Whether a statement by a university dean and a designation by a professor's department chair constitute direct evidence of age discrimination

QUESTIONS PRESENTED 1. Whether (1) a statement by a university dean, made during the time that the university was deciding whether or not to renew the contract of a then-79-year-old professor, that the professor “would have great difficulty with any [teaching] changes” and (2) a designation by the 79-year-old professor’s department chair during this same time frame, that the professor was “retiring” when, in fact, she was not, constitute, individually or collectively, direct evidence of age discrimination. 2. Where an employer’s proffered legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for taking an allegedly discriminatory adverse action against an employee is that the employee is not meeting the employer’s “legitimate expectations,” is it appropriate for a court to consider that allegedly non-discriminatory reason during the initial prima facie stage of the McDonnell Douglas framework, as held by the Fourth Circuit, or does such consideration improperly import the later stages of the McDonnell Douglas inquiry into the prima facie case analysis and thereby create too high an evidentiary bar for a plaintiff to be able to prove a prima facie case of discrimination, as held by the Sixth and Eighth Circuits? 3. Whether the Fourth Circuit’s majority decision that affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the defendant/appellee erroneously “failed to view the record evidence at summary judgment in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff] with respect to the central facts of this case” such that it requires this Court’s intervention in order to correct the Fourth Circuit’s “clear misapprehension of summary ii judgment standards.” Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650, 657, 659 (2014). 4, Whether a career art professor employed by a religious university who during her employment (i) was never been tasked with performing any religious duties, (ii) had never taught theology or religious studies and, instead, had only taught art classes; (iii) did not lead her students in worship or Bible-study; (iv) did not give sermons or tell her students what to believe or no to believe; (v) did not lead her students to or from any worship services or chapel; and (vi) did not hold herself out as a minister was a “minister” for purposes of the First Amendment’s “ministerial exception,” as adopted and applied in Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru, ___, U.S., __, 140 S. Ct. 2014 (2020) and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171 (2012).