Feeling Sidelined? Your Rights as an Older Worker in MD & DC

By: Nathan Quinn

5 Min Read

You’ve spent years - maybe even decades - serving your agency, building relationships, developing expertise, and helping others around you succeed. You’ve earned a reputation as someone who’s dependable, who knows the ropes, who shows up and gets things done. But now something has changed.

Maybe you’ve noticed that your ideas are no longer taken seriously. Maybe younger employees are suddenly getting promoted, while you’re being left out of key meetings or big projects. Maybe someone made a “joke” about your retirement plans during a team meeting, or you’ve started receiving mediocre performance reviews after years of praise. If any of this sounds familiar, it could be more than just bad luck - it might be age discrimination.

And yes, it may be against the law.

If you’re 40 or older and work for the federal government, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), put the law in here, protects you. This federal law says it’s illegal for your employer to treat you unfairly because of your age. That includes things like being passed over for promotions, having your pay reduced, being reassigned without reason, or being excluded from training opportunities that could help your career.

What’s especially important for federal workers to know is that the rules are different - and better - for you. Thanks to a 2020 Supreme Court case called Babb v. Wilkie (italic and add in case), you don’t have to prove that age was the only reason for what happened. You just need to show that age played any role at all. Even if it was only part of the decision, that’s enough to violate the law.

Unfortunately, age discrimination is rarely obvious. Most managers won’t say outright that you’re too old for a promotion. Instead, it shows up as patterns: sudden changes in feedback, comments about fresh ideas or new energy, or being left out of important decisions. These kinds of subtle shifts can be frustrating, demoralizing, and easy to overlook. But they matter.

So what can you do?

Start by documenting everything. Keep a record of changes in your workload, feedback from supervisors, comments that seem off, and anything else that feels connected. Save emails, take notes after meetings, and write down dates and names. This kind of information can be incredibly helpful later on.

The next step is about timing. If you believe you’ve been discriminated against because of your age, you have just 45 days to contact your agency’s EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) counselor. That’s not a lot of time, especially when you’re trying to process what’s happened. Missing that deadline could mean losing the chance to file a complaint altogether.

If you're not a federal employee, you have 300 days. 

That’s where we come in. At Quinn Patton LLC, we work with employees every day who are dealing with situations just like this. We help you make sense of what’s going on, figure out what your options are, and support you through each step of the process. You don’t have to do this alone.

If something doesn’t feel right at work, trust that instinct. You’ve worked too hard for too long to be pushed aside now.

Call us. We’ll help you take the next step.

 Call: (443) 247-5444

 Email: alishaw@quinnpatton.com (Intake specialist) 

Book online: Schedule Here

This post is informational and does not constitute legal advice. Sending an email does not