Laith Saud v. DePaul University

Whether a discriminatory Title IX investigation— whose findings are relied upon by a decisionmaker to impose concrete employment consequences—can constitute an adverse employment action under 42 U.S.C. § 1981.

Whether a court of appeals may affirm summary judgment in a race-discrimination case by crediting an employer’s asserted “honest belief” and resolving disputed facts and witness credibility in the employer’s favor, notwithstanding evidence of contradictory sworn testimony, shifting explanations, and unsubstantiated justifications, in conf lict with Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133 (2000), and Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986).

Whether an employer’s reliance on new or expanded justifications for an adverse employment action—raised only after litigation begins—may be deemed nonpretextual on the ground that those reasons are merely “additional” to earlier explanations, contrary to Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133 (2000), and decisions of other circuits holding that shifting or post hoc explanations permit an inference of discrimination.

Whether a court misapplies the “but-for” causation standard clarified in Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020), by treating the employer’s articulation of multiple asserted reasons for an adverse employment action as defeating causation, rather than asking whether race was a determinative cause of the decision.