Three age discrimination lawsuits, three different outcomes so far, one common fact pattern: older professional staff let go in a reduction in force at a large design firm.
ENR reviewed recent claims filed against AECOM, HNTB and Gehry Partners. Court records show one case is in arbitration, one was dismissed and one was settled. AECOM is arbitrating a claim brought by a former unit president. None of the three establishes wrongdoing, and dismissal and settlement carry no admission. What they establish is that the claims are being filed.
The demographics make this predictable
Roughly a quarter of the construction workforce is over 55. In professional services, the skew is worse, because the people with the deepest client relationships and the highest billing rates are also the ones with the longest tenure. When a firm trims overhead outside the data center boom, high-cost senior staff are structurally in the crosshairs, and cost and age correlate closely enough that the distinction has to be documented rather than assumed.
That’s the exposure. Not that firms are targeting older workers, but that a selection process driven by salary, utilization or practice area can produce a list that looks like age discrimination on a spreadsheet, and the burden of showing otherwise falls on the employer after the fact.
What careful firms do differently
The mechanics are known and mostly ignored until there’s a claim. Set selection criteria before you know who they’ll hit. Run an adverse impact analysis on the draft list. Document the business rationale for each position eliminated, not each person. Keep the decision-makers consistent. Have counsel review before notifications go out, not after the first demand letter.
The firms getting sued are not outliers in their practices. They’re large enough that a single RIF produces a large enough sample for a pattern to show up.
Why the arbitration matters
The AECOM matter is the one to watch. Arbitration keeps outcomes private, which is why employers write it into agreements, and it’s also why nobody knows the real volume of these claims. If the arbitration produces a result that plaintiff-side firms find encouraging, the filing rate goes up.
Meanwhile the demand side keeps splitting. Design work tied to data centers, energy and industrial programs is hiring. Design teams on institutional and civic work are being asked to do more with fewer senior people, including on projects delivered by lean regional teams like The Synapse at the University of West Florida, where a Pensacola architect is paired with a national lab designer on a fourteen-month schedule. Firms restructuring toward that model should assume the documentation will be read by someone other than HR.