HR.BLR.com (05/22/12)

Employers can make business decisions based on “reasonable factors other than age,” but to avoid age discrimination claims, it is important for them to understand what constitutes “reasonable.” In response to a final rule by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission effective April 29, 2012, employers using an RFOA defense must show that “the practice at issue was both reasonably designed to further achieve a legitimate business purpose” and that it “was administered in a way that reasonably achieves that purpose in light of the particular facts and circumstances that were known, or should have been known, to the employer,” says Brian Kurtz, attorney at Chicago-based Ford & Harrison LLP.