Executive employment attorney Joe Ahmad sees an interesting trend in the recent retirements of IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and Freddie Mac Chairman John Koskinen. In both cases, the high-profile executives cited their companies’ mandatory retirement age policies as the reason for their departures.  

In his most recent blog post, Ahmad examines the common belief that these mandatory retirement clauses are legally enforceable. He writes:  

The truth is, most of them aren’t. Neither IBM CEO Sam Palmisano nor Freddie Mac Chairman John Koskinen had to retire this week. If they wanted to stay, and they wanted to press the point, chances are the courts would have been on their side. That’s because most mandatory retirement policies are, with relatively few exceptions for safety (such as airline pilots) and some institutions of higher education, a blatant violation of the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967.

Ahmad's full post can be found at the Legal Issues in the Executive Suite blog.