Age Discrimination Lawyer for Oakland County
The headquarters announced a reorganization. Your role was “consolidated,” the person who absorbed it is fifteen years younger, and the severance packet in your inbox has a 45-day clock and a list of ages on the last page.
Here is the one-sentence test: if the workers kept skew young, the workers cut skew old, and the stated criteria do not match what the employer actually did, you may have a case. Finding out costs nothing: a free 15-minute call, and termination cases are handled on contingency. The deadline that bites first is the EEOC’s 300-day window for the federal claim; Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Act allows three years. I’m Warren Astbury. I take age discrimination cases from Troy, Southfield, Auburn Hills, and the rest of Oakland County, for employees only.
How age discrimination cases look in Oakland County
Oakland County’s workforce is white-collar and heavily documented, so age cases here arrive with reviews, spreadsheets, and Teams messages. Three patterns account for most of them; a fourth, training withheld from older engineers at Bosch, Nissan, or FANUC before a “skills” layoff, is covered in the questions below.
The headquarters reorganization
Stellantis North America in Auburn Hills, Magna, BorgWarner, and Lear in Troy, Southfield, and Auburn Hills, and the tech centers in Farmington Hills all run periodic reorganizations of their salaried ranks. A reorganization is lawful. A selection method that lands on the 55-and-over engineers while the under-40 engineers on the same program are “retained for future capability” is not. The evidence is the ranking spreadsheet used to pick names, the definition of the group it was applied to, the age-and-title disclosure attached to the group release, and any email discussing “runway,” “digital native,” or “next-generation talent.”
The rating that fell after twenty good years
Corewell Health Royal Oak and Troy, Ascension Providence in Southfield and Novi, and Henry Ford West Bloomfield employ thousands of nurses, managers, and administrative staff whose ratings were “exceeds” for two decades. Then a new director arrives, the rating drops to “needs improvement,” and a performance plan follows within a quarter. The evidence is the full run of prior reviews, the date the decision-maker changed, the ratings of younger staff under the same director, and whether the plan’s goals were ones anyone could meet.
“Culture fit” in finance and tech
Comerica, Flagstar, and the software and consulting firms along Big Beaver and Northwestern Highway hire for “energy” and “fit,” and older managers hear those words in the meeting where they lose their team. A 52-year-old analyst passed over for a 31-year-old with half the tenure, then let go for lacking “growth trajectory,” has the outline of a case. The evidence is the promotion decision paper, the comparator’s qualifications, and every message that used a proxy word for age.
The law that applies
An Oakland County age case can rest on two statutes, and the differences between them shape the whole strategy.
The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers workers 40 and older at employers with 20 or more employees. It requires an EEOC charge within 300 days, filed at the Detroit Field Office. Since Gross v. FBL, an ADEA plaintiff must prove age was the but-for cause of the decision. A willful violation doubles lost wages as liquidated damages, but the ADEA pays nothing for emotional distress and no punitive damages.
Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, MCL 37.2202, reaches employers with a single employee, protects every age rather than only 40 and up, allows three years to file directly in circuit court, and puts no cap on emotional-distress damages. Under Elezovic v. Ford Motor Co., 472 Mich 408 (2005), the executive who made the call can be named individually. For a ten-person Birmingham firm or an 18-person Troy startup, ELCRA is the only statute that applies at all.
The deadline trap in Oakland County is the release, not the statute. The 21- or 45-day consideration period runs while you are still deciding whether to call anyone, and the 300-day EEOC clock keeps running whether or not you sign. All of the deadlines are on the Michigan employment claim deadlines page.
| Claim | Who’s covered | Deadline | Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELCRA age (Michigan) | Employers with one or more employees; workers of any age | Three years, filed directly in Oakland County Circuit Court | Back pay, front pay, uncapped emotional distress, attorney fees; individual liability for the decision-maker |
| ADEA (federal) | Workers 40 and older at employers with 20 or more employees | EEOC charge within 300 days, then suit | Back pay and front pay; doubled as liquidated damages when willful; no emotional-distress or punitive damages |
| OWBPA waiver rules (federal) | Workers 40 and older asked to release ADEA claims | 21 days to consider, 45 in a group program, 7 days to revoke | A non-compliant waiver leaves the ADEA claim intact |
Where your Oakland County age discrimination case gets filed
A case pleading only ELCRA files in the Oakland County Circuit Court at 1200 N. Telegraph Road in Pontiac. Add an ADEA count and the employer can remove the whole case to the Eastern District of Michigan, whose main courthouse is the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse at 231 W. Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit, where summary-judgment motions arrive sooner.
For age cases the state courthouse holds most of the value: uncapped emotional-distress damages, coverage at every age and employer size, and personal liability for the manager. The ADEA adds liquidated damages when the violation was willful. Which to lead with depends on the evidence, the employer’s size, and whether a Pontiac jury drawn from the same offices and hospitals is the audience you want. The Oakland County employment lawyer page has the jury-pool and venue detail.
A product manager from Troy, a nurse manager from Southfield, and a validation engineer from Farmington Hills all file in the same two buildings.
The headquarters reorganization: the decisional unit and the list
In Oakland County the group layoff is a routine management tool, and federal law built a specific rule for it. When an employer asks workers 40 and older to sign ADEA releases as a group, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act requires it to hand over, in writing, the job titles and ages of everyone in the “decisional unit” who was selected and everyone who was not. That document is the most useful piece of evidence a reorganization produces, and most people throw it away with the packet.
Read it for two things. First, the skew: if the ten selected average 56 and the thirty kept average 38, the employer has to explain that with something other than age. Second, the boundary of the unit. Employers sometimes draw it narrowly enough to hide a pattern, or broadly enough to dilute it, and how it was drawn is a discovery question whose answer is often the case.
A reorganization is not itself unlawful. Choosing who goes because of age is, and a neutral-sounding criterion like “highest compensation” or “skills alignment” that falls almost entirely on older workers requires the employer to show a reasonable factor other than age. Read RIF or age discrimination? for how that analysis runs, and Michigan severance agreements explained before the consideration period ends.
What to do in the first 72 hours
- Forward yourself the file tonight. Five years of reviews, the reorganization announcement, the layoff criteria if you saw them, the training request and reply, and any message that used “fit,” “energy,” or “runway,” to a personal account before access ends.
- Do not sign the severance agreement yet. The consideration period is there to be used, and the release inside it is worth more to the employer than the payment is to you.
- Keep the age-and-title disclosure. If the packet came with a list of who was selected and who was kept, that list is evidence of the pattern, not a formality.
- Request your personnel file in writing. Michigan’s Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right to Know Act obligates the employer to let you review and copy it, which fixes the record before the “performance history” gets rewritten.
- Write down the comparators. The younger person who absorbed your duties, the engineers who got the training, and the analyst promoted over you, with approximate ages and dates.
- Do not accept a “retirement” label to soften the exit. Agreeing to call a termination a voluntary retirement can hand the employer its best defense.
Oakland County age discrimination questions
My Oakland County employer says it kept younger, cheaper employees in the layoff to cut costs. Is that a legal defense to age discrimination?
Not automatically. Cutting cost is a lawful goal, but selecting the highest-paid people in a group usually means selecting the oldest, and a criterion that falls almost entirely on older workers has to be justified as a reasonable factor other than age. “Cheaper” can also be a cover story. Whether it was is answered by the selection spreadsheet and the ages of who stayed.
I signed a severance release at a Troy company after only a week. Is my age discrimination claim gone?
Not necessarily. A release of ADEA claims is invalid unless it gave you at least 21 days to consider it, 45 in a group layoff, plus seven days to revoke and written advice to consult a lawyer. Miss those and the federal age claim survives the signature. Michigan courts apply a separate knowing-and-voluntary test to the ELCRA release, so bring the agreement and the timeline to the call.
I’m an engineer over 50 at a Farmington Hills tech center. Younger staff got trained on the new platform, then I was laid off for lacking those skills. Is that age discrimination?
It can be. Withholding training from older workers and then selecting them for layoff on a skills criterion is a recognized pattern, and the training roster is often the cleanest evidence in the case. Save your request for the training and the answer, the roster showing who attended, and the written layoff criteria. If the criterion measured a skill the employer chose not to give you, that supports pretext.
Do I have to prove age was the only reason I was cut in an Oakland County corporate layoff?
Under the federal ADEA, you must prove age was the but-for cause, meaning the decision would not have happened without it, though other factors can exist alongside. Michigan’s ELCRA has not adopted that federal standard the same way, one reason the state claim is often the lead claim. Either way, the proof is the same: comparators, the selection criteria, and the ages of who stayed.
My annual rating at a Royal Oak hospital dropped from “exceeds” to “needs improvement” the year I turned 57. Is that age discrimination?
A rating decline after years of strong reviews is evidence, not proof, and it becomes stronger with context: a new director close in time, younger staff under the same director rated normally, a performance plan with goals nobody could meet, and then termination. Get every prior review out of the HR portal now, and note when the rater changed and what that person said about retirement or “fresh perspective.”
Talk to an age discrimination lawyer who takes Oakland County cases
If you were reorganized out, rated down, or passed over at an Oakland County headquarters, supplier, hospital, or bank, and the people who stayed are younger, call (313) 701-2448 or schedule a free 15-minute case evaluation. I will read the disclosure list, the criteria, and the reviews with you and tell you whether they add up to a case.
Warren Astbury. Harvard Law School, J.D. 2009. Fifteen years in practice, more than 50 cases tried to verdict, employee-side only. Working somewhere else in the region? See the age discrimination pages for Wayne County, Macomb County, and Washtenaw County.