Opinion ID: 776543
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Replaced by a Younger Person

Text: 46 As applied to age discrimination claims, the McDonnell Douglas test requires that an employee's replacement be a younger person. The district court expressly declined to address the issue of whether Cicero's replacement satisfied this element of the prima facie case. While the defendants assert that an employee's replacement must be substantially younger, we have not adopted a bright-line rule defining what such a standard entails. 47 On a motion for summary judgment, a district court considers whether there is sufficient evidence to create a genuine dispute at each stage of the McDonnell Douglas inquiry. Cline, 206 F.3d at 661. 48 Here, Cicero was fifty-one at the time of his firing. His replacement was forty-three. A question of fact remains for a fact finder to resolve whether, under the circumstances of the present case, the seven and one-half year age difference satisfies the fourth prong of Cicero's prima facie case. See, e.g., Hicks, 509 U.S. at 509-10, 509 n. 3, 113 S.Ct. 2742 (noting that if reasonable minds could differ, a fact finder will be called upon to decide whether a preponderance of the evidence establishes the facts of a prima facie case).