Three Democratic Congressional committee chairmen said Tuesday that they would move to overturn a four-month-old Supreme Court ruling that made it significantly harder for workers to win many age discrimination cases.

The three chairmen criticized the court’s decision in a case involving a 54-year-old man who was demoted, saying the ruling flouted Congress’s intent and created unfair obstacles to the victims of age discrimination.

In a 5-to-4 ruling last June, the Supreme Court created a tougher burden of proof for plaintiffs in age bias cases. Previously, if an employee could prove that age was a factor in an adverse employment decision, like a demotion or a layoff, the employer then had to show that it had acted for a valid reason other than age discrimination. But as a result of the June ruling, employees now face the full burden of demonstrating that age was the deciding factor.

“This extremely high burden really undermines workers’ ability to hold employers accountable,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Read the full article here on the New York Times website.