Exclusive | Meathead feds target California movers over nonexistent age discrimination: Weaponization of government

Which would you be more likely to hire: a moving company whose ads feature energetic, youthful workers or one that highlights its less sprightly, aged employees?That’s a no-brainer — even a meathead could answer such a simple advertising question.Yet the federal government has spent about a decade investigating California-based, family-owned Meathead Movers for age discrimination, citing its marketing materials — demanding $15 million in penalties and suing when the company wouldn’t cough up the cash.And the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has done this without pointing to a single discrimination complaint.Meathead, California’s biggest independent moving company, and its CEO, Aaron Steed, are finally fighting back — after a think tank heard about the crazy case.“The EEOC is not only targeting a successful American company on what appears to be pretextual grounds, but now it’s refusing to tell the public why it did that.And we think the public has a right to know,” Jon Riches, the Goldwater Institute’s vice president for litigation, tells The Post.Goldwater sent the agency a Freedom of Information Act Request in March, seeking basic facts such as the number of age-discrimination complaints against Meathead Movers and number of EEOC investigations into alleged age discrimination at any moving company since January 2016.

The feds refused to ’fess up.So this week Goldwater appealed, Riches tells The Post exclusively — and the EEOC has 30 days to respond before the Arizona think tank will sue.“We bring legal actions to challenge government overreach and unconstitutional action,” explains Riches, an ex-Navy JAG who joined Goldwater in 2012.“We’ve had cases of many, many, many other government agencies, and I’ve never seen anything this unprecedented in my experience.”Most EEOC lawsuits are the result of discrimination complaints.

The agency has filed just eight in the last decade based on what it calls “directed inves...