Judges 'swipe left' on Tinder's 'discriminatory' pricing for older users

A panel of seven mostly middle-aged Californians blew off Tinder’s plea for another chance to explain why discounting its dating app for users under 30 isn’t illegal discrimination against older people. 

The California Supreme Court voted Wednesday, without comment, to let stand a lower court’s January ruling that the Match Group Inc. unit’s age-based discount for its premium service violates the state’s civil rights law.

The case was brought by a man who complained that it’s unfair for Tinder Plus to charge $19.99 a month to people over 30 and only $9.99 or $14.99 for younger people.

A trial judge dismissed the claims, saying the age-based pricing didn’t constitute discrimination because it was based on market testing showing that younger users are more budget-constrained. But a three-judge appeals panel in Los Angeles revived the class-action case, concluding that the pricing model “employs an arbitrary, class-based generalization about older users’ incomes as a basis for charging them more than younger users.”