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Are the laws really that specific? I thought the way it generally worked was that discrimination based on age was illegal, but being young is viewed as a proxy for inexperience, so discriminating on that basis is OK. I didn't know there was generally a specific cutoff.

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Under U.S. federal law, age discrimination not only protects exclusively the old against the young, it also protects only those over 40.[1] Discrimination in the workplace and in public policy against the young is a big problem (in the moral sense, perhaps not an economic sense) that really has, as far as I can tell, political recognition among essentially no one.

1: http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

They are indeed.

> The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination.

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

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