Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—6th Cir.: Vanderbilt professor wasn’t promoted due to issues with her published work, not her MS diagnosis, (Jun 6, 2025)

By George Basharis, J.D.

Court finds no evidence that Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis influenced Vanderbilt University’s assessment of professor’s scholarly record.

The Sixth Circuit, in an unpublished decision, has affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Vanderbilt University in a disability discrimination case involving a faculty member denied promotion to full professor. The appeals court’s decision reinforces the principle that although subjective academic evaluations can provide cover for discrimination, such evaluations alone do not constitute evidence of disability discrimination when legitimate educational reasons support the employment action (Oliveira-Monte v. Vanderbilt University, No. 24-5768 (6th Cir. June 4, 2025, unpublished)).

MS diagnosis. The case involved a tenured associate professor in Vanderbilt University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese who applied for promotion to full professor in 2019. Vanderbilt hired the professor in 2002 as an assistant professor and promoted her to associate professor with tenure in 2008. During the 2014-2015 academic year, while on medical leave, the professor was diagnosed with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis.

Following her diagnosis, the professor took additional leave periods, including parental leave in fall 2015 and medical leave in fall 2017. Her 2019 application for promotion to full professor initially received unanimous support from the full professors in her department but ultimately failed at higher levels of review.

Vanderbilt’s promotion process and standards. Vanderbilt’s promotion process involves multiple tiers of review. After departmental approval, applications proceed to the appropriate dean, who considers input from the Senior Advisory Review Committee. The dean’s recommendation then goes to the Promotion and Tenure Review Committee and the Provost, with final approval from the Chancellor.

For promotion to full professor, Vanderbilt requires candidates to demonstrate sustained and excellent research equivalent to that expected at leading research universities. Candidates must achieve national or international recognition in their field, maintain consistently high teaching effectiveness, and show a well-developed service record.

Evaluation and denial. The professor’s application passed the initial departmental review but encountered problems at the college level. The Senior Advisory Review Committee praised her teaching and service records but criticized her scholarly productivity as insufficient. The committee described external reviewers’ reception of her most recent book as lukewarm and questioned whether the promotion was premature.

The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences ultimately denied the promotion, concluding that the professor had not satisfied Vanderbilt’s standard for excellence in research. His decision focused on both the quantity and quality of her scholarly output.

Quantity concerns. Regarding quantity, the dean noted that by the time of her promotion application, the professor had published two books, eight journal articles, five book chapters, two book reviews, and a translation. However, many of these publications predated her 2008 tenure award. Since receiving tenure, she had published only one book, one journal article with a second forthcoming, and several book chapters.

The dean characterized this post-tenure productivity as low, pointing to lengthy gaps between publications. The professor published an article in 2008, then not again until 2013, with another significant gap before her next forthcoming article. External reviewers also commented on the relatively small scope of her post-tenure output compared to her pre-tenure work.

Quality assessment. The dean’s quality concerns centered on the professor’s second book, published in 2018. After reviewing external evaluations, the dean determined the book was of uncertain quality. He noted that none of the external reviewers offered strong, detailed praise for the work, with most engaging only briefly in their discussions of it.

The dean found the reviewers’ limited intellectual engagement worrisome, suggesting they viewed the book as competent but not compelling. He also expressed concern that the book was published by an academic trade press rather than a major university press and had received no nominations for major external awards or prizes.

Failed appeals and lower court dismissal. The professor’s departmental colleagues unanimously voted to appeal the dean’s decision, but the Promotion and Tenure Review Committee upheld the denial. The committee’s principal concern remained the professor’s scholarly record, which it determined insufficient to meet Vanderbilt’s excellence standard.

After filing an internal grievance that found no evidence of discrimination or retaliation, the professor sued Vanderbilt in 2022, bringing claims for discrimination and retaliation under the ADA. The district court dismissed the retaliation claim and granted summary judgment on the discrimination claim.

On appeal to the Sixth Circuit, the court applied the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework for circumstantial evidence discrimination cases. While Vanderbilt contested whether the professor established a prima facie case, the court found that Vanderbilt had clearly presented a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the denial based on the professor’s insufficient research record in both quantity and quality.

The court then analyzed whether the professor had demonstrated that Vanderbilt’s explanation was pretextual, requiring evidence that would allow a reasonable jury to reject the university’s explanation and infer discrimination instead.

Pretext arguments rejected. The professor argued that Vanderbilt’s reliance on publication quantity was pretextual because the university lacked consistent quantitative standards and had promoted other professors with only two books. The court rejected this argument, noting that while Vanderbilt’s standards were subjective and open-ended, subjectivity alone does not constitute evidence of discrimination.

The court found no inconsistency in Vanderbilt’s application of its standards. The dean had explained that while some professors could be promoted with two books, the second book would need to be a game changer in the field. The professor provided no evidence about the quality of other promoted professors’ books or whether those professors had disabilities, failing to establish that their situations were substantially identical to hers.

Disability references deemed non-discriminatory. The professor also argued that references to her disability during the promotion process showed discriminatory intent. She pointed to a committee member’s comment suggesting the application was rushed to support a colleague with health issues and to departmental colleagues mentioning her medical issues during their appeal.

The court found these isolated comments insufficient to demonstrate pretext. The committee member’s remark showed no hostility toward the professor based on her disability and appeared to comment on her colleagues’ motivations rather than expressing discriminatory animus. The departmental colleagues’ comments actually praised her perseverance in continuing to work despite serious health problems, showing support rather than discrimination.

Quality assessment upheld. Regarding quality concerns, the professor argued that positive assessments from her departmental colleagues and external reviewers contradicted the dean’s negative evaluation, creating a stark divergence that suggested discrimination. The court rejected this argument, holding that conflicting evaluations alone do not constitute evidence of pretext.

The court noted the dean’s extensive experience reading hundreds of promotion files and thousands of external letters, giving him expertise in evaluating such materials. His decision to focus on the substance of external reviews rather than their ultimate recommendations was reasonable, particularly given his observation that almost all external reviewers recommend promotion regardless of the work’s quality.

Thus, the appeals court found the employer’s assessment of the employee’s scholarly record. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

The case is No. 24-5768.

Judge: Larsen, J.

Attorneys: Robert L. Sirianni, Jr. (Brownstone Appellate Law Firm) for Emanuelle K.F. Oliveira-Monte. Michael Thomas Raupp (Husch Blackwell) for Vanderbilt University.

Companies: Vanderbilt University

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