Contact the experienced employment law attorneys at Maya Murphy, P.C. today at (203) 221-3100 or JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

A Columbia Law School professor recently sued Columbia University and the dean of its law school for age discrimination in violation of New York State’s and New York City’s human rights laws. 78-year-old George P. Fletcher alleges that the administration is pressuring him to retire by making it more difficult for him to meet his teaching quota, and is giving favorable treatment to younger faculty members. Two weeks ago, the university filed a motion to dismiss Fletcher’s lawsuit, claiming that there is no basis for his age-bias allegations.

Professor Fletcher has been a tenured professor at Columbia Law School for more than 30 years and is the author or co-author of several books. Wall Street Journal has reported that he is an “influential scholar of criminal law.” His work exploring principles and theories behind criminal law and tort liability is widely cited and taught.

Fletcher claims that the law school dean, Gillian Lester, purposefully sabotaged the professor’s ability to meet his teaching quota by booting him from the Introduction to American Law, and instead assigning him to teach a cancellable elective course. According to Fletcher, for more than a decade he was able to accumulate enough teaching hours, while spending spring semesters abroad as a visiting scholar in Israel. When he requested that he teach a mandatory course to ensure that he reach his quota, Lester refused, stating to Fletcher, “[if this] is not acceptable to you, we will have to revisit the arrangement whereby you load all of your teaching into one semester, or we will need to discuss moving to a fractional appointment.” The complaint states, “Rather than allowing Fletcher to teach a mandatory course to ensure that he earns the full ten (10) credit points that he is willing and able to earn, the Law School has placed his credit total, and therefore his tenure, directly at risk and subject to Defendants’ unilateral discretion.” Moreover, it alleges, “the threat of moving Fletcher to a ‘fractional appointment’ confirms what was already apparent: that Defendants improperly are attempting to force Fletcher to retire.”

The university claims that Fletcher was removed from the Introduction to American law course based on poor student evaluations and procedural mishaps, including the late submission of a syllabus. Fletcher claims that about 90% of his latest evaluations were positive, and that he had always used his own course book as the basis for the syllabus. Fletcher further alleges that the school’s micromanaging of his teaching was discriminatory, as the school did not oversee younger professors in such a controlling manner.

Fletcher further alleges that, in booting him from the Introduction to American Law course, and replacing him with younger professors who were less qualified, the dean was giving favorable treatment to those professors based on age. The complaint states, “faculty members who are much younger than Fletcher have had real, and more egregious, administrative shortcomings in their performance. Those younger faculty members nevertheless have been allowed to keep teaching mandatory classes, with virtually guaranteed enrollment and annual teaching credits.”

Columbia argued in its motion to dismiss that the discrimination claim is too unsubstantiated to hold up in court. The motion states, “[I]t is well settled (and common sense) that a university’s mere failure to accommodate a professor’s preferred course schedule does not give rise to a discrimination claim.”

If you believe that you have been discriminated against by your employer and would like to explore your options, contact the experienced employment law attorneys today at 203-221-3100, or by email at JMaya@mayalaw.com. We have the experience and knowledge you need at this critical juncture. We serve clients in both New York and Connecticut including New Canaan, Bridgeport, White Plains, and Darien.