In 2005, a significant decision was made in a lawsuit that brought officers and public safety officials against the city in which they were hired to uphold the law. The decision in this case resolved a long heated battle in the Supreme Court with plaintiffs bringing claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) with reliance on disparate impact. Previous to this decision, an employee could only recover if a business made an unfavorable business decision if it was made with the intent of discriminating against the person if he or she was of forty years of age. What this decision does allows for claims to be recovered if the business has an impartial business practice, which in turn has no discriminatory intent that has a negative impact on people aged forty and over. I will state views of the case from both sides and give my suggestions on how this may have been avoided from a managerial point of view. In 1999, the city of Jackson, Mississippi adopted a plan that would grant raises to their officers that had less than five years of experience to receive raises that were of higher percentage than those of officers that were more experienced. Even though the new proposal discrepancy was based on the years of service that the officers had and not the age of the current officers, most of the officers with more than five years experience were over the age of forty. They claimed that the city that they were hired to protect had established a new pay rate initiative that would reward the younger officers out of discrimination. The city claims that the new proposal was to make the city a more competitive market for officers for the purpose of attracting and retaining people. This practice gave the older and more experienced officers a lower monetary increase based on wage percentages. This would prove to be a difficult situation to manage. If the pay of the less experienced officers was not that of officers in surrounding areas, there would have had to have been an arrangement of some significance to recruit and preserve some of the lesser knowledgeable and practiced officers. At the same time, the veteran officers should not have to feel the effects of such a pay discrepancy. As a manager, I believe that the only way that this could have been avoided was to bring the veteran officers in on the decision making process on how to recruit and retain the less experienced officers as there may have been other opportunities for those officers in which the city was focusing on rather than pay. Bringing in the veteran officers could have created a much better environment not only for the inexperienced officers, but for the veteran officers as well as it may have also encouraged the veteran officers to speak up about the changes that were needed. There may have been some conflicts during the discussion but I believe that it would have been a win-win situation all around.