Court to Rule on Mandatory Retirement : Will Settle Dispute on Fire Department 55-and-Out Policy

The Supreme Court today agreed to settle, in a case from Baltimore, whether a city may cite federal policy to defend its requirement that firefighters retire at 55.

The justices will hear arguments this term from a ruling upholding Baltimore’s mandatory retirement age and will decide the issue by next July.

The court accepted appeals from the federal government and Baltimore firefighters protesting the city’s 55-and-out policy, although U.S. civil service law provides for mandatory retirement at 55 for such federal public safety workers.

Acting in another major discrimination case, the court let stand a $60-million award against Northwest Airlines for discriminating against women flight attendants by paying them less than men for doing the same work.

End of Appeal The court’s action appears to bring to an end Northwest’s appeals in the 15-year-old case, and opens the way for about 3,300 women who serve in the lower-paid capacities to be paid for inequities in their treatment.

In the Baltimore firefighters case, city firefighter Robert Johnson and five of his colleagues challenged Baltimore’s mandatory retirement policy. Johnson and four others were 60 or over when the lawsuit against city officials was brought in May, 1979. Johnson was involuntarily retired on May 1, 1979, two days after his 60th birthday.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission joined the suit, charging that the policy discriminated on the basis of age in violation of the 1967 federal Age Discrimination in Employment act, which protects workers from forced retirement up to age 70.

A court temporarily barred the city from forcing the firefighters’ retirement until the case is completed, and Johnson has returned to his job.

Job Ability Disputed The city argues that age is a legitimate and necessary occupational qualification for the firefighter position. The ability of firefighters to perform their duties safely and efficiently diminishes after 60, the city maintains.

A federal district court ruled that Baltimore had not proved that mandatory retirement was necessary to operate the Fire Department, or that firefighters over the age limit could not perform satisfactorily. The court concluded the city should conduct individual testing on firefighters over 60 to see if they are able to perform their jobs.

But that decision was reversed by a federal appeals court, which found that since Congress had designated 55 as the retirement date for most federally employed firefighters, age was a legitimate occupational qualification for that job at the state and local level.

In other action today, the court:

--Refused to hear arguments that financier C. Arnholt Smith, 85, who began serving a one-year sentence in the San Diego city jail in November, was unfairly prosecuted in his 1979 conviction for grand theft and state tax evasion.

--Agreed to clarify a federal anti-mobster law whose extraordinarily broad language has resulted in recent efforts to label such businesses as American Express Co., E.F. Hutton & Co. and Lloyd’s of London as “racketeers.”

--Agreed to decide, in a case involving bootleg Elvis Presley records, if the government has the power to prosecute music “piracy” under the Copyright Act and federal mail fraud laws.