Employment Litigation · Primary-source case analysis

Meacham: The Employer Bears the RFOA Burden

By Aneeta Mishra and Timothy Chan

Published May 11, 2026 · Updated October 20, 2026

Decision: Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Lab., 554 U.S. 84 (2008).

An employer defending an age-discrimination disparate-impact claim must do more than name a non-age reason for its selection criteria. If it invokes the reasonable-factors-other-than-age defense, it must persuade the factfinder that the factors were reasonable. In Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, 554 U.S. 84 (2008), the Supreme Court placed that burden on the employer while preserving the employee’s separate duty to identify the specific practice causing the disparity. Its June 19, 2008 judgment vacated and remanded; it did not decide whether Knolls ultimately proved its defense. Meacham.

The layoff scores concentrated the losses among older workers

Knolls operated a federal laboratory and faced a fiscal-year 1996 workforce reduction. After voluntary departures, it used an involuntary selection process. Managers scored employees on performance, flexibility and the criticality of their skills; the formula also credited service. Of 31 employees selected for layoff, 30 were at least forty. Twenty-eight sued under federal and state age-discrimination laws. Their expert linked the outcomes particularly closely to flexibility and criticality—the measures over which managers exercised the most discretion. Meacham.

The jury found for the employees on disparate impact, but not intentional disparate treatment. The Second Circuit initially affirmed. After the Supreme Court sent the case back for consideration under Smith v. City of Jackson, the appellate court ruled for Knolls. It distinguished reasonableness from business necessity but assigned employees the burden of proving the non-age factor unreasonable. That allocation—not a new Supreme Court finding about the layoff statistics—brought the case back. Meacham.

The statute made reasonableness an employer defense

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act places its reasonable-factors-other-than-age exception in a provision separate from its prohibitions. Section 623(f)(1) excuses conduct that would otherwise be prohibited when the statutory conditions are met. The Court read that structure as an affirmative defense: The party claiming the exception must prove it. The neighboring bona-fide-occupational-qualification defense, the Act’s relationship to the Fair Labor Standards Act and Congress’s treatment of a separate benefits exemption reinforced that reading. Meacham.

Knolls argued that showing a factor other than age simply negated an element of the employee’s claim. The Court rejected that premise for disparate impact. A facially age-neutral practice is the starting point of that theory: Its effects may fall disproportionately on older employees even without intentional age discrimination. The defense therefore turns on whether using the non-age factor was reasonable, not merely whether the employer can give the factor a name other than age. A factor’s reasonableness and its actual age-related impact are different questions. Meacham.

The employee’s causal showing and the employer’s defense remained separate

The Court also rejected layering a business-necessity inquiry onto the reasonableness defense. That would create overlapping disputes about the employer’s justification and then allow a separate reasonableness defense anyway. The ADEA’s defense was not the Title VII business-necessity test. Nor did Smith’s references to Wards Cove transfer persuasion on this statutory defense to the employee. Meacham.

The employee still had substantial work to do: Isolate the particular employment practice responsible for the observed disparity and establish the causal link. An overall imbalance or a generalized attack on a layoff policy was insufficient. Only after that showing did the employer’s defense matter. Our Smith analysis explains why identifying the particular pay practice was decisive in that separate case. Meacham.

The disputed difference was between producing evidence and persuading the factfinder. Both sides accepted that an employer had to produce evidence supporting its defense. The Court held that the employer also bore the risk of failing to persuade. Where a factor’s reasonableness was obscure, the employer could have more explaining and evidentiary work to do. That consequence followed from Congress’s choice of an affirmative defense, even if it made litigation more costly. Meacham.

The Court left the actual reasonableness outcome for remand

The employees had also asked the Court to review whether giving managers broad discretion to choose layoff targets constituted a reasonable factor other than age as a matter of law. The Supreme Court denied review of that question and expressly offered no view on it. Its burden ruling therefore should not be presented as a finding that Knolls’s particular scoring system failed the defense. Meacham.

The Second Circuit had considered Knolls’s factors reasonable while phrasing its conclusion as the employees’ failure of proof. Whether the outcome should change once persuasion was properly placed on Knolls was for that court to consider first. The Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded. Justice Scalia agreed with that judgment through deference to the EEOC’s interpretation. Justice Thomas agreed with the affirmative-defense reading but would have affirmed because he continued to reject ADEA disparate-impact claims. Justice Breyer did not participate. Meacham.

Examine what the scores measured and how managers applied them

For a selection process like this one, the useful record includes the actual scoring definitions, instructions, individual scores and changes, the employees eligible for selection and the resulting age distribution. Those materials test both the employee’s claimed causal practice and the employer’s explanation of reasonableness. A score labeled flexibility does not explain what managers measured or how consistently they measured it.

The EEOC’s later RFOA rule explanation, questions 8–18, discusses the connection to the business purpose, accurate and fair application, guidance for subjective judgments, impact assessment and potential harm. It treats these as contextual considerations, not a mandatory checklist or a requirement to choose the least discriminatory method. Keep that current agency explanation separate from the narrower question the Court decided in 2008.