Gregory v. Ashcroft

Justice White, joined by Justice Stevens (concurring and dissenting in part), agreed with the majority opinion that neither the ADEA nor the Equal Protection Clause prohibited Missouri's mandatory retirement provision. On the other hand, White could not agree with the majority's use of the "plain statement" requirement for application of federal statute (the ADEA) to state activities (the mandatory retirement provision of the Missouri Constitution). Congress's intent to regulate age discrimination by states through enacting the ADEA was "unmistakably clear in the language of the statute." Therefore, the ADEA could have been imposed over Missouri's constitutional provision for mandatory retirement for its state judges without fear of violating the balance of federal and state sovereignties.

Dissenting Justices Blackmun and Marshall were of the opinion that parts of cited ADEA text should be viewed as related to one another (that was the argument of the two Missouri judges), and thus concluded that the intention of Congress was not to exclude state judges from the ADEA protection. State judges were not "on [a] policymaking level" because they were not accountable to the official who appointed them and were precluded from working closely with that official once they had been appointed. In addition, Justice Blackmun stated that when a statutory term was ambiguous or undefined, the Court should defer to a reasonable interpretation of that term proffered by the agency entrusted with administering the statute. Blackmun referred to Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency which was entitled to administer the ADEA, had a position that an appointed judge was not an "appointee on the policymaking level." Nonetheless, the dissenting argument was countered by Justice White's opinion that the EEOC was entitled to little if any deference by the Supreme Court and that its position was inconsistent with "the plain language" of the ADEA.