be open to a charge of discrimination by the younger
man if he hired the older one.” S. Rep. No. 723, 90th Cong., 1st Sess.,
15–16 (1967); see also id., at 16 (mentioning confusion among committee
counsel). Senator Dominick considered this result undesirable. See ibid.
(“[M]any legal complexities surrounding this bill . . . have not been ade-
quately dealt with by the committee”).

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600 GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. v. CLINE
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The parties contest the degree of weight owed to the
EEOC’s reading, with General Dynamics urging us that
Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134 (1944), sets the limit,
while Cline and the EEOC say that § 1625.2(a) deserves
greater deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Re-
sources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). Al-
though we have devoted a fair amount of attention lately to
the varying degrees of deference deserved by agency pro-
nouncements of different sorts, see United States v. Mead
Corp., 533 U. S. 218 (2001); Christensen v. Harris County,
529 U. S. 576 (2000), the recent cases are not on point here.
In Edelman v. Lynchburg College, 535 U. S. 106, 114 (2002),
we found no need to choose between Skidmore and Chevron,
or even to defer, because the EEOC was clearly right; today,
we neither defer nor settle on any degree of deference be-
cause the Commission is clearly wrong.
Even for an agency able to claim all the authority possible
under Chevron, deference to its statutory interpretation is
called for only when the devices of judicial construction have
been tried and found to yield no clear sense of congressional
intent. INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 446–448
(1987) (citing Chevron, supra, at 843, n. 9). Here, regular
interpretive method leaves no serious question, not even
about purely textual ambiguity in the ADEA. The word
“age” takes on a definite meaning from being in the phrase
“discriminat[ion] . . . because of such individual’s age,” occur-
ring as that phrase does in a statute structured and mani-
festly intended to protect the older from arbitrary favor for
the younger.
IV
We see the text, structure, purpose, and history of the
ADEA, along with its relationship to other federal statutes,
as showing that the statute does not mean to stop an em-
ployer from favoring an older employee over a younger one.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.

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Scalia, J., dissenting
Justice Scalia, dissenting.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
(ADEA or Act), 29 U. S. C. §§ 621–634, makes it unlawful for
an employer to “discriminate against any individual with re-
spect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of
employment, because of such individual’s age.” § 623(a)(1).
The question in this case is whether, in the absence of an
affirmative defense, the ADEA prohibits an employer from
favoring older over younger workers when both are pro-
tected by the Act, i. e., are 40 years of age or older.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
has answered this question in the affirmative. In 1981, the
agency adopted a regulation which states, in pertinent part:
“It is unlawful in situations where this Act applies, for
an employer to discriminate in hiring or in any other
way by giving preference because of age between indi-
viduals 40 and over. Thus, if two people apply for the
same position, and one is 42 and the other 52, the em-
ployer may not lawfully turn down either one on the
basis of age, but must make such decision on the basis
of some other factor.” 29 CFR § 1625.2(a) (2003).
This regulation represents the interpretation of the agency
tasked by Congress with enforcing the ADEA. See 29
U. S. C. § 628.
The Court brushes aside the EEOC’s interpretation as
“clearly wrong.” Ante, at 600. I cannot agree with the
contention upon which that rejection rests: that “regular
interpretive method leaves no serious question, not even
about purely textual ambiguity in the ADEA.” Ibid. It
is evident, for the reasons given in Part II of Justice
Thomas’s dissenting opinion, that the Court’s interpretive
method is anything but “regular.” And for the reasons
given in Part I of that opinion, the EEOC’s interpretation is
neither foreclosed by the statute nor unreasonable.

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602 GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. v. CLINE
Thomas, J., dissenting
Because § 623(a) “does not unambiguously require a differ-
ent interpretation, and . . . the [EEOC’s] regulation is an
entirely reasonable interpretation of the text,” Barnhart v.
Thomas, ante, at 29–30, I would defer to the agency’s author-
itative conclusion. See United States v. Mead Corp., 533
U. S. 218, 257 (2001) (Scalia, J., dissenting). I respectfully
dissent.
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Kennedy joins,
dissenting.
This should have been an easy case. The plain language
of 29 U. S. C. § 623(a)(1) mandates a particular outcome: that
the respondents are able to sue for discrimination against
them in favor of older workers. The agency charged with
enforcing the statute has adopted a regulation and issued an
opinion as an adjudicator, both of which adopt this natural
interpretation of the provision. And the only portion of leg-
islative history relevant to the question before us is consist-
ent with this outcome. Despite the fact that these tradi-
tional tools of statutory interpretation lead inexorably to the
conclusion that respondents can state a claim for discrimina-
tion against the relatively young, the Court, apparently dis-
appointed by this result, today adopts a different interpreta-
tion. In doing so, the Court, of necessity, creates a new tool
of statutory interpretation, and then proceeds to give this
newly created “social history” analysis dispositive weight.
Because I cannot agree with the Court’s new approach
to interpreting antidiscrimination statutes, I respectfully
dissent.
I
“The starting point for [the] interpretation of a statute
is always its language,” Community for Creative Non-
Violence v. Reid, 490 U. S. 730, 739 (1989), and “courts must
presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means
and means in a statute what it says there,” Connecticut Nat.
Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 253–254 (1992). Thus,

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603 Cite as: 540 U. S. 581 (2004)
Thomas, J., dissenting
rather than looking through the historical background of the
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA),
I would instead start with the text of § 623(a)(1) itself, and if
“the words of [the] statute are unambiguous,” my “judicial
inquiry [would be] complete.” Id., at 254 (internal quotation
marks omitted).
The plain language of the ADEA clearly allows for suits
brought by the relatively young when discriminated against
in favor of the relatively old. The phrase “discriminate . . .
because of such individual’s age,” 29 U. S. C. § 623(a)(1), is not
restricted to discrimination because of relatively older age.
If an employer fired a worker for the sole reason that the
worker was under 45, it would be entirely natural to say that
the worker had been discriminated against because of his
age. I struggle to think of what other phrase I would use
to describe such behavior. I wonder how the Court would
describe such incidents, because the Court apparently con-
siders such usage to be unusual, atypical, or aberrant. See
ante, at 591 (concluding that the “common usage” of language
would exclude discrimination against the relatively young
from the phrase “discriminat[ion] . . . because of [an] individu-
al’s age”).
The parties do identify a possible ambiguity, centering on
the multiple meanings of the word “age.” As the parties
note, “age” does have an alternative meaning, namely, “[t]he
state of being old; old age.” American Heritage Dictionary
33 (3d ed. 1992); see also Oxford American Dictionary 18
(1999); Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 40
(1993). First, this secondary meaning is, of course, less com-
monly used than the primary meaning, and appears re-
stricted to those few instances where it is clear in the imme-
diate context of the phrase that it could have no other
meaning. The phrases “hair white with age,” American
Heritage Dictionary, supra, at 33, or “eyes . . . dim with age,”
Random House Dictionary of the English Language 37 (2d
ed. 1987), cannot possibly be using “age” to include “young

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604 GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. v. CLINE
Thomas, J., dissenting
age,” unlike a phrase such as “he fired her because of her
age.” Second, the use of the word “age” in other portions
of the statute effectively destroys any doubt. The ADEA’s
advertising prohibition, 29 U. S. C. § 623(e), and the bona fide
occupational qualification defense, § 623(f)(1), would both be
rendered incoherent if the term “age” in those provisions
were read to mean only “older age.” 1 Although it is true
that the “ ‘presumption that identical words used in different
parts of the same act are intended to have the same mean-
ing’ ” is not “rigid” and can be overcome when the context is
clear, ante, at 595 (quoting Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc.
v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 433 (1932)), the presumption
is not rebutted here. As noted, the plain and common read-
ing of the phrase “such individual’s age” refers to the individ-
ual’s chronological age. At the very least, it is manifestly
unclear that it bars only discrimination against the relatively
older. Only by incorrectly concluding that § 623(a)(1) clearly
and unequivocally bars only discrimination as “against the
older,” ante, at 591, can the Court then conclude that the
“context” of §§ 623(f)(1) and 623(e) allows for an alternative
meaning of the term “age,” ante, at 596–597.
The one structural argument raised by the Court in de-
fense of its interpretation of “discriminates . . . because of
such individual’s age” is the provision limiting the ADEA’s
protections to those over 40 years of age. See 29 U. S. C.
1 Section 623(f)(1) provides a defense where “age is a bona fide occupa-
tional qualification.” If “age” were limited to “older age,” then § 623(f)(1)
would provide a defense only where a defense is not needed, since under
the Court’s reading, discrimination against the relatively young is always
legal under the ADEA. Section 623(e) bans the “print[ing] . . . [of] any
notice or advertisement relating to . . . indicating any preference, limita-
tion, specification, or discrimination . . . based on age.” Again, if “age”
were read to mean only “older age,” an employer could print advertise-
ments asking only for young applicants for a new job (where hiring or
considering only young applicants is banned by the ADEA), but could not
print advertisements requesting only older applicants (where hiring only
older applicants would be legal under the Court’s reading of the ADEA).

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605 Cite as: 540 U. S. 581 (2004)
Thomas, J., dissenting
§ 631(a). At first glance, this might look odd when paired
with the conclusion that § 623(a)(1) bars discrimination
against the relatively young as well as the relatively old, but
there is a perfectly rational explanation. Congress could
easily conclude that age discrimination directed against
those under 40 is not as damaging, since a young worker
unjustly fired is likely to find a new job or otherwise recover
from the discrimination. A person over 40 fired due to irra-
tional age discrimination (whether because the worker is too
young or too old) might have a more difficult time recovering
from the discharge and finding new employment. Such an
interpretation also comports with the many findings of the
Wirtz report, United States Dept. of Labor, The Older Amer-
ican Worker: Age Discrimination in Employment (June
1965), and the parallel findings in the ADEA itself. See,
e. g., 29 U. S. C. § 621(a)(1) (finding that “older workers find
themselves disadvantaged in their efforts to retain employ-
ment, and especially to regain employment when displaced
from jobs”); § 621(a)(3) (finding that “the incidence of unem-
ployment, especially long-term unemployment with resultant
deterioration of skill, morale, and employer acceptability is,
relative to the younger ages, high among older workers”).
This plain reading of the ADEA is bolstered by the inter-
pretation of the agency charged with administering the stat-
ute. A regulation issued by the Equal Employment Oppor-
tunity Commission (EEOC) adopts the view contrary to the
Court’s, 29 CFR § 1625.2(a) (2003), and the only binding
EEOC decision that addresses the question before us also
adopted the view contrary to the Court’s, see Garrett v.
Runyon, Appeal No. 01960422, 1997 WL 574739, * 1 (EEOC,
Sept. 5, 1997). I agree with the Court that we need not
address whether deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v.
Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837
(1984), would apply to the EEOC’s regulation in this case.
See ante, at 600. Of course, I so conclude because the
EEOC’s interpretation is consistent with the best reading

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606 GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS, INC. v. CLINE
Thomas, J., dissenting
of the statute. The Court’s position, on the other hand, is
untenable. Even if the Court disagrees with my interpreta-
tion of the language of the statute, it strains credulity to
argue that such a reading is so unreasonable that an agency
could not adopt it. To suggest that, in the instant case, the
“regular interpretive method leaves no serious question, not
even about purely textual ambiguity in the ADEA,” ibid., is
to ignore the entirely reasonable (and, incidentally, correct)
contrary interpretation of the ADEA that the EEOC and
I advocate.
Finally, the only relevant piece of legislative history ad-
dressing the question before the Court—whether it would
be possible for a younger individual to sue based on discrimi-
nation against him in favor of an older individual—comports
with the plain reading of the text. Senator Yarborough, in
the only exchange that the parties identified from the legisla-
tive history discussing this particular question, confirmed
that the text really meant what it said. See 113 Cong. Rec.
31255 (1967).2 Although the statute is clear, and hence there
is no need to delve into the legislative history, this history
merely confirms that the plain reading of the text is correct.
II
Strangely, the Court does not explain why it departs from
accepted methods of interpreting statutes. It does, how-
ever, clearly set forth its principal reason for adopting its
particular reading of the phrase “discriminate . . . based on
[an] individual’s age” in Part III–A of its opinion. “The
point here,” the Court states, “is that we are not asking an
abstract question about the meaning of ‘age’; we are seeking
the meaning of the whole phrase ‘discriminate . . . because
of such individual’s age.’ . . . As we have said, social history
emphatically reveals an understanding of age discrimination
as aimed against the old, and the statutory reference to age
2 See ante, at 598 (citing exchange between Sens. Yarborough and
Javits).

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discrimination in this idiomatic sense is confirmed by legisla-
tive history.” Ante, at 596 (emphasis added). The Court
does not define “social history,” although it is apparently
something different from legislative history, because the
Court refers to legislative history as a separate interpretive
tool in the very same sentence. Indeed, the Court has never
defined “social history” in any previous opinion, probably be-
cause it has never sanctioned looking to “social history” as a
method of statutory interpretation. Today, the Court takes
this unprecedented step, and then places dispositive weight
on the new concept.
It appears that the Court considers the “social history” of
the phrase “discriminate . . . because of [an] individual’s age”
to be the principal evil that Congress targeted when it
passed the ADEA. In each section of its analysis, the Court
pointedly notes that there was no evidence of widespread
problems of antiyouth discrimination, and that the primary
concerns of Executive Branch officials and Members of Con-
gress pertained to problems that workers generally faced as
they increased in age.3 The Court reaches its final, legal
conclusion as to the meaning of the phrase (that “ordinary
people” employing the common usage of language would
“talk about discrimination because of age [as] naturally [re-
ferring to] discrimination against the older,” ante, at 591)
only after concluding both that “the ADEA was concerned
to protect a relatively old worker from discrimination that
works to the advantage of the relatively young” and that
3 See ante, at 587 (“The [Wirtz] report contains no suggestion that reac-
tions to age level off at some point, and it was devoid of any indication
that the Secretary [of Labor] had noticed unfair advantages accruing to
older employees at the expense of their juniors”); ante, at 589 (finding
from the records of congressional hearings “nothing suggesting that any
workers were registering complaints about discrimination in favor of their
seniors”); ante, at 590 (finding that, with one exception, “all the findings
and statements of objectives are either cast in terms of the effects of age
as intensifying over time, or are couched in terms that refer to ‘older’
workers, explicitly or implicitly relative to ‘younger’ ones”).

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“the record is devoid of any evidence that younger workers
were suffering at the expense of their elders, let alone that
a social problem required a federal statute to place a younger
worker in parity with an older one.” Ante, at 590–591.
Hence, the Court apparently concludes that if Congress has
in mind a particular, principal, or primary form of discrimi-
nation when it passes an antidiscrimination provision prohib-
iting persons from “discriminating because of [some personal
quality],” then the phrase “discriminate because of [some
personal quality]” only covers the principal or most common
form of discrimination relating to this personal quality.
The Court, however, has not typically interpreted nondis-
crimination statutes in this odd manner. “[S]tatutory prohi-
bitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably
comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our
laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by
which we are governed.” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore
Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 79 (1998). The oddity of the
Court’s new technique of statutory interpretation is high-
lighted by this Court’s contrary approach to the racial-
discrimination prohibition of Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e
et seq.
There is little doubt that the motivation behind the enact-
ment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to prevent invidious
discrimination against racial minorities, especially blacks.
See 110 Cong. Rec. 6552 (1964) (statement of Sen. Humphrey)
(“The goals of this bill are simple ones: To extend to Negro
citizens the same rights and the same opportunities that
white Americans take for granted”). President Kennedy, in
announcing his Civil Rights proposal, identified several social
problems, such as how a “Negro baby born in America today
. . . has about one-half as much chance of completing a high
school as a white baby . . . one-third as much chance of be-
coming a professional man, twice as much chance of becom-
ing unemployed, . . . and the prospects of earning only half

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as much.” Radio and Television Report to the American
People on Civil Rights, Public Papers of the Presidents, John
F. Kennedy, No. 237, June 11, 1963, pp. 468–469 (1964). He
gave no examples, and cited no occurrences, of discrimination
against whites or indicated that such discrimination moti-
vated him (even in part) to introduce the bill. Considered
by some to be the impetus for the submission of a Civil
Rights bill to Congress,4 the 1961 Civil Rights Commission
Report focused its employment section solely on discrimina-
tion against racial minorities, noting, for instance, that the
“twin problems” of unemployment and a lack of skilled work-
ers “are magnified for minority groups that are subject to
discrimination.” 3 U. S. Commission on Civil Rights Report
1 (1961). It also discussed and analyzed the more severe
unemployment statistics of black workers compared to white
workers. See id., at 1–4; see also id., at 153 (summarizing
findings of the Commission, listing examples only of discrimi-
nation against blacks). The report presented no evidence
of any problems (or even any incidents) of discrimination
against whites.
The congressional debates and hearings, although filled
with statements decrying discrimination against racial mi-
norities and setting forth the disadvantages those minorities
suffered, contain no references that I could find to any prob-
lem of discrimination against whites. See, e. g., 110 Cong.
Rec. 7204 (1964) (statement of Sen. Clark) (“I turn now to
the background of racial discrimination in the job market,
which is the basis for the need for this legislation. I suggest
that economics is at the heart of racial bias. The Negro has
been condemned to poverty because of lack of equal job op-
portunities. This poverty has kept the Negro out of the
mainstream of American life”); id., at 7379 (statement of Sen.
Kennedy) (“Title VII is directed toward what, in my judg-
ment, American Negroes need most to increase their health
4 See R. Loevy, To End All Segregation: The Politics of the Passage of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, p. 24 (1990).

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and happiness. . . . [T]o be deprived of the chance to make a
decent living and of the income needed to bring up children
is a family tragedy”); id., at 6547 (statement of Sen. Hum-
phrey) (“I would like to turn now to the problem of racial
discrimination in employment. At the present time Ne-
groes and members of other minority groups do not have an
equal chance to be hired, to be promoted, and to be given
the most desirable assignments”); ibid. (citing disfavorable
unemployment rates of nonwhites as compared to whites);
ibid. (“Discrimination in employment is not confined to any
region—it is widespread in every part of the country. It
is harmful to Negroes and to members of other minority
groups”); id., at 6548 (“The crux of the problem is to open
employment opportunities for Negroes in occupations which
have been traditionally closed to them”); id., at 6562 (state-
ment of Sen. Kuchel) (“If a Negro or a Puerto Rican or an
Indian or a Japanese-American or an American of Mexican
descent cannot secure a job and the opportunity to advance
on that job commensurate with his skill, then his right to be
served in places of public accommodation is a meaningless
one . . . . And if a member of a so-called minority group
believes that no matter how hard he studies, he will be con-
fronted with a life of unskilled and menial labor, then a loss
has occurred, not only for a human being, but also for our
Nation”); id., at 6748 (statement of Sen. Moss) (“All of us,
that is except the person who is discriminated against on the
basis of race, color, or national origin . . . . He frequently
knows that he is not going to school to prepare for a job. . . .
He frequently knows that no matter how hard he works, how
diligently he turns up day after day, how much overtime he
puts in, that he will never get to be the boss of a single work
crew or the foreman of a single division. And that is what
the fair employment practices title is about—not the right to
displace a white man or be given preference over him—but
simply the right to be in the running”). I find no evidence
that even a single legislator appeared concerned about

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whether there were incidents of discrimination against
whites, and I find no citation to any such incidents.
In sum, there is no record evidence “that [white] workers
were suffering at the expense of [racial minorities],” and in
1964, discrimination against whites in favor of racial minori-
ties was hardly “a social problem requir[ing] a federal statute
to place a [white] worker in parity with [racial minorities].”
Ante, at 591. Thus, “talk about discrimination because of
[race would] naturally [be] understood to refer to discrimi-
nation against [racial minorities].” Ibid. In light of the
Court’s opinion today, it appears that this Court has been
treading down the wrong path with respect to Title VII since
at least 1976.5 See McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp.
Co., 427 U. S. 273 (1976) (holding that Title VII protected
whites discriminated against in favor of racial minorities).
In McDonald, the Court relied on the fact that the terms
of Title VII, prohibiting the discharge of “any individual”
because of “such individual’s race,” 42 U. S. C. § 2000e–
2(a)(1), “are not limited to discrimination against members
of any particular race.” 427 U. S., at 278–279. Admittedly,
the Court there also relied on the EEOC’s interpretation of
Title VII as given in its decisions, id., at 279–280, and also
on statements from the legislative history of the enactment
of Title VII. See id., at 280 (citing 110 Cong. Rec., at 2578
(remarks of Rep. Celler); id., at 7218 (memorandum of Sen.
Clark); id., at 7213 (memorandum of Sens. Clark and Case);
id., at 8912 (remarks of Sen. Williams)). But, in the instant
case, as I have already noted above, see supra, at 605, the
EEOC has issued a regulation and a binding EEOC decision
adopting the view contrary to the Court’s and in line with
the interpretation of Title VII. And, again as already
noted, see supra, at 606, the only relevant piece of legislative
history with respect to the question before the Court is in
the same posture as the legislative history behind Title VII:
5 The same could likely be said, of course, of most, if not all, of the other
provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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namely, a statement that age discrimination cuts both ways
and a relatively younger individual could sue when discrimi-
nated against. See 113 Cong. Rec., at 31255 (statement of
Sen. Yarborough).
It is abundantly clear, then, that the Court’s new approach
to antidiscrimination statutes would lead us far astray from
well-settled principles of statutory interpretation. The
Court’s examination of “social history” is in serious tension
(if not outright conflict) with our prior cases in such matters.
Under the Court’s current approach, for instance, McDonald
and Oncale 6 are wrongly decided. One can only hope that
this new technique of statutory interpretation does not catch
on, and that its errors are limited to only this case.
Responding to this dissent, the Court insists that it is not
making this “particular mistake,” namely, “confining the ap-
plication of terms used in a broad sense to the relatively
narrow class of cases that prompted Congress to address
their subject matter.” Ante, at 592, n. 5. It notes that, in
contrast to the term “age,” the terms “race” and “sex” are
“general terms that in every day usage require modifiers to
indicate any relatively narrow application.” Ante, at 597–
598. The Court, thus, seems to claim that it is merely trying
to identify whether the “narrower reading” of the term
“age” is “the more natural one in the textual setting.” Ante,
at 598.7 But the Court does not seriously attempt to ana-
6 “[M]ale-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not
the principal evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII.”
Oncale, 523 U. S., at 79. I wonder if there is even a single reference in
all the committee reports and congressional debates on Title VII’s prohibi-
tion of sex discrimination to any “social problem requir[ing] a federal stat-
ute [to correct],” ante, at 591, arising out of excessive male-on-male sex-
ual harassment.
7 The Court phrases this differently: It states that the “prohibition of
age discrimination is readily read more narrowly than analogous provi-
sions dealing with race and sex.” Ante, at 598 (emphasis added). But
this can only be true if the Court believes that the term “age” is more
appropriately read in the narrower sense.

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lyze whether the term “age” is more naturally read narrowly
in the context of § 623(a)(1). Instead, the Court jumps im-
mediately to, and rests its entire “common usage” analysis,
ante, at 591, on, the “social history” of the “whole phrase
‘discriminate . . . because of such individual’s age.’ ” Ante,
at 596. In other words, the Court concludes that the “com-
mon usage” of “age discrimination” refers exclusively to dis-
crimination against the relatively old only because the “so-
cial history” of the phrase as a whole mandates such a
reading. As I have explained here, the “social history” of
the “whole phrase ‘discriminate . . . because of such individu-
al’s age,’ ” ibid., found in § 623(a)(1) is no different than the
“social history” of the whole phrase “discriminate . . . because
of such individual’s race.” 42 U. S. C. § 2000e–2(a)(1).
* * *
As the ADEA clearly prohibits discrimination because of
an individual’s age, whether the individual is too old or too
young, I would affirm the Court of Appeals. Because the
Court resorts to interpretive sleight of hand to avoid ad-
dressing the plain language of the ADEA, I respectfully
dissent.