The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed and reversed in part the grant of summary judgment to the defendants 

Shortly after Dr. Hollis joined the MSU faculty in 2014, a graduate student in Dr. Hollis’s department asked then-Department Chair Dr. Glenda Prime about Dr. Hollis’s anticipated timeline for acquiring tenure. The student attests that Dr. Prime replied: “Dr. Leah Hollis will never receive her tenure because she is a reject lesbian who will never receive her tenure while I maintain my office.” J.A. 1412. When the student indicated that he would report this comment, Dr. Prime allegedly doubled down, telling the student that the male professors – “[her] boys” – and “not a foul mouth reject lesbian” would “get the crown jewel,” which in context referred to a tenured faculty position. Id. “Dr. Hollis will never receive my blessing of any tenure at my University,” Dr. Prime allegedly stated. Id. In a meeting a month later, the student inquired once again about Dr. Hollis’s tenure timeline. Dr. Prime once again told him that Dr. Hollis would not receive her blessing for  tenure because “she’s a disgusting lesbian and another reason why I unpaid [sic] her so she will leave my campus, very soon!” Id.

At the end of her first academic year at MSU, Dr. Hollis submitted a first-year dossier for review by Dr. Prime. According to Dr. Hollis, Dr. Prime never reviewed it. Nor did she follow university policy by assembling a departmental review committee to determine if Dr. Hollis would be renewed for a second three-year contract. The parties dispute whether MSU understood Dr. Hollis to have been granted a second three-year contract term as an Assistant Professor. But it is undisputed that Dr. Hollis did not receive the notification that should have come had she not been continued past her original threeyear term, that she was scheduled by MSU to teach classes into a second three-year term, and that she understood her contract to have been extended.

Appellant was denied promotion and reduced to at-will employment status.

QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judge, concurring:

When someone says, “watch this, hold my beer,” what follows rarely turns out well. The same is true when judges make up tests inconsistent with the statutory text that Congress enacted. A good example of this is the Title VII burden-shifting framework announced in McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). What began as a tool for processing evidence in a Title VII bench trial has far too often turned into the substantive test for intentional discrimination at summary judgment. This approach counter-textually limits what counts as discrimination under Title VII, demands more proof than the Federal Rules require at summary judgment and is unnecessarily complex.

The majority does not “parse the back-and-forth of the McDonnell Douglas framework.” Maj. Op at 19. Instead, it goes straight to pointing out the evidence that creates a genuine dispute of material fact of discrimination under Title VII, and Dr. Hollis’ other claims. I certainly take no issue with that approach. Indeed, as explained below, I think that is the way these claims should be considered at summary judgment. But because the district court did engage in the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework, I take this opportunity to express my views on McDonnell Douglas, or at least how it is all too often applied. In the end, while I fully join in the majority’s decision, I join those urging the Supreme Court to clarify or overturn McDonnell Douglas.