I don't believe that for a second. It's made up. They wanted to fire him for some other reason, possibly for taking time off due to covid.

Doesn't sound legal to me. Can you legally get canned because of your age? Sounds fishy. At least the job market is wide open for a young man but that stinks

He should apply for a union auto maker job, I bet you can build cars at 18 yrs old

That sounds really fishy...but maybe it's an open door to a better job.

Wouldn’t that be age discrimination? Who sets the age you can work on cars?

The bank can’t tell a 90yr old they can’t take out a 30yr loan. Insurance company or not, that seems fishy.

I suspect it's related to the type of work - auto repair. The scope of working on automobiles necessitates test drives. Likely the insurance company has written acceptance guidelines which restrict them from providing auto (garage) liability insurance where they know young drivers will be conducting test drives. I doubt it has anything to do with the young man's skill or ability as a mechanic or his quality as a worker. And, sometimes it is the insurance company's insurance company (the reinsurer) that dictates such underwriting restrictions. Sometimes you just can't "fight city hall" no matter how illogical the reasoning.

It most definitely is age discrimination. But insurance underwriting is purely and entirely discrimination based on all sorts of factors - age just being one of them. There's nothing wrong or illegal about discrimination unless it is unfair or illegal discrimination. Due to age being a quantifiable and known increase in risk, age discrimination in insurance is neither unfair or illegal.

Back when I sold a lot of garage liability insurance, we sometimes worked around this problem by the auto repair facility having a written policy that precludes mechanics under the age of 25 (or mechanics with a DUI history) from test driving customer cars or operating tow trucks if they had them. That means another mechanic would need to do the test drive and report his findings to the other mechanic doing the work. But not every insurance company would accept that work-around.

I had a friend years ago who during high school, worked at a fast-food location that had a meat slicer. Because of his age, he could not go near it. Probably insurance or OSHA rule. This was in the min 60s.

OSHA wasn't around in the mid 60's.