Multination aerospace and defense systems company RTX Corporation—formerly known as Raytheon Technologies—has been sued for allegedly discriminating against people age 40 or older in recruiting for job candidates.
The class action lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by the AARP Foundation and two law firms, claims that certain Raytheon job ads use language that implies a preference for younger job candidates. This would violate the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, as well as the Massachusetts Fair Employment Practice Act and the Virginia Human Rights Act. The company was previously headquartered in Massachusetts and recently moved to Virginia.
The ads in question refer to “Recent Graduate Positions” and express that applications should be recent college or graduate school graduates or have less than 12 or 24 months of related work experience. Even though they’re lower-level positions, the salaries for the jobs could top $100,000 annually.
Currently there is one named plaintiff, 67-year-old Mark H. Goldstein, who said that he applied to at least seven Raytheon recent graduate jobs and met all of the qualifications for the position, other than being a recent graduate or limited work experience. He filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2019, and in 2021, the agency said its investigation supported Goldstein’s claim for discrimination and the advertisements violated the ADEA.
