Labor Law Pay Equity and Age Discrimination

Zippittelli v. J.C. Penney Company Case Study

Case Summary

The case of Zippittelli v. J.C. Penney Company stems from a hiring dispute between the plaintiff, Joanne Zippittelli, and her employer, J.C. Penney Company. In the summer of 2004 the plaintiff worked for the defendant as a general lead clerk in the Call Service Center, and after being informed by her boss that the position of shift operations manager had become available, the plaintiff elected to apply. As one of four women applying for the promotion, each of whom held the same job title at the time, the plaintiff expected her application to be given an equal level of appraisal as her peers during the hiring process conducted by Personnel Manager James Johnson. Instead, according to the plaintiffs allegations before the United States District Court, although the plaintiff passed the interview phase of the hiring process along with two other applicants, her candidacy was summarily dismissed due to her advanced age. When Patti Cruikshank, an applicant who received inferior performance evaluations by the company but was significantly younger than the plaintiff, was awarded the promotion to shift operations manager, the plaintiff privately believed that she was discriminated against due to her age. The plaintiff based her eventual complaint of age discrimination, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2004, on a comment made by her supervisor Anita Benko. When Benko responded to the plaintiff's concern by asking her exact age, and responded to the answer of 63 years old by stating that the plaintiff "would probably not" be promoted, the plaintiff's suspicions of age discrimination were apparently confirmed. After receiving a right-to-sue letter from the EEOC in 2005, Ms. Zippittelli filed suit against J.C. Penney Co. claiming that she could provide direct evidence of discriminatory hiring practices based on the age of applicants. The matter was tried before the U.S. District court in 2007, with the defendant's motion for summary judgment being granted after the court found that a single offhand remark, made by a person with no influence on the hiring process, did not constitute reasonable proof that age was a determining factor in the hiring decisions made by either Mr. Johnson or J.C. Penney Co. executives.

Case Questions

1.) Given a conversation that an employee had with her supervisor about applying for a promotion, which resulted in a question about age and a response by the supervisor when she found out that the applicant was 63 that the applicant would "probably not" get the position, coupled with the fact that the applicant had better performance evaluations than the younger woman who was awarded the position, would not a reasonable layperson in the position of the applicant think that she had been discriminated against because of her age?

On the surface, the case of Zippittelli v. J.C. Penney Company appears to present a clear-cut case of age discrimination in the realm of hiring, pursuant to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, which prohibits any discriminatory practices against people over the age of 40 in regards to "compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of an individual's age." The basis of the plaintiff's allegations, however, fail to meet the minimal legal standards providing for recovery under this act, because in order to obtain relief from discriminatory practices under ADEA, "a plaintiff must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that age was the determinative factor in the employer's decision at issue" (1967). While the plaintiff was able to show that her own supervisor, Ms. Benko, held the opinion that an applicant who was 63 years old "would probably not" be hired for the position of shift operations manager, this remark alone does not meet the legal standard for age discrimination as established by ADEA's provisions for recovery and relief. Had Ms. Benko been in a position to influence the decision process involved in this promotion, her remark may have provided the court with sufficient evidence to believe that a reasonable juror would agree with the plaintiff's claim that advanced age was the determinative factor used by Mr. Johnson in his decision to eliminate Ms. Zippittelli from the hiring process. Because the remark made by Ms. Benko was found to be "too temporally and situationally distant from the actual hiring decision to be seen as strong evidence of the employer's practice or attitude," the court ultimately decided that "the plaintiff could not convince a reasonable juror that this evidence proved that age was a substantial factor in the decision made by Mr. Johnson not to promote the plaintiff" (Munley, 2007).

2.) Was the fact that the plaintiff had better performance evaluations than the younger worker promoted to the job evidence of discriminatory intent because of her age?

The prevailing view would hold that the applicant who received the highest scores on performance evaluations administered by the company should be likely to receive the promotion being applied for, but the standards used by independent companies to guide the hiring process is not a matter for the court to decide. While the evidence presented by the plaintiff showing that she had received a superior performance evaluation when compared to the applicant who was eventually promoted to shift operations manager is certainly compelling, it does not meet the standard of "direct evidence" as provided by the ADEA's provisions for recovery in cases of age discrimination (1967). In the decision to grant J.C. Penney Company's motion for summary judgment in this matter, the court ruled that the performance evaluation "evidence could only be used to convince a jury that defendants were wrong in the employment decision they made, not that their mistake was motivated by an animus towards plaintiff because of her age" (Munley, 2007).