Laura Barbour Bowes, as Executor of the Estate of Eva Palmer v. Liberty University, Inc.

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

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.

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?

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