Workforce Bulletin

On March 6, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a significant decision clarifying how discrimination claims brought by majority-group plaintiffs should be analyzed under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). In Massey v. Borough of Bergenfield, the court concluded that majority-group plaintiffs should not be required to satisfy the “background circumstances” rule—a doctrine that imposed a heightened burden on plaintiffs alleging discrimination against majority groups. In reaching that conclusion, the court, predicting that the New Jersey Supreme Court would do the same, relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, which rejected the background circumstances rule in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) cases. Massey marks the first federal appellate decision to apply Ames to state law.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) protects individuals who are at least 40 years of age from discrimination in the workplace. As such, the outcome of disparate-impact claims under the ADEA hinges, ordinarily, on whether or not an employer’s facially neutral-policy has a disparate impact on employees who are 40 years of age or older.  On January 10, 2017, the Third Circuit, in Karlo v. Pittsburgh Glass Works, LLC, 2017 BL 6064 (3d Cir. 2017), issued a precedential ruling, holding that disparate impact claims under the ADEA are not limited to comparisons of the ...