WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court wrestled for more than two months with the question of whether a worker alleging age discrimination may present as evidence similar stories from co-workers. Its ruling Tuesday was a unanimous maybe.

Such "me too" evidence is neither automatically admissible nor automatically inadmissible, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. In the case at hand, justices said they could not tell why the district judge had decided to exclude such testimony, and they sent the matter back for more work.

The ruling brought an inconclusive ending to what was once thought to be one of the more important employment law cases on the court's docket this term.

The case involved Ellen Mendelsohn, a 51-year-old midlevel manager with Sprint in Kansas, one of 14,000 employees laid off in a company downsizing. She said she was targeted because of her age, and she wanted to call on her behalf other fired workers who would have said the same about themselves.

But those workers were not fired by Mendelsohn's supervisor, nor did they work in her division. A district court judge excluded their testimony, and a jury ruled against Mendelsohn.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said the judge had erred, because the testimony could have shown a companywide movement to eliminate older workers.