Court Opinion

ID: 9490337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:40:27.062468+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:02.383121
License: Public Domain

JON 0. NEWMAN, Chief Judge,
with whom Judges KEARSE, WINTER, and CABRANES concur, dissenting:
The result of this rehearing in banc is the entirely unwarranted rejection of a trial judge’s ultimate findings of discrimination against married women and age discrimination in the denial of tenure to a college professor, even though those ultimate findings are supported by facts establishing a prima facie case of discrimination on both grounds, by a sustainable finding that the employer’s proffered reason for denying tenure was pretextual, and by additional sustainable findings pointing to discrimination. This result is accomplished by a combination of actions of the in banc court and the panel that originally decided this appeal. Though I do not doubt that, in some Title VII and ADEA cases, an ultimate finding of discrimination may properly be ruled clearly erroneous despite a valid finding of pretext, there is no basis for such a ruling on this appeal.
I respectfully dissent, not only because of disagreement with the outcome of this appeal, but, more significantly, because the *1362combined rulings of the in bane majority and the panel depart from settled law and practice in several respects concerning discrimination law, appellate review, and in banc practice. One of the most bizarre aspects of the majority’s opinion is its insistence that the in banc court is deciding only a very narrow issue even as the majority opinion advances significant views on matters far beyond the narrow issue identified. The majority says that the in banc court is deciding only the issue of “whether a finding of liability under Title VII, supported by a prima facie case and a sustainable finding of pretext, is subject to review for clear error.” 114 F.3d at 1333. That issue was never in question, since findings of discrimination had always been subject to “clear error” review, and the Supreme Court had confirmed the availability of such review, prior to this in banc rehearing, in St. Mary’s Honor Center v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 511, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 2749-50, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993). Beyond reasserting the obvious availability of “clear error” review, the in banc majority undertakes to express several views concerning the significance (or lack of significance) of a prima facie case, a finding of pretext, and the combination of both in the context of discrimination cases.
Understanding the reasons for my disagreement with the majority requires separate consideration of (1) what the majority has said about discrimination law, especially the significance of a prima facie case and the significance of a finding of pretext, (2) the role of an appellate panel in reviewing the factual findings of a district court, (3) the role of an in banc court in relation to the panel whose decision is being reheard, and (4) the panel’s consideration of the merits of Dr. Fisher’s claims of discrimination. Since these issues relate primarily to Dr. Fisher’s claim of discrimination against her as a married woman, I consider them in that context, and discuss thereafter her age claim.
A. The Claim of Discrimination Against Married Women
1. Discrimination Law and the Significance of a Prima Facie Case and a “Pretext” Finding
(a) The Significance of a Prima Facie Case. The majority asserts that a “prima facie case” under Title VII, assessed without regard to the persuasive force of any opposing evidence, is not necessarily sufficient to take the ultimate issue of discrimination to the fact-finder. In the majority’s view, a Title VII prima facie case serves only to require the defendant to proffer an explanation for its adverse action; upon lack of such a proffer, the plaintiff is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. But, says the majority, if the defendant proffers an explanation, the plaintiffs prima facie case is not necessarily sufficient to take the case to the fact-finder, i.e., to support an inference of discrimination. Though I recognize that the facts of a plaintiffs prima facie case might be so undermined or so overwhelmed by opposing evidence that no reasonable fact-finder could find discrimination, I disagree with the view that the facts of a prima facie case, assessed without regard to opposing evidence, are insufficient to support an inference of discrimination.
The phrase “prima facie case” has long been recognized to have two meanings. It usually means evidence sufficient to permit (but not require) a fact-finder to find a disputed matter in favor of the party presenting the prima facie case. This is the prima facie case that creates a permissible inference. In some limited circumstances, it can mean, in addition, evidence sufficient to require a finding of a disputed matter in favor of the party presenting the prima facie ease in the absence of a proffer of evidence by the opposing party. This is the prima facie case that creates a rebuttable presumption. The Supreme Court made it clear in Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981), that in the Title VII context, the Court was using the phrase “prima facie case” to mean evidence that creates a rebut-table presumption. See id. at 254 n. 7, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 n. 7.
But, as Judge Winter’s dissenting opinion points out, the prima facie ease that creates a rebuttable presumption is an even stronger version of the concept of a prima facie case than the version that only permits an infer*1363ence. Moreover, the Supreme Court in Bur-dine defined a Title VII prima fade case to mean adverse employment action taken “under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination.”1 Id. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1093-94 (footnote omitted). The four subsidiary facts given in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 1824, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), as an example of a prima facie ease of discrimination are not four isolated bits of information plucked from the air. They are the Supreme Court’s own example of facts sufficient, in the Supreme Court’s words, to “give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination.” Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 (emphasis added). Since those facts are sufficient to give rise to an inference of discrimination, they cannot cease to have such an effect simply because the employer has proffered an explanation. That proffer defeats the presumptive effect that the four facts would have had in the absence of an explanation (i.e., the plaintiff is no longer entitled to judgment as a matter of law once the four subsidiary facts have been proven), but it does not deprive these facts of their capacity to support an inference of discrimination if the fact-finder finds these facts proven and then chooses to draw such an inference. The Supreme Court explicitly made this point in Burdine:
A satisfactory explanation by the defendant destroys the legally mandatory inference of discrimination arising from the plaintiffs initial evidence. Nonetheless, this evidence and inferences properly drawn therefrom may be considered by the trier of fact on the issue of whether the defendant’s explanation is pretextual.
Burdine, 450 U.S. at 255 n. 10, 101 S.Ct. at 1095 n. 10. There is simply no way to reconcile the Supreme Court’s statement in Bur-dine that the four facts of a prima facie discrimination case are facts sufficient “to give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination” and the majority’s assertion that “[t]he fact that a plaintiff is judged to have satisfied these minimal requirements [of a prima facie case] is no indication that, at the end of the case, plaintiff will have enough evidence of discrimination to support a verdict in his favor.” 114 F.3d at 1337 (emphasis added).
The capacity of facts supporting a rebuttable presumption to permit the inference of the ultimate fact even after the opposing side has proffered an explanation was explicitly recognized by Congress in adopting Rule 301 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, a rule the Supreme Court cited in Burdine in explaining a Title VII rebuttable presumption. See Burdine, 450 U.S. at 255 n. 8, 101 S.Ct. at 1094-95 n. 8. Rule 301 provides:
In all civil actions ... a presumption imposes on the party against whom it is directed the burden of going forward with evidence to rebut or meet the presumption, but does not shift to such party the burden of proof in the sense of the risk of nonpersuasion, which remains throughout the trial upon the party on whom it was originally ease.
Fed.R.Evid. 301.
The Conference Report explaining this Rule states:
Under the Senate amendment, a presumption is sufficient to get a party past an adverse party’s motion to dismiss made at the end of his case-in-ehief. If the *1364adverse party offers no evidence contradicting the presumed fact, the court will instruct the jury that if it finds the basic facts, it may presume the existence of the presumed fact. If the adverse party does offer evidence contradicting the presumed fact, the court cannot instruct the jury that it may presume the existence of the presumed fact from proof of the basic facts. The court may, however, instruct the jury that it may infer the existence of the presumed fact from proof of the basic facts.
The conference adopts the Senate amendment.
H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1597, at 2 (1974), reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 7098, 7099 (second emphasis added).
Indeed, if the facts constituting a Title VII prima facie case could not permit an inference of discrimination (and in the majority’s view they sometimes do not), then it is very likely that these facts could not constitutionally have the presumptive effect that McDonnell Douglas and Burdine hold that they have in the absence of a defendant’s proffered explanation. The Supreme Court’s rebuttable presumption jurisprudence long ago established that a presumption of “one fact from evidence of another” will satisfy due process requirements only if “there shall be some rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed, and that the inference of one fact from proof of another shall not be so unreasonable as to be a purely arbitrary mandate.” Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City R. Co. v. Turnipseed, 219 U.S. 35, 31 S.Ct. 136, 55 L.Ed. 78 (1910). Tumipseed considered the constitutionality of a state statute providing that “proof of injury inflicted by the running of locomotives or cars of [a railroad] company shall be prima facie evidence of the want of reasonable skill and care on the part of the servants of the company.” Id. at 41, 31 S.Ct. at 137. The Court understood the statute to east upon the railroad the burden of producing some evidence disputing its negligence, without which the defendant would lose as a matter of law. The Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute because “its operation is only to supply an inference of liability in the absence of other evidence contradicting such inference” and because there was “some rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed.” Id. at 43, 31 S.Ct. at 138.
Though some might view Tumipseed as a case that permitted a rebuttable presumption that was sufficient to impose liability in the absence of a defendant’s proffer of opposing evidence, but was created by facts insufficient in themselves to carry a case to a fact-finder, i. e., the fact of injury and the fact that the injury was inflicted by a train, the Supreme Court thought otherwise: “It is not an unreasonable inference that a derailment of railway cars is due to some negligence, either in construction or maintenance of the track or trains, or some carelessness in operation.” Id. at 44, 31 S.Ct. at 1382
The requirement of Tumipseed, that it must be reasonable to infer the presumed fact from the proven facts, was subsequently invoked to invalidate rebuttable presumptions in a series of criminal cases, beginning with Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 63 S.Ct. 1241, 87 L.Ed. 1519 (1943). Id. at 467-68, 63 S.Ct. at 1244-45. Tot, it will be recalled, involved a statute that made possession of a firearm by a convicted felon “presumptive evidence” that the firearm was transported or received in interstate commerce by the felon. That the Court viewed the presumption as rebuttable merely by the proffer of opposing evidence is made plain by the Court’s statement that the statute “leaves the jury free to act on the presump*1365tion alone once the specified facts are proved, unless the defendant comes forward with opposing evidence.” Id. at 469, 63 S.Ct. at 1245-46. This rebuttable presumption was invalidated as in conflict with due process because, in the absence of a proffer of opposing evidence (which need not have been proven), it permitted inference of an ultimate fact that was not rationally connected to the facts that were proved.
The Supreme Court subsequently applied Tot to invalidate rebuttable presumptions in United States v. Romano, 382 U.S. 136, 86 S.Ct. 279, 15 L.Ed.2d 210 (1965) (rebuttable presumption of control of still from presence at still), Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 29-54, 89 S.Ct. 1532, 1544-57, 23 L.Ed.2d 57 (1969) (rebuttable presumption of illegal importation of marijuana from possession of marijuana), and Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 418-19, 90 S.Ct. 642, 653-54, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970) (rebuttable presumption of illegal importation of cocaine from possession of cocaine). Leary explained that rebut-table presumptions are valid only where “it can be said with substantial assurance that the presumed fact is more likely than not to flow from the proved fact on which it is made to depend.” Leary, 395 U.S. at 36, 89 S.Ct. at 1548 (footnote omitted). Leary also made clear that the Court’s “more likely than not” test for rebuttable presumptions was not influenced by the context of a criminal case in which guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court said that the rebuttable presumption was invalid for failure to pass the “more likely than not” test without reaching the further question of whether the presumption would be valid to meet the “reasonable doubt” standard. Leary, 395 U.S. at 36 n. 64, 89 S.Ct. at 1548 n. 64.
Since a rebuttable presumption is constitutionally valid only where “it can be said with substantial assurance that the presumed fact is more likely than not to flow from the proved fact,” Leary, 395 U.S. at 36, 89 S.Ct. at 1548, it necessarily follows that the rebut-table presumption that the Supreme Court applied to Title VII cases in McDonnell Douglas and Burdine is based on subsidiary facts from which it can be said with substantial assurance that the presumed fact of discrimination is more likely than not to flow. Surely, the Supreme Court did not create in McDonnell Douglas and Burdine a rebuttable presumption that was unconstitutional under Tumipseed, Tot, and Leary. It also necessarily follows that the facts that suffice to create the McDonnell Douglas/Burdine rebuttable presumption are facts from which a reasonable trier may infer discrimination. Since these facts will support a constitutionally valid rebuttable presumption only if it is more likely than not that the ultimate fact— discrimination — flows from the subsidiary facts, it must be reasonable for a trier to draw the inference of that ultimate fact. Thus, the facts that support the rebuttable presumption in Title VII cases must also be sufficient to create a prima facie case in the lesser and ordinary sense that they suffice to permit a fact-finder to find the ultimate fact of discrimination in the plaintiffs favor.
Brushing aside the caselaw on rebuttable presumptions, the majority nonetheless asserts that “prima facie ease” in Title VII has a third meaning, one far weaker than the only two identified by the Supreme Court in Burdine, 450 U.S. at 254 n. 7, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 n. 7. In the majority’s view, a Title VII “prima facie case” starts out meaning facts sufficient to create a rebuttable presumption and then, upon the proffer of an explanation by the defendant, becomes a set of facts that only sometimes permits a fact-finder to infer discrimination. Though the majority does not say that the facts establishing a prima facie case of discrimination are always insufficient to get to a fact-finder, it does assert that since such a prima facie case is relatively easy to present, such facts, though supported by evidence, will sometimes be insufficient even to create a factual issue as to discrimination. In the majority’s words:
[A] plaintiff alleging discrimination can satisfy the prima facie case and avoid dismissal at the conclusion of the plaintiffs direct case without submitting evidence sufficient to support a finding in his favor on each element that the plaintiff must ultimately prove to win.
114 F.3d at 1336-37 (emphasis in original). The majority has thus embraced a novel concept — the insufficient prima facie case.
*1366The majority views a prima facie discrimination case as a collection of facts that always suffices to pry an explanation out of a defendant on pain of suffering an adverse judgment if no explanation is proffered and only sometimes also suffices to permit a jury to infer discrimination. The Supreme Court has never so characterized a prima facie discrimination case. It is true that the Court has characterized the burden of establishing a prima facie of discrimination as “not onerous,” Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1093-94, but it has not said that facts constituting a prima facie ease, if not undermined by opposing evidence, are insufficient to permit an inference of discrimination. In Bur-dine, the Court said precisely the opposite.
St. Mary’s made the further point that, after a defendant has proffered an explanation and thereby removed the presumptive force of the plaintiffs prima facie case, the prima facie case does not compel a directed verdict in the plaintiffs favor. St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 515, 113 S.Ct. at 2751-52 (emphasis added). That is because the fact-finder must decide whether or not to draw the inference of discrimination from the facts constituting the prima facie case. But though St. Mary’s quite understandably values the prima facie case at less than what is required to obtain a directed verdict, it does not reduce it so far as to say, as the majority here holds, that a prima facie case, even where its constituent facts are credited, sometimes might not even get to a fact-finder for decision. Thus, the Supreme Court is content to say that, after a defendant proffers an explanation, even a false one, a prima facie ease does not guarantee the plaintiff a victory. The majority here says that a supportable prima facie case does not even guarantee the plaintiff an opportunity to have the fact-finder consider the case.
Some of the confusion in this area of the law stems from the way the Supreme Court has articulated the McDonnell Douglas/Bur-dine analysis and the lower courts have applied it. McDonnell Douglas identified four factors that were present in that ease and sufficed to constitute a prima facie case. The sentence identifying the four factors carried an important footnote, which is often overlooked. It says:
The facts necessarily will vary in Title VII cases, and the specification above of the prima facie proof required from [the plaintiff] is not necessarily applicable in every respect to differing factual situations.
McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802 n. 13, 93 S.Ct. at 1824 n. 13.
Then in Burdine the Court generalized the test for a prima facie case by stating that the plaintiff “must prove by a preponderance of the evidence” adverse action taken “under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination.” Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1094. Again, the Court added a footnote of explication. It referred to the four factors that had sufficed in McDonnell Douglas as “an appropriate model for a prima facie case of racial discrimina tion,” explained again that “this standard is not inflexible,” and quoted from footnote 13 of McDonnell Douglas the important language that “‘[t]he facts necessarily will vary in Title VII cases, and the specification above of the prima facie proof required from [the plaintiff] is not necessarily applicable in every respect in differing factual situations.’ ” Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253 n. 6, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 n. 6 (quoting McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802 n. 13, 93 S.Ct. at 1824 n. 13).
These were important qualifications to be relegated to footnotes, and some courts might not have always kept them in mind. Thus, some courts repeat the four factors that were given in McDonnell Douglas as an example appropriate for that case and seem to regard them as always enough for a prima facie case, even though the different fact patterns such courts are confronting might not meet Burdine’s general test of “circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination.” And some courts, including ours, have said that the prima facie case may be “de minimis,” a phrase not normally associated with a prima facie case sufficient to take the ultimate issue to a fact-finder.3 However, even when we have la*1367beled a prima facie ease “de minimis,” we have usually, perhaps always, done so with respect to a fact pattern that met Burdine’s standard of “circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination” See, e.g., Chambers v. TRM Copy Centers, 48 F.3d 29, 37 (2d Cir.1994) (collecting cases upholding plaintiffs prima facie case).
Focusing on the four factors, without regard to the precise facts of a case, is what has led the majority to believe that we in the dissent favor subjecting employers “to liability for discrimination where none was present and none was shown.” 114 F.3d at 1344. The majority attributes that view to us because they assume that we think a prima facie case of discrimination is established whenever the four factors illustrated in McDonnell Douglas are met, regardless of what facts the plaintiff presents to establish the prima facie ease. That is not our view. We take seriously the caution in McDonnell Douglas, repeated in Burdine, that the facts “necessarily will vary in Title VII cases,” and that the “specification” of “prima facie proof required” in McDonnell Douglas “is not necessarily applicable in every respect to differing factual situations.” McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802 n. 13, 93 S.Ct. at 1824 n. 13.
The majority mischaracterizes our view in saying that we think an employer may be found liable without evidence of discrimination. We believe that a prima facie case requires, as the Supreme Court said in Bur-dine, adverse employment action taken “under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination,” Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1094, and that if such a. prima facie case is presented, and if, at the end of the trial, the inference remains reasonable despite the defendant’s evidence, then, as the Court said in St. Mary’s, “no additional proof of discrimination is required,” St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 511, 113 S.Ct. at 2749 (brackets and emphasis omitted), and the case goes to the fact-finder for decision. The facts in McDonnell Douglas sufficed to support such an inference; a qualified Black was rejected and the employer sought other workers with no better qualifications.4 The facts also sufficed in Burdine, where a qualified woman was rejected, and after several months, the position was filled by a male who had been under her supervision. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 254 n.6, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 n.6. The facts will not necessarily suffice every time a member of some protected class is rejected. The precise facts, not the rote repetition of the four factors, determine whether a prima facie case, sufficient to support an inference of discrimination and thus to permit a finding of liability, has been presented.
In any event, I believe that the Supreme Court wishes to recognize a prima facie case under Title VII only when the facts presented support a reasonable inference of discrimination. Whatever confusion in such terms as “inference” and “presumption” might have existed when the Court decided Henderson in 1929, the Court that decided Burdine in 1981 and St. Mary’s in 1993 understood that an inference permits, but does not require, finding an ultimate fact from a predicate fact or facts.5 That is why a Title VII prima facie *1368case can exist only when the predicate facts support a reasonable inference of discrimination. As the Court has cautioned, however, the fact patterns that meet that standard will vary from case to case.
Of course, a prima facie case of discrimination might cease to have its normal effect of permitting a jury to infer discrimination in some circumstances. But these instances can arise only where (a) the evidence in the entire record is such that no reasonable fact-finder could find to be true the facts presented by the plaintiff as constituting the prima facie ease (e.g., the evidence indisputably shows that the plaintiff is unqualified), or (b) the evidence in the entire record points so strongly away from discrimination (or toward a third reason) that no reasonable fact-finder could infer discrimination. The elimination of a prima facie ease in such circumstances, either by being indisputably undermined or indisputably overcome, can occur only where evidence provides a basis for such conclusions. The prima facie ease, sufficient in the Supreme Court’s view to permit an inference of discrimination, cannot, in the absence of undermining or opposing evidence, cease to permit the inference just because a majority of this Court believes, without reference to such evidence, that the inference ought not to be drawn.
(b) The Effect of a Finding of Pretext. Having embraced a new and weak meaning of “prima facie case,” the majority then compounds its error by substantially downgrading the effect of a finding of pretext. In this case, the trier of fact found that Vassar’s proffered reason for denying Dr. Fisher tenure was a pretext. The proffered reason, as acknowledged by the majority, was that Dr. Fisher “did not meet the posted standards for tenure, and that she was less qualified than other candidates who filled specific needs of the Biology Department.”6 114 F.3d at 1345. The panel opinion concluded that the District Court’s finding of pretext was sustainable, Fisher v. Vassar College, 70 F.3d 1420, 1437 (2d Cir.1995) (“Fisher II”), and the majority opinion, by disclaiming any consideration of the panel’s assessment of any of the District Court’s findings, leaves undisturbed the critical panel ruling that the pretext finding is not clearly erroneous.
Some of what the in banc majority says about a pretext finding is not in dispute. We all agree that a finding of pretext permits the fact-finder to draw an inference of discrimination. As the Supreme Court explicitly stated, “[Rejection of the defendant’s proffered reasons will permit the trier of fact to infer the ultimate fact of intentional discrimination, and ... no additional proof of discrimination is required.” St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 511, 113 S.Ct. at 2749 (internal quotation marks, footnote, and brackets omitted; emphasis in original). We also agree that the fact-finder need not infer discrimination after finding the proffered reason to be a pretext. The inference is available, not required.
We begin to part company when the majority offers its analysis of what a pretext finding means. The majority begins its analysis by pointing out that a pretextual reason for justifying adverse employment action might be advanced for a variety of reasons. The majority correctly observes that decision-makers might “intentionally dissemble” to hide such true reasons as “back-scratching, log-rolling, horse-trading, institutional *1369politics, envy, nepotism, spite, or personal hostility.” 114 F.3d 1337. Such-reasons, the majority points out, are non-discriminatory. To this unexceptional starting point, the majority then adds the equally indisputable point that the probative force of a pretext finding on the ultimate issue of discrimination is not a fixed value, but varies depending upon the circumstances of each case.
The majority then introduces three considerations to justify its view that the pretext finding in this case may properly be given slight, if any, probative force. Each consideration risks weakening the law of discrimination, at least in the context of university tenure decisions. First, the majority relies on the large number of reasons why a pretext explanation could be proffered as a circumstance for diminishing the force of the pretext finding that was made by the District Court. But numbers of possibilities have little to do with probative force, as can be readily demonstrated by consideration of a common instance of a permissible finding of state of mind — the inference of consciousness of guilt from flight from the scene of a crime. A person running from a crime scene might have done so for many reasons. He might be late for a doctor’s appointment, or a date with a friend, or any other important event; he might have just remembered that he left the oven on in his apartment, or the shower running; he might have heard a loud noise and thought there was some explosion endangering him; or he might just be a jogger who runs around that block every morning. The majority apparently believes that whenever a number of possible explanations can be suggested for conduct that normally has probative significance, the probative force of the conduct diminishes, triers of fact should be wary of attaching significance to it, and appellate courts should be emboldened to reject as clearly erroneous an ultimate finding that relies in part on a normally available inference drawn from such conduct.
This view of the law is totally unsupported and unsupportable. In every case where a person is seen running from the scene of a crime, the jury is instructed that they may, but need not, draw an inference that such flight is probative of consciousness of guilt, and that state of mind, in turn, is probative of ultimate guilt (though not alone sufficient to convict). Of course, the strength of the inference from flight will depend on all of the evidence in the case. If there is some slight evidence of an innocent explanation for the flight, the inference of consciousness of guilt might be lessened. If the evidence of an innocent explanation is strong, the inference of consciousness of guilt will be weak. And eases might arise where the evidence of an innocent explanation is so strong that no reasonable fact-finder could draw the inference of consciousness of guilt, in which event a finding based on the inference would be clearly erroneous.
To assert these self-evident propositions is not to suggest, as the majority says of this dissent, 114 F.3d at 1345, that I favor assigning a “fixed” or “special” value to a proffer of a pretextual explanation for an adverse employment decision. I do not. I simply observe, as every appellate court that has ever had a pretext case has observed, that a finding of pretext will normally permit (not require) an ultimate finding of discrimination, that the possibility that other explanations can be imagined is not a valid reason for depreciating the significance of a pretext finding, and that an appellate court cannot validly point to such possibilities as a basis for declaring clearly erroneous a trial court’s decision to infer discrimination from a finding of pretext.
The majority then amplifies its argument about multiple possible explanations by stating that a pretext finding is to be accorded “minimal” significance “if, on examination of the circumstances, there are many possible reasons for the false explanation, stated or unstated, and illegal discrimination is no more likely a reason than others.” Id. at 1338 (emphasis added). This statement is offered in an effort to provide an explanation of what the panel meant by its extraordinary statement that the District Court’s pretext finding “points nowhere.” See Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1437. I can agree that a fact-finder’s determination that discrimination is no more likely to be the motive for the proffer of a pretext than many other explanations is an ample basis for according diminished *1370weight to a pretext finding. But the majority’s gloss on the “points nowhere” statement provides no basis for depreciating the pretext finding in this case. That is so because in this case, there was nothing in the record to support a finding that log-rolling, nepotism, spite, or any of the majority’s other hypothesized explanations were the reason for Vassar’s proffer of a pretextual explanation, and the fact-finder did not find that other explanations for the pretextual proffer were as likely as discrimination. Whether the majority’s “equal probability” gloss and its unflattering speculation about how tenure decisions are made at Vassar strengthens the argument for ruling the discrimination finding clearly erroneous on appellate review is more properly considered in Part A(2), infra.
The majority’s second reason for diminishing the significance of a pretext finding is the startling notion that an employer like Vassar might quite understandably proffer a false reason for adverse employment action simply because of a “lack of candor.” 114 F.3d at 1346. Thus, a college, usually regarded as a bastion of uninhibited pursuit of truth, is excused from proffering its real reasons because the professors holding them lack “candor.”
However, the whole point of the three-part analysis of St. Mary’s and its predecessors (plaintiffs prima facie case, defendant’s proffer, and plaintiffs ultimate burden to prove discrimination) is to afford the defendant an opportunity to proffer its real reason for the challenged action. A Title VII lawsuit is not some sort of face-saving exercise to enable bashful decision-makers to excuse their lack of candor. The defendant is called upon to proffer what it believes is the true reason for its action. It need not do so precipitously. It can make appropriate inquiry within its ranks. But once it proffers its reason in court, it subjects that reason to the assessment of the fact-finder, and if the fact-finder concludes, with support in the record, that the proffered reason is a pretext, the defendant is usually at risk of having the fact-finder draw the permissible inference that the pretextual reason was proffered to hide the true reason — discrimination.
Third, the majority depreciates the significance of a pretextual explanation by observing that the tenure decision challenged by Dr. Fisher was the combined result of many decision-makers. For several reasons, this circumstance is also not a proper basis for depreciating the force of a pretext finding.
To begin with, Vassar did not say, after full opportunity for internal inquiry, that different participants in the tenure process held views related to “log-rolling,” “envy,” “spite,” or any of the other reasons suggested as possibilities by the majority. Vassar said Dr. Fisher was denied tenure because she lacked tenure qualifications, either on an absolute basis or at least on a comparative basis, in view of the needs of the Biology Department. Having proffered its single explanation, Vassar cannot expect the probative force of a finding that this explanation is pretextual to be diminished just because Vassar could have proffered a variety of explanations that might have been held by its various decision-makers.
Moreover, whenever motivation is in issue, as it is in every discrimination case, identification of motive is more difficult where decisions are made by a group than by an individual. That fact, however, cannot provide insulation for group decision-making permeated by discrimination. Perhaps if only one out of 100 decision-makers participating in a collective process harbored an impermissible motive, the group decision would not be vulnerable. But if some significant portion of the decision-makers shared the improper motive (or perhaps just one of a very small number), the decision is tainted. The Supreme Court has recognized this principle in ruling that a state constitutional convention acted with an impermissible, racially-based motive in enacting a constitutional provision, even though the evidence identified only some convention delegates holding that motive. See Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222, 228-30, 105 S.Ct. 1916, 1920-21, 85 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985) (citing evidence canvassed by court of appeals in Underwood v. Hunter, 730 F.2d 614, 618-20 (11th Cir.1984)); cf. United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 383-84, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 1682-83, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968) (declining to declare act *1371of Congress unconstitutional based on motives expressed by “a handful of Congressmen”). Whatever approach courts might take in ascertaining the motives of a group of convention delegates or legislators for purposes of constitutional adjudication, the group decision-making process of an employer, tested for purposes of determining a Title VII violation, may be found to be tainted by an impermissible motive held by any significant participants in the process. The Supreme Court made this precise point in Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 579-80, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1514-15, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985), when it upheld the reasonableness of the District Court’s finding of discrimination by citing the pretextual explanations of just two members of the five-member committee that had rejected the application of the Title VII plaintiff.
A further point about group decision-making concerns the venerable principle of respondeat superior. If an employer entrusts personnel decisions to persons who act on the basis of impermissible motives, the employer is responsible for the resulting act of discrimination. It may be true, as the majority says, that Vassar is not lying about the reason for denying tenure to Dr. Fisher just because one or more professors in the tenure process are lying, or as the majority prefers to say, “intentionally dissembl[ing].” Nevertheless, an employer can no more avoid legal responsibility for the unlawful discriminatory action of its subordinates than it can for their negligent infliction of harm in the course of their employment.
For all of these reasons, I fundamentally disagree with the majority’s view that the pretext finding in this case, or in other tenure denial cases, is generally to be accorded slight evidentiary significance on the ultimate issue of discrimination, or, in the panel’s even more extreme view, “points nowhere,” Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1437, at least in the absence of evidence that blunts the probative force of the pretext finding. In my view, the proper analysis as to the significance of a pretext finding should start, not with excuses for an employer’s lack of candor nor with a claim that such a finding “points nowhere,” but with an understanding of what a “pretext” really is. A standard dictionary definition is “a purpose or motive alleged ... in order to cloak the real intention.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1797 (1993). Thus, a pretext is not merely a reason that relies on factual assertions that are not true; it is a reason that a person proffers but does not believe is the real reason for the action the person has taken. If a supervisor believes an employee has embezzled funds, a discharge based on that belief is not rendered pretextual simply because at trial the employee proves that he did not embezzle. The supervisor’s proffered reason for the discharge is a pretext only if the supervisor says that embezzlement was the reason for the discharge and does not believe that this was the real reason. Of course, evidence that the employee did not embezzle is probative of the supervisor’s true state of mind, and a trier persuaded that the employee did not embezzle might well doubt the claimed statement of belief.7 But the issue remains — is it true that the supervisor believed that the employee embezzled? The reason stated (“proffered” in Title VII parlance) is pretextual only if the person does not believe what he or she is saying. What must be proffered is the alleged reason for the challenged action, i.e., why the action was taken.
In ordinary discourse, if a person asserts that something is true and knows that it is not, that person would be described as lying (or, in the majority’s felicitous phrase, “intentionally dissembl[ing]”), at least in the absence of joking, rhetorical debate, or mental disorder. But not every misstatement of fact, even a misstatement as to one’s own belief, is necessarily a lie, in the sense of an indictable perjury. Though the distinction between a knowingly false statement of one’s belief and a lie is not easy to describe, the majority in St. Mary’s drew this very distinction. See 509 U.S. at 520-21, 113 S.Ct. at 2754-55. The distinction inheres in this sig*1372nifieant sentence from Justice Scalia’s opinion:
The factfinder’s disbelief of the reasons put forward by the defendant (particularly if disbelief is accompanied by a suspicion of mendacity) may, together with the elements of the prima facie case, suffice to show intentional discrimination.
Id. at 511, 113 S.Ct. at 2749 (emphasis added). Since the falsity of the reason (e.g., the employee did not embezzle or was never late) is not necessarily inconsistent with an employer’s belief that the reason is true, in which case the employer’s motive is not impermissible, Justice Scalia must have been using the phrase “disbelief of the reasons” to mean a fact-finder’s “disbelief that the defendant really believed the reasons it was putting forward.” That being so, Justice Scalia must have meant that mendacity is something additional to a defendant’s putting forward a reason that it knows is not true.
Justice Scalia offers two explanations as to why a pretextual reason is not necessarily a lie, at least in the sense of a criminally actionable perjury. First, he points out, a dispute between two versions of an occurrence underlying the employer’s proffered reason, even though resolved in a plaintiffs favor by a preponderance of the evidence, is not tantamount to proving guilt of perjury. See id. at 520, 113 S.Ct. at 2754. Second, he notes, a company might rely in good faith on a false statement of a front-line supervisor’s professed belief in the reason given for some adverse employment action. See id. at 520-21, 113 S.Ct. at 2754-55. The supervisor, Justice Scalia maintains, may be a liar, but the company is not (though under agency principles the company may be liable for the supervisor’s lie). In any event, Justice Scalia does not doubt that a proffered explanation, found by a fact-finder not to be the reason believed by the defendant, is a pretext, and (whether perjurious or not) supports an inference, when coupled with the facts of a prima facie case, that the true reason was discrimination.
The reason for permitting an inference of discrimination from a finding of pretext is evident. In the context of Title VII lawsuits, the likely motivation for a defendant, called upon in court to proffer an explanation for its adverse employment action, to proffer a pretextual explanation is to hide the true explanation of discrimination. At least, this is generally so in the absence of some plausible explanation for the pretextual proffer. As we have previously observed, “Resort to a pretextual explanation is, like flight from the scene of a crime, evidence indicating consciousness of guilt, which is, of course, evidence of illegal conduct.” Binder v. Long Island Lighting Co., 57 F.3d 193, 200 (2d Cir.1995). In McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 805, 93 S.Ct. at 1825-26, the Supreme Court called a pretextual proffer a “coverup” for discrimination. Of course, just as flight from the scene of a crime might be explained, there might be innocent explanations for proffering a reason not believed to be true, and evidence of such explanations will weigh against drawing the inference of discrimination.
Thus, the panel opinion is quite wrong to assert that the pretext finding made by the District Court in this case “points nowhere.” On the contrary, it starts out pointing in the same direction that all pretext findings point — toward the finding of discrimination that is inferable from the facts constituting the plaintiff’s prima facie case.8 That proposition has been consistently recognized by the Supreme Court and by every appellate judge that has considered a Title VII case. Whether the pretext finding continues to point toward discrimination with sufficient probative force to persuade a fact-finder to infer discrimination depends on the evidence in the case, but there can be no doubt of at least the initial direction in which a pretext finding points. When the Supreme Court says in St. Mary’s, as all other courts have also said, that a fact-finder may infer discrimination from a finding of pretext, it is obviously in no doubt as to the direction in which a pretext finding points. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s assertion that an infer*1373ence of discrimination may be drawn from a finding of pretext, without any additional evidence required from the plaintiff, necessarily means that the pretext finding generally points toward discrimination with considerable force, enough force to enable the plaintiff to win, except in those rare cases, considered below, where a finding of discrimination, following a finding of pretext, may fairly be viewed as clearly erroneous because of special circumstances existing in the record.
I have no doubt that in some cases, a fact-finder would be fully entitled to consider the probative force of a pretext finding to be substantially diminished or even eliminated. This could occur for any of three general reasons. First, the fact-finder might decline to draw the inference of discrimination from a finding of pretext because evidence in the record points persuasively to the existence of a third motive (neither the proffered explanation nor discrimination) as the true explanation for the defendant’s adverse employment action. For example, the evidence might show that the employer gave a false explanation for discharging an employee (chronic lateness) in order to spare the employee the embarrassment of the true reason (stealing company funds). Many courts have recognized that the falsity of a defendant’s proffered reason might not support an ultimate finding of discrimination in the face of substantial evidence blunting the normally probative force of the finding of pretext. See Rhodes v. Guiberson Oil Tools, 75 F.3d 989, 994 (5th Cir.1996) (in banc) (example of one of several proffered reasons shown to be questionable); Binder, 57 F.3d at 200 (example of pretextual reason explained by desire to protect business secret or reputation of employee); Woods v. Friction Materials, Inc., 30 F.3d 255, 260-62 & n. 3 (1st Cir.1994) (example of pretextual reason for a discharge accomplished to prevent disclosure of employer’s embezzlement); see also Isenbergh v. Knight-Ridder Newspaper Sales, Inc., 97 F.3d 436, 442-43 (11th Cir.1996) (example of employer proffering reason, lateness, that was falsely overstated). Obviously, if the evidence points toward a motive other than discrimination, a pretextual explanation offers slight, if any, basis for inferring discrimination.
Second, the evidence might persuade the fact-finder that some component of the plaintiffs prima facie case is not established. For example, the evidence might show that the plaintiff is in fact not a member of the protected class against which discrimination was alleged.
Third, the evidence might persuade the fact-finder that the defendant has such a strong tradition of not making discriminatory employment decisions as to make it unlikely that it acted on the basis of a discriminatory motive in the plaintiffs ease. For example, the evidence might show that an employer has hired and promoted an unusually large number of members of the group allegedly discriminated against and has also disciplined supervisors for isolated instances of discrimination. In such circumstances, even if a proffered explanation is found to be pretextual, a fact-finder would have a sound basis for declining to infer that the true explanation was discrimination.
These examples do not exhaust the possible circumstances in which the fact-finder could properly accord a pretext finding little, if any, significance. The important point, however, is that in all such circumstances, the diminished significance of a pretext finding arises from evidence in the record. Evidence, not speculation about possibilities, will normally be the soundest basis for diminishing or even eliminating the probative force of a finding of pretext.
Beyond relying on such evidence, a fact-finder is also entitled to decline to draw an inference of discrimination from a finding of pretext simply because of the fact-finder’s own view of the unlikelihood that the pretextual explanation was proffered as a cover for discrimination. When trial judges regularly instruct juries to rely on their “common sense” or their “experience” in determining whether an inference, including an inference of motivation, ought to be drawn,9 they are *1374inviting these fact-finders to apply their own individual views about how likely it is that a person acted on the basis of an alleged motivation. Bench trial fact-finders, no less than jurors, are entitled to rely upon their common sense and experience in deciding whether to draw an inference, including the decision whether to infer discrimination from a finding of pretext.
Some might think that my view permitting the force of a pretext finding to be substantially diminished or even eliminated by the defendant’s evidence of a “third motive” or any other circumstance that weakens the inference available from a pretext finding would be an instance of placing on an employer a burden to disprove discrimination. This is not so. To avoid entry of judgment as a matter of law, a defendant has no obligation to do anything other than proffer evidence of an explanation for its adverse employment action. However, if it proffers such evidence, it takes the risk that a fact-finder will find its explanation to be a pretext and the further risk that a fact-finder will infer discrimination from the facts of the prima facie case, strengthened by the permissible adverse inference from proffering a pretextual explanation. The employer is free to mitigate that risk by introducing evidence that explains why it proffered a pretextual explanation. It has no obligation or burden to do so, but, like all litigants facing the risk of liability based on permissible inferences from an adversary’s evidence, it declines to present its own opposing evidence at its peril, even though the burden of persuasion on the ultimate issue remains on the plaintiff.
The point is best illustrated by the numerous cases permitting adverse inferences to be drawn against defendants even in criminal cases unless they provide an explanation that satisfies the jury. See, e.g., Turner, 396 U.S. at 405-18, 90 S.Ct. at 646-53 (possession of heroin may authorize conviction for importing heroin unless defendant satisfactorily explains possession); United States v. Gainey, 380 U.S. 63, 85 S.Ct. 754, 13 L.Ed.2d 658 (1965) (presence at still being operated may authorize conviction for operating still unless presence satisfactorily explained by defend ant). Though two members of the Court believed that permitting such an inference in the absence of a defendant’s satisfactory explanation shifted the burden of proof to the defendant, Turner, 396 U.S. at 432-35, 90 S.Ct. at 660-61 (Black, J., with whom Douglas, J., joins, dissenting); see also Gainey, 380 U.S. at 71, 85 S.Ct. at 759-60 (Douglas, J., dissenting in part on self-incrimination grounds); id. at 74, 85 S.Ct. at 761 (Black, J., dissenting on various grounds), the Supreme Court disagreed.
To say that a set of facts (subsidiary facts of the prima facie ease plus a finding of pretext) permits an inference of discrimination unless the defendant presents evidence undermining the prima facie ease or overwhelming it with contrary evidence does not assign to the defendant a burden of proof. The defendant has simply been afforded the opportunity of every defendant, confronted with a plaintiff’s sufficient evidence, to present opposing evidence, without which it takes the risk that the trier might draw the inference of liability from the plaintiffs sufficient evidence. Neither the opportunity to present such evidence nor the risk that the inference might be drawn in its absence has ever been thought to place a burden of proof on the party opposing the inference.
For all of these reasons, I disagree profoundly with the majority’s view that a finding of pretext in a discrimination ease is often to be accorded little significance.10
*1375(c) The Combined Effect of a Prima Facie Case and a Finding of Pretext. Having embraced a new and weak meaning of “prima facie ease” and then depreciated the significance of a pretext finding simply because unproven possible explanations might exist, the majority then aggregates its views to assert that “the combined effect of both [a prima facie case and a finding of pretext] may have little capacity to prove what the plaintiff has the ultimate burden of proving.” 114 F.3d at 1338. This view is completely at odds with Justice Sealia’s statement in St. Mary’s that “rejection of the defendant’s proffered reasons will permit the trier of fact to infer the ultimate fact of intentional discrimination, and ... no additional proof of discrimination is required.” St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 511, 113 S.Ct. at 2749 (internal quotation marks, footnote, and brackets omitted; emphasis in original).
Though I agree with the majority that “a finding of pretext, together with evidence comprising a prima facie case, is not always sufficient to sustain an ultimate finding of intentional discrimination,” 114 F.3d at 1343 (emphasis added), it will be a rare case where this is not so. Surely the three cases11 cited by the majority for the language just quoted are not examples of such insufficiency because in none of them was there any pretext finding at all, much less a pretext finding diminished by opposing evidence. As the Fifth Circuit has noted, “In tandem with a prima facie case, the evidence allowing rejection of the employer’s proffered reasons will often, perhaps usually, permit a finding of discrimination without additional evidence.” Rhodes, 75 F.3d at 994.
Whether this appeal presents one of those rare cases, explicitly contemplated by St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 524, 113 S.Ct. at 2756, where a finding of discrimination may be deemed clearly erroneous despite a valid finding of pretext, requires consideration of how an appellate court reviews findings of fact, including a finding of discrimination.
2. Appellate Review of Findings of Fact
On the aspect of the appeal that concerns appellate review of a trial court’s findings of fact, we again start in complete agreement. We all agree that any finding of fact by a district judge may be rejected on appeal if the finding is “clearly erroneous,” see Fed. R.Civ.P. 52(a), a conclusion that may be reached when the appellate court is “left with the ‘definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.’ ”12 See Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc., 456 U.S. 844, 855, 102 S.Ct. 2182, 2189, 72 L.Ed.2d 606 (1982) (quoting United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 542, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948)). Furthermore, we all agree that this basic principle of appellate review applies to findings of fact about a defendant’s state of mind *1376in discrimination cases. The Supreme Court settled that point fifteen years ago. See Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 287-88, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 1789-90, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982) (intent to discriminate is issue of fact, subject to “clearly erroneous” standard of review). Finally, we all agree that clear error review is available for a finding of discrimination made after a finding of pretext. As the Supreme Court stated in St. Mary’s, even after a finding of pretext, the plaintiffs claim of discrimination “remains a question for the factfinder to answer, subject, of course, to appellate review — which should be conducted ... under the ‘clearly erroneous’ standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a).” St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 524, 113 S.Ct. at 2756 (citing Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573-76, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1511-13, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985)).
We divide, however, not on whether an appellate court may review a finding of discrimination to determine if it is clearly erroneous, but on how such review is to be made. An appellate court may not simply review a record and announce that it is left with a firm conviction that a mistake has been made. After a district judge has made an ultimate finding of fact and has supported that finding with a large number of subsidiary findings of fact, proper regard for the relationship between a court of appeals and a district court requires more than a bare assertion of disagreement. The reviewing court has an obligation either to analyze the evidence relied on to support the ultimate finding and explain why it is seriously deficient, or to analyze other evidence in the record and explain why it so substantially supports a finding contrary to the one reached by the district judge as to create a firm conviction that the judge’s finding is wrong. See Anderson, 470 U.S. at 575, 105 S.Ct. at 1512. In rare cases, both tasks might lead to appellate rejection of a finding.
Appellate courts rejecting district court findings as clearly erroneous have regularly undertaken these tasks. See, e.g., Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526, 534-37, 99 S.Ct. 2971, 2977-79, 61 L.Ed.2d 720 (1979) (approving Court of Appeals rejection of finding after identifying significant evidence overlooked by District Court); Jiminez v. Mary Washington College, 57 F.3d 369, 380-82 (4th Cir.1995) (rejecting finding of discrimination after analyzing and deeming insubstantial evidence trial court relied on and also analyzing substantial contrary evidence); Sumner v. United States Postal Service, 899 F.2d 203, 209-11 (2d Cir.1990) (analyzing evidence opposing District Court’s rejected finding that employer’s proffered reason for discharge was not pretext).
In this case, the panel decision that the in banc majority has permitted to go into effect did not perform either task. It did not even purport to deem deficient the evidence underlying either the plaintiffs prima facie case of discrimination against married women or the finding of pretext. Not one of the District Court’s 111 subsidiary findings of fact was ruled unsupported by the evidence. Nor did the panel attempt to marshall evidence in the record opposed to the ultimate finding of discrimination.
This does not mean that a fact-finder’s inference of discrimination is immune from review for clear error. An appellate court may reject an inferential ultimate finding if the subsidiary facts are clearly erroneous, if there is a complete absence of subsidiary facts, e.g., Goldhirsh Group, Inc. v. Alpert, 107 F.3d 105, 109-10 (2d Cir.1997) (inference of content of telephone conversation rejected for lack of factual predicate), or if the fact-finder articulated, or necessarily relied on, an aspect of its reasoning process that was not merely different from the views of the appellate court but was demonstrably unsound. But the rejection must be based on evidence in the record.
Our disagreement on the circumstances under which an inference of discrimination may be rejected is at the heart of the matter. The majority believes that an appellate court may reject a fact-finder’s inference of discrimination, drawn from a finding of pretext, whenever the appellate court thinks (or in Rule 52(a) terms, “is firmly convinced”) that reasons other than discrimination are as likely to explain a pretextual proffer as discrimination itself. No authority is cited for this proposition, not any Title VII case, not even any decision from any other field of substan*1377tive law. I fundamentally disagree with the majority’s unprecedented grant to reviewing panels of a roving commission to second-guess district courts on the relative likelihood of possible explanations for a Title VII defendant’s proffer of a pretextual reason. A reviewing court may legitimately reject an inference of discrimination, not because of its views about employer behavior in general or university behavior in particular, but only where a record provides an articulable basis for exercising the narrowly circumscribed appellate function of determining that a finding of fact is clearly erroneous.
It is not difficult to imagine cases where, despite a sustainable finding of pretext, a record contains evidence that justifies an appellate court in ruling that an ultimate finding of discrimination is clearly erroneous. Just as the fact-finder is entitled to decline to draw an inference of discrimination from a finding of pretext, an appellate court is entitled to conclude from evidence in the record that the inference of discrimination is so demonstrably unsupportable as to be clearly erroneous. Such clear error could occur if the record overwhelmingly established any of the circumstances discussed above' that would entitle a fact-finder not to infer discrimination from a pretextual proffer. These include facts that overwhelmingly establish a third motive for the pretextual proffer, undermine a component of the plaintiffs prima facie ease, or demonstrate that the defendant is highly unlikely to have discriminated. But in the absence of such evidence, a reviewing court may not reject a finding of discrimination simply because the reviewing court does not believe that the inference of discrimination is warranted. That is the clear message of Anderson, where the Supreme Court reversed a court of appeals for disagreeing with a district court’s inference of discrimination, which was based on pretextual explanations. “This standard [a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made] plainly does not entitle a reviewing court to reverse a finding of the trier of fact simply because it is convinced that it would have decided the case differently.” Anderson, 470 U.S. at 573, 105 S.Ct. at 1511.
The point is well illustrated by the majority’s comment on the significance of an inference of guilt arising from flight from the scene of a burning budding: “[F]light from the scene of a crime ordinarily has evidentiary weight, but flight from a scene of arson shows nothing if the defendant fled the scene of a department store inferno during business hours.” 114 F.3d at 1346. What diminishes the significance of flight in this example is evidence that establishes key facts: (a) the building is a department store, and (b) the suspect fled from it during business hours. That evidence, not an appellate court’s generalized view of why people flee from crimes (or proffer pretextual explanations for tenure decisions) diminishes the significance of daytime flight from a burning department store, and even permits an appellate court to deem an inference of guilt from such flight clearly erroneous.
Having disclaimed any review of the adequacy of the District Court’s finding of discrimination,13 the majority instead has elected to narrow the scope of the in banc appeal and authorize issuance of a mandate that relies on the rulings of the panel that initially *1378heard this appeal. That procedural device requires consideration of the third matter presented by this ease — an in banc court’s relation to a panel opinion.
3. Relation of an In Banc Court to a Panel
The majority observes, and I fully agree, that an in banc court is not normally convened to reconsider a panel’s assessment of a district court’s factual findings. In this ease, however, an in banc court was convened in an appeal that largely concerned the panel’s rejection of the District Court’s finding of discrimination. The rehearing order contained no limitation of issues. See Fisher v. Vassar College, No. 94-7737 (2d Cir. Feb. 16, 1996) (order for rehearing). Once an appeal is ordered for a plenary rehearing, the in banc court normally ought to make its independent assessment of the appeal.14 Of course, an in banc court has the option of deciding only certain issues and then voting to dissolve itself and return any undecided issues to the panel for further consideration in light of the decision of the in banc court, cf. Peck v. United States, 102 F.3d 1319 (2d Cir.1996) (in banc) (in banc court dissolves itself and returns appeal to panel for reconsideration in light of recent Supreme Court decision), but the in banc court has not done so in this case.
Instead, the majority pursues a most unusual course. Despite the grant of plenary in banc review, the majority first frames a limited issue for in banc decision, then states that the majority’s “ruling” on the limited issue “reaffirms the applicability of the rule employed by the panel,” 114 F.3d at 1347, and finally orders issuance of a mandate that draws its authority both from the in banc opinion and the rulings of the panel as originally made, without any further consideration.
The majority’s unprecedented approach is not even internally consistent. At the outset, the majority states, “A majority of the Court has decided to limit in banc review to resolution of the question whether a finding of liability under Title VII, supported by a prima facie case and a sustainable finding of pretext, is subject to review for clear error.” 114 F.3d at 1333 (footnote omitted). Then, after framing this narrow (and indisputable) question, the majority moves on to consider several other matters. The majority states that a prima facie case of discrimination, considered apart from the persuasive force of opposing evidence, is not necessarily sufficient to take a ease to a fact-finder. Then, acknowledging that the in banc rehearing is not limited to the question of whether clear error review is possible, as it first said, the majority states that the review is “limited to the force and effect of a pretext finding.” Id. at 1347. On this issue, the majority further states that a finding of pretext has little, if any, significance whenever an appellate court believes that there are possible explanations, even though not established in the evidence, that might explain why an employer proffered a false explanation for its action. Later, the majority, though disclaiming the promulgation of any “rule,” id. at 1346 (“The rule is that there is no rule peculiar to discrimination cases.”), announces a novel method of analyzing an employer’s false statement, which looks very much like a “rule”: “the weaker the evidence of discrimination, the less reason there is to believe that the employer’s false statement concealed discrimination,” id. at 1346-47. Finally, the majority, though declining to consider the correctness of the panel’s rejection of the District Court’s finding of discrimination, undertakes to explain what the panel must have meant by its extraordinary statement that a finding of pretext “points nowhere.” Id. at 1345.
The majority’s novel method of proceeding raises two serious issues of institutional concern: (a) what issues should this in banc court adjudicate, and (b) what procedure *1379should be required of the panel after dissolution of the in bane court?
(a) Issues for the in banc court. The majority asserts that the in banc rehearing wds ordered to resolve the issue of “whether a finding of liability under Title VII, supported by a prima facie case and a sustainable finding of pretext, is subject to review for clear error.” 114 F.3d at 1333. That is assuredly not why I voted for in banc review, since that issue had previously been decisively settled by St. Mary’s. See 509 U.S. at 524, 113 S.Ct. at 2756. My vote to in banc, and, I believe, the votes of some other members of the Court, were cast to determine not whether clear error review was available, but how such review should be conducted. Many of us were deeply troubled by the panel’s unprecedented ruling that a finding of pretext “points nowhere,” see Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1437, which was contrary to the ruling in St. Mary’s that such a finding permits an ultimate finding of discrimination.
Even if many of those voting to in banc this appeal did so primarily, or even only, to confirm the proposition that clear error review is permissible, once the appeal is reheard, we should discharge our responsibilities by facing up to major issues fairly presented by the case. Manifestly, a major issue arising from the panel opinion is what significance a reviewing court should give to a sustainable finding of pretext. Does it “point[ ] nowhere,” as the panel stated? Does it point toward discrimination, but with only minimal probative force, as perhaps some believe? Or does it point toward discrimination with strong probative force, at least in the absence of evidence that blunts such probative force, as I believe? Rather than answer these questions, the majority expresses a few thoughts about a pretext finding and then declines to rule on whether or not the District Court’s use of a pretext finding to support an inference of discrimination in this case is permissible. But whether such use is permissible is the crucial issue on this appeal. To decline to rule on it is a default of adjudication. The district judges of this Circuit gain little, if any, illumination from learning that a majority of this Court believes that lack of candor might explain why a Title VII defendant proffers a reason that is pretextual. What they need to know, especially after reading the panel opinion in this case, is whether this Circuit holds the view that a pretext finding points nowhere, and, if not, to have some guidance as to the appropriate role of such a finding in the resolution of a Title VII claim. This in bane rehearing was the occasion for providing that guidance. Regrettably, the opportunity has been missed.
Rather than provide such guidance, the in bane court has voted to dissolve itself without considering whether the pretext finding in this case, plus other findings of the District Court, support the ultimate finding of discrimination. Though the majority has the undoubted power to use its one-vote edge to accomplish this result, its action is an inappropriate use of the in banc procedure. A clear majority of the active judges voted to accord this appeal a plenary rehearing. No changed circumstance has arisen since that decision to warrant a restriction of the scope of the in banc.15 The majority has simply elected to use its voting power to remove from in bane consideration the resolution of the issue that occasioned the in banc order.16 In the Supreme Court, a minority of four justices are permitted to bring a case to the Court for review, after which the majority adjudicates the issues presented.17 See *1380Leonard M. Leiman, The Rule of Four, 57 Colum. L. Rev. 975 (1957). In this ease, despite a majority vote of the active judges in favor of in banc review, a narrow majority of the in banc court has now voted to remove the basic issue on this appeal from consideration by the in banc court.
I do not contend that all members of an appellate court, and certainly not of an in banc court, are obliged to read every word of a record in order to cast a responsible vote on the issue of whether an ultimate finding of fact is clearly erroneous. Judges are entitled to rely on the materials culled from the record by knowledgeable appellate lawyers on opposing sides. They are also entitled to accept, without detailed independent verification, an analysis of the evidence set forth in majority and minority opinions. But to decline to use any of these traditional techniques and instead to remove the key issue of this appeal from in banc consideration is unfair both to the judges of this Court who wish to have that issue considered (whether or not their views on the merits ultimately prevail) and to the judges of the district courts who will now not receive the authoritative guidance for which this in banc rehearing was ordered.18
(b) Procedure for the panel after in banc dissolution. After limiting the scope of the in banc rehearing and dissolving the in banc court, the majority then takes the wholly unprecedented step of ordering a mandate to issue without the need for reconsideration by the panel in light of the in banc majority’s opinion. This step is taken because of the in bane majority’s assertion that its “ruling” on the now limited question of “the force and effect of a pretext finding ... reaffirms the applicability of the rule employed by the panel.” 114 F.3d at 1347.
In fact, it is evident that, at least in two crucial respects, the panel did not proceed as the majority now indicates is required of a reviewing court diminishing the significance of a pretext finding. First, the in bane majority opinion says that a finding of pretext may be accorded little, if any, weight where *1381circumstances make it clear that the probability that the pretext was proffered to hide discrimination is just as likely as several other explanations that the defendant might have had for such a proffer. But in this case, the fact-finder made no such finding of equal probabilities, and the panel that rejected Judge Motley’s finding of discrimination made no determination that it thought that the probabilities were equal. Second, the in banc majority says that appellate rejection of a finding of discrimination must be based on the evidence in the record. But in this case the panel opinion did not point to evidence that undermined the plaintiffs prima facie case, supported a non-diseriminatory reason for proffering a pretextual explanation, or showed that discrimination was not the reason for the tenure denial. Of course, it is possible that if this appeal is returned to the panel for reconsideration in light of the majority’s in banc opinion, the panel would again conclude that the finding of discrimination was clearly erroneous. But adjudication of this appeal should not rest on the majority’s prediction of what the panel will do.
The reality is that the issue framed by the majority — “the force and effect of a pretext finding” — is the type of issue that gains only slight illumination from abstract statements. Only the exercise of an appellate court’s authority to review a discrimination finding for clear error will oblige that court to explain how such review is being conducted and why, in a particular case, a pretext finding lacks the “force and effect” that normally permits it to support a discrimination finding. Since the majority has said so little about how a discrimination finding is to be reviewed and how a finding of pretext may be diminished in significance, it is not surprising that it prefers not to demonstrate the shortcomings of its “ruling” by attempting to apply it to Judge Motley’s findings of pretext and discrimination.
Since the majority authorizes issuance of a mandate that draws part of its authority from the panel opinion, I am obliged to turn my attention to the reasons given by the panel for rejecting the District Court’s finding of discrimination.
4. The Panel Opinion’s Rejection of the Finding of Discrimination19
■ The panel opinion starts with the District Court’s finding of pretext and then abruptly eliminates it from the ensuing analysis by stating, “The finding of pretext affirmed in this opinion points nowhere.... ” Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1437. As discussed above, this total rejection of the significance of the pretext finding cannot be reconciled with the contrary view of the Supreme Court in St. Mary’s.
What then was there about the pending case that led the panel to ascribe no weight to the finding of pretext and to rule that the finding of discrimination was clearly erroneous? The panel took two further steps after disregarding the finding of pretext. First, it said that the District Judge herself did not believe that the combination of a prima facie case plus a finding of pretext supported an ultimate finding of discrimination. Id. I see nothing in Judge Motley’s opinion to support this statement, and, even if some basis for doubt on this score existed, the proper remedy would not be to reverse the District Judge by reading (or misreading) her mind, but to remand the case so that Judge Motley can tell us whether she finds that the prima facie case plus the finding of pretext suffices to persuade her, as the fact-finder, to make the ultimate finding of discrimination.
Lacking any words in Judge Motley’s opinion to support the notion that she did not believe the pretext finding supported an inference of discrimination, the panel bases its view of Judge Motley’s thinking on the fact that after finding both a prima facie case and *1382pretext, she went on to identify three categories of evidence that lent additional support to her ultimate finding of discrimination. As the panel views it, Judge Motley “felt compelled to comb the record for evidence of discrimination, evidently convinced, as are we, that the finding of pretext here did not alone justify a finding of discrimination.” Id. This is an unfair characterization of Judge Motley’s opinion. The District Judge proceeded as bench trial judges frequently do: she made the two findings that the case law of the Supreme Court and this Circuit says are sufficient to support an inference of discrimination, she then drew the permissible inference from pretext and made the ultimate finding of discrimination, and then she went on to make additional findings to demonstrate added support for her ruling.
The panel’s next step was to reject, not the basic findings of a prima facie case and pretext, but some of the additional findings that lend further support to the ultimate finding of discrimination. Judge Motley discussed three categories of evidence as additional support for her finding of discrimination — (a) discriminatory use of student evaluations, (b) statistical evidence, and (c) anecdotal evidence. Fisher v. Vassar College, 852 F.Supp. 1193, 1228-29 (S.D.N.Y.1994) (“Fisher I”). The panel rejected the statistical evidence, Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1442-47, and the anecdotal evidence, id. at 1438-40, and, for purposes of this discussion, I will assume, only for the sake of the argument, that the District Court’s findings in these two categories were clearly erroneous. But the panel disregarded, without explanation, Judge Motley’s first category of additional evidence. This concerned student evaluations, which she found were “almost exclusively” the basis for assessment of Dr. Fisher’s teaching performance. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1209 (finding 45).
Judge Motley found that Vassar students rated teachers for various characteristics on a scale of one to five, and that for male tenure candidates and non-married female tenure candidates Vassar considered the percentage of students who rated candidates in the top two categories but that for Dr. Fisher, the only married female considered for tenure, Vassar considered only the percentage of students rating her in the one highest category. As a result, Dr. Fisher had a lower percentage of favorable student evaluations than males and unmarried women, and this lower percentage was considered in the tenure evaluation.20 Id. at 1209-10 (findings 47-49), 1228. This additional finding was not ruled clearly erroneous by the panel, and no explanation was given as to why it does not lend some weight to the finding of discrimination. Indeed, this subsidiary finding was accepted by the panel in its discussion of the evidentiary sufficiency of the finding of pretext, Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1435-36, but omitted, without explanation, in the panel’s rejection of the District Judge’s finding of discrimination.21
Though leaving undisturbed the findings about discriminatory use of student evaluations, the panel then proceeded to reject aspects of Judge Motley’s findings that she had not included in the three categories of evidence that she elected to discuss as giving added weight to her finding of discrimination. These other aspects concern expert testimony, id. at 1447-48, and party admissions, id. at 1440-42. Again, for purposes of this discussion, I will assume that the panel was entitled to reject these other findings. Nevertheless, the basic issue remains: how can a panel reject a finding of discrimination that *1383is based on the facts that establish a prima facie case, plus a finding of pretext, plus the undisturbed additional finding of discriminatory use of student evaluation ratings?
The panel’s approach boils down to three steps: (a) the finding of pretext is disregarded, (b) the findings of discriminatory use of student evaluations are ignored, and (e) other findings are found to be clearly erroneous. This approach is inconsistent with every instance of appellate review of trial court fact-finding in discrimination cases. Even if some of the trial court’s subsidiary findings are deemed clearly erroneous, the most an appellate court could properly do would be to remand to the District Court to reconsider its ultimate finding of discrimination on the basis of the subsidiary findings that are undisturbed — the facts of the prima facie case, the finding of pretext, and the findings of discriminatory use of student ratings. Since Judge Motley’s opinion leaves me in no doubt that, even if limited to these undisturbed matters, she would infer discrimination against married women, I would affirm this aspect of the judgment she entered.
Moreover, there is an additional basis in the evidence and the findings that supports Judge Motley’s ultimate finding of discrimination against married women. Judge Motley found evidence of bias against married women reflected in the adverse comments in the tenure review file concerning Dr. Fisher’s eight-year hiatus from teaching in order to raise a family. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1216 (findings 84-87). This hiatus occurred from 1966 to 1973, after which Dr. Fisher resumed teaching, first at Marist College for three years and then at Vassar. Though fully aware that Dr. Fisher had been away from teaching for an eight-year period that ended three years before she applied to Vassar, Vassar hired her and placed her on a tenure track. As Judge Motley noted:
The persistent fixation of the Biology Department’s senior faculty on a married woman’s pre-Vassar family choices reflects the acceptance of a stereotype and bias: that a married woman with an active and on-going family life cannot be a productive scientist and, therefore, is not one despite much evidence to the contrary.
Id. (finding 87).
Though the panel opinion discussed the evidence that Judge Motley relied on to support her findings regarding Dr. Fisher’s hiatus from teaching and acknowledged that “[t]he evidence supports an inference that Fisher’s eight-year absence from academia hurt her chance for tenure,” 70 F.3d at 1448, it concluded that the District Court’s inferences about discrimination from such evidence were not supportable. The panel expressed the view that the adverse comments about her hiatus were not “sex specific” and were legally insufficient to lend support to a Title VII claim. Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1448. The panel agreed with Vassar’s contention that the hiatus would be relevant to her claim only if the tenure experiences of women who took extended leaves of absence compared unfavorably with the tenure experiences of men who took such absences. Id.
I strongly disagree with this assessment of evidence that Judge Motley properly deemed significant. The panel’s approach means that working women, penalized for taking years off to raise children, can be disadvantaged in the workplace for so long as it takes our society to become accustomed to the idea that working men share a responsibility to devote their time to. raising children. Of course, Vassar was careful to say that the relevant comparison, necessary to make the adverse comments probative, should be between men and women who took extended absences from work regardless of the reason. Such a felicitous generalization cannot mask the obvious truth that the predominant reason that working women take absences from work is to bear and raise children; there is no pervasively comparable reason for absences among working men, and it is fatuous for the college to suggest that Dr. Fisher is to be faulted for not producing evidence of the tenure experiences of men who took absences “regardless of the reason.” With rare exception, men do not take extended absences from work to raise children (or for any other reason); their reluctance to share in child-raising responsibilities cannot fairly be turned against Dr. Fisher to penalize her *1384for not assembling data concerning such nonexistent male absences. Judge Motley was entirely correct: the Biology Department’s “persistent fixation on [Dr. Fisher’s] preVassar family choices reflects the acceptance of a stereotype and bias.”
Of course, a college, or any other employer, is entitled to give an unfavorable rating to a person whose absence from a field, for whatever reason, has left that person deficient in necessary knowledge of current learning and developments. But there was not even a claim, much less evidence, that Dr. Fisher’s child-raising hiatus had left her in any respect deficient in contemporary knowledge of her field. On the contrary, the record is replete with evidence of her numerous peer-reviewed publications, grant awards, papers presented, and consultant-ships to such institutions as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1198-1205 (findings 9-31). Judge Motley was entirely justified in considering the adverse view of Dr. Fisher’s hiatus to be further evidence of bias against married women.22
B. The Claim of Discrimination Based on Age
The District Court also found that Vassar had denied Dr. Fisher tenure on the basis of age. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1230-31. This second ultimate finding was based primarily on (a) a prima facie case of age discrimination and (b) a finding that Vassar’s proffered reason for denying tenure — failure to meet tenure standards — was pretextual.23 Id. Significantly, the District Court found that a component of the prima facie ease of age discrimination — discharge under cireumstances giving rise to an inference of age discrimination — was established by evidence showing that, with one distinguishable exception, see id. at 1230 n. 24, “all other tenured faculty who were equally or less qualified than Dr. Fisher were at least nine years younger than Dr. Fisher when they were tenured.” Id. at 1230; see id. at 1219 (finding 106). Moreover, had Dr. Fisher not taken eight years off from teaching to raise her children, before joining the Vassar faculty, she would have been within the age group from which Vassar is apparently willing to select tenured professors.
The claim of discrimination on two distinct grounds, inferable from a finding of pretext, introduces an added complexity to this case. Though the analogy is not exact, the situation is somewhat comparable to that presented by a person who is apprehended while fleeing from the scene of two crimes. The fact-finder may draw from flight an inference of consciousness of guilt with respect to one of the crimes, the other crime, or both crimes. However, it is also true that, in some circumstances, the strength of the inference from flight that tends to prove guilt of one offense makes it most unlikely that an inference of guilt as to the other crime is reasonable.
For example, if a person is apprehended fleeing from a scene where two victims have been robbed moments before, it is entirely reasonable to infer consciousness of guilt of both crimes, at least in the absence of circumstances significantly distinguishing the offenses. On the other hand, if the person fled from a scene where a bank was robbed and a work of art was elaborately defaced, and if circumstances strengthened the infer*1385ence of the person’s guilt of the bank robbery, the very act of fleeing from the bank robbery would make it highly unlikely that the fleeing person paused to commit an act of vandalism. In such circumstances, the trier would be fully justified in drawing an inference of guilt only as to the robbery, and, depending on the facts, an additional inference as to the vandalism, if drawn by the fact-finder, might well be clearly erroneous.
In the pending case, where the plaintiff presented a prima facie case of discrimination because she was a married woman and because of age, it was within the prerogative of the fact-finder to draw from the finding of pretext an inference of discrimination on both grounds. Unlike the bank robbery/vandalism example discussed above, discrimination based on marital status is not realistically incompatible with additional discrimination based on age. An employer could rationally decide to deny tenure to married women and to those over 40, and would therefore likely deny tenure to a married woman over 40. Thus, this is not a case where the very existence of one discriminatory motive is itself strong evidence that another alleged discriminatory motive is unlikely to have existed. Though the evidence more strongly supported the ultimate conclusion of discrimination against married women, it also permitted the inference of discrimination on the basis of age.
Concluding Thoughts
The majority has permitted the rejection, as clearly erroneous, of findings of discrimination that are entirely permissible in view of the fact that the finding of pretext is undisturbed by the Court, unexplained by the defendant, and uncontroverted by evidence in the record. That rejection is unwarranted, and the majority offers no satisfactory explanation for what it has done. In the absence of such explanation, one can only speculate about what underlies the majority’s decision. The most likely explanation is that the majority is reluctant to have a court confer tenure on a professor who has been rejected for tenure by her faculty colleagues, her dean, her college president, and her board of trustees.24 I share that reluctance, and had I been the trier of fact, I might have declined to find pretextual the proffered explanation of noneompliance with tenure standards, or to draw the inference of discrimination, even after a finding of pretext. But, as we have been authoritatively instructed, “the court of appeals may not reverse [a finding] even though convinced that had it been sitting as the trier of fact, it would have weighed the evidence differently.” Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574, 105 S.Ct. at 1511.
Though it is also possible that the majority prefers to fashion a less deferential approach to appellate review of a discrimination finding because the adverse employment decision has been made by a highly respected college, or because the particular action taken is the denial of tenure, we have no authority to apply special rules of appellate review for such reasons.25 See University of Pennsylvania v. EEOC, 493 U.S. 182, 190, 110 S.Ct. 577, 583, 107 L.Ed.2d 571 (1990) (“The effect of the elimination of this exemption [for educational institutions] was to expose tenure determinations to the same enforcement procedures applicable to other employment decisions.”) (emphasis added); Zahorik v. Cornell University, 729 F.2d 85, 93 (2d Cir.1984) (“Tenure decisions are not exempt under Title VII____”); Powell v. Syracuse University, 580 F.2d 1150, 1154 (2d Cir.1978) (“[A]ca*1386demic freedom [does not] embrace[] the freedom to discriminate.”).
In the end, I am left with no adequate basis to reject the findings of married-woman and age discrimination made by the conscientious District Judge after a meticulous analysis of an extensive record. Even if, as I suspect, the majority’s willingness to tolerate the rejection of these findings is an aberrational instance of excessive appellate review, prompted by reluctance to upset a college’s denial of tenure, I cannot agree that such a rejection comports with applicable principles of law, and I therefore respectfully dissent.

. Burdine states:
The burden of establishing a prima facie case of disparate treatment is not onerous. The plaintiff must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that she applied for an available position for which she was qualified, but was rejected under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination.®
Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1093-94. Footnote 6 then quotes the four subsidiary facts from McDonnell Douglas — plaintiff belongs to a racial minority, plaintiff applied for and was qualified for a job for which applicants were sought, the plaintiff was rejected, and the employer continued to seek applicants from person's with plaintiff's qualifications — and describes them as “an appropriate model for a prima facie case of racial discrimination." Id. at 253-54 n. 6, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 n. 6.
The reason that some courts say that a prima facie case of discrimination requires the four facts illustrated by McDonnell Douglas (or variants of them), while other courts describe a prima facie case as adverse employment action under circumstances giving rise to an inference of discrimination is because the four facts are, in the Supreme Court's view, facts sufficient to support an inference of discrimination.

. Subsequently, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a presumption against railroads that shifted to a railroad defendant the burden of proving that an accident caused by its equipment was not the result of negligence. Western & Atlantic R.R. v. Henderson, 279 U.S. 639, 49 S.Ct. 445, 73 L.Ed. 884 (1929). Though this shift of a burden of proof distinguished the rebuttable presumption in Tumipseed, the Court also pointed out that "[t]he mere fact of a collision between a railway train and a vehicle at a highway grade crossing furnishes no basis for any inference as to whether the accident was caused by the negligence of the railway company or the traveler on the highway or of both or without fault of anyone.” Id. at 642-43, 49 S.Ct. at 447 (emphasis added). Thus, as in Tumipseed, the Court continued to be concerned with the reasonableness of inferring the presumed fact from the proven facts.

. The Supreme Court has never called a Title VII prima facie case "de minimis." Burdine called it *1367"not onerous,” 450 U.S. at 253, 101 S.Ct. at 1094, and St. Mary’s called the requirements “minimal,” 509 U.S. at 506, 113 S.Ct. at 2746-47, which may simply mean at the low end of a traditional range.

. Even these facts would not necessarily suffice in all circumstances. For example, if the employer had a predominantly Black work force, the rejection of one Black applicant would most likely not give rise to an inference of discrimination.

. It is true that Burdine quoted a prior opinion to the effect that “the prima facie case 'raises an inference of discrimination only because we presume these acts, if otherwise unexplained, are more likely than not based on the consideration of impermissible factors.’ ” Burdine, 450 U.S. at 254, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 (quoting Fumco Construction Corp. v. Waters, 438 U.S. 567, 577, 98 S.Ct. 2943, 2950, 57 L.Ed.2d 957 (1978)). Some might think this means that the inference available from the prima facie case is no longer available whenever the acts are explained. I believe the Court meant, as it said, that we "presume” discrimination if the acts remain unexplained; once we have the defendant's explanation, we no longer presume discrimination, but a reasonable fact-finder may infer it, unless the entire evidence makes the inference unreasonable.
I acknowledge, however, that this sentence can be read to mean that the defendant's proffer of an explanation has two consequences: it causes the disappearance of the mandatory presumptive *1368effect of the prima facie case, and it also renders the prima facie case no longer necessarily sufficient even to support a permissible inference of discrimination. That reading would deprive the word "inference” of its normal meaning and essentially equate it with the word "presumption." The quoted sentence is also problematic because it seems to say that the inference from the prima facie case is available because of the presumption, yet most presumption cases, including the Supreme Court’s opinions in Turnip-seed, Tot, and Leary, make the reciprocal point that a mandatory rebuttable presumption is available only because facts permit a reasonable inference. Whether an inference is permissible normally depends only on the reasonableness of inferring an ultimate fact from proven subsidiary facts, not on whether in some limited circumstances those subsidiary facts are accorded the extra force of triggering a mandatory rebuttable presumption that disappears upon the opposing side’s proffer of an explanation.

. The majority properly identifies Vassar’s proffered reason from the record as a whole. See St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 522-23, 113 S.Ct. at 2755 (proffered reason "set forth 'through the introduction of admissible evidence,’ ” rather than in formal pleading) (quoting Burdine, 450 U.S. at 255, 101 S.Ct. at 1094-95).

. As Judge Friendly observed, "One way of [establishing the pretextual nature of a proffered reason], of course, would be to show that the asserted neutral basis was so ridden with error that defendant could not honestly have relied upon it.” Lieberman v. Gant, 630 F.2d 60, 65 (2d Cir.1980).

. This case is complicated by the circumstance that the plaintiff has alleged discrimination on two different grounds — status as a married woman and age. I consider the consequence of this circumstance in Part B, infra.

. A typical jury instruction includes the following language:
The process of drawing inferences from facts in evidence is not a matter of guesswork or speculation. An inference is a deduction or *1374conclusion which you, the jury, are permitted to draw — but not required to draw — from the facts which have been established by either direct or circumstantial evidence. In drawing inferences, you should exercise your common sense.
So, while you are considering the evidence presented to you, you are permitted to draw, from the facts which you find to be proven, such reasonable inferences as would be justified in light of your experience.
1 Sand et al., Modem Federal Jury Instructions, ¶ 6.01 (emphases added).

. The majority makes an interesting comparison in suggesting that the "strength” of an employer's false statement, as probative of discrimination, will vary with the circumstances, like "a false exculpatory statement” as "an indicator of guilt.” 114 F.3d at 1345. The comparison demonstrates just how extraordinary it is for the in banc majorily to indicate that a pretext finding may often have diminished probative force. One *1375will search the Federal Reporter in vain for a decision in which a finding of guilt was held to he clearly erroneous because the strength of a false exculpatory statement was thought to be diminished by the "circumstances," even those shown by the record, much less the possible circumstances that an appellate court speculated might explain why a defendant might make a false exculpatory statement.

. Hargett v. National Westminster Bank, USA, 78 F.3d 836 (2d Cir.1996); Sutera v. Schering Corp., 73 F.3d 13 (2d Cir.1995); Quaratino v. Tiffany & Co., 71 F.3d 58 (2d Cir.1995).

. Review of a bench trial finding of fact to determine if it is "clearly erroneous” requires “deference” to a district judge. Inwood Laboratories, 456 U.S. at 855, 102 S.Ct. at 2189, but less deference than is accorded a jury’s verdict. Because of Seventh Amendment considerations, a jury's fact-finding may not be rejected unless it can be said that no reasonable person could find as the jury did. See Brady v. Southern Ry. Co., 320 U.S. 476, 479-80, 64 S.Ct. 232, 234-35, 88 L.Ed. 239 (1943); Mattivi v. South African Marine Corp., "Huguenot", 618 F.2d 163, 167-68 (2d Cir.1980). To reject as clearly erroneous a trial judge’s finding, an appellate court need not say that no reasonable judge could make such a finding. As the Supreme Court has observed, "the ‘clearly erroneous’ standard is significantly deferential ... [a]nd application of a reasonableness standard is even more deferential ..., requiring the reviewer to sustain a finding of fact unless it is so unlikely that no reasonable person would find it to be true____” Concrete Pipe & Products of California, Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust, 508 U.S. 602, 623, 113 S.Ct. 2264, 2279-80, 124 L.Ed.2d 539 (1993) (emphasis added); see Perrero v. United States, 603 F.2d 510, 512 (5th Cir.1979) (noting distinction between review of jury verdict and trial judge's findings); Continental Casualty Co. v. Stokes, 249 F.2d 152, 154 (5th Cir.1957) (same).

. The closest the majority comes to explaining why the finding of discrimination is clearly erroneous (apart from depreciating the finding of pretext) is the following passage:
A five-member committee of tenured professors in the Biology Department, three men and two women, were charged with reviewing Fisher’s credentials in accordance with four criteria: scholarship, leadership, teaching ability, and service to Vassar. In a confidential report, the committee found Fisher deficient in all four categories, and unanimously recommended that she be denied tenure.
114 F.3d at 1334.
If the majority means to say that there is so much evidence in the record that Dr. Fisher is not qualified for tenure as to overwhelm the inference that she was rejected because of discrimination, it is free to refer us to it. It is not surprising, however, that the majority opinion does not undertake this task, because the majority has accepted the finding that the proffered reason was pretextual, and that reason was that Dr. Fisher "did not meet the posted standards for tenure.” Once the majority accepts as a pretext Vassar’s claim that Dr. Fisher did not meet the tenure standards, it cannot rely on her alleged failure to meet those standards as the explanation for rejecting Judge Motley's finding of discrimination.

. The majority faults me for not citing authority for my view that the in banc court should not dissolve itself without considering the issue that prompted the in banc rehearing — whether the panel was entitled to depreciate the significance of a pretext finding by asserting that it "points nowhere.” I can cite no authority opposing the majority's novel procedure for the simple reason that until today no in banc court had ever acted to dissolve itself in the absence of changed circumstances. If supporting authority is needed, it should be supplied by the side that is taking this wholly unprecedented step.

. Thus, this case is unlike prior instances in which an in banc court dissolved itself such as Peck, 102 F.3d at 1320, where the intervening decision of the Supreme Court made reconsideration by the panel appropriate, or United States v. Muniz, 112 F.3d 506 (2d Cir.1997) (on reconsideration), where the intervening discovery of a transcript revealed a procedural step that eliminated the issue for which the in banc had been ordered.

. The exercise of such voting power is especially questionable in this case since the current narrow majority that is voting to limit the scope of the in banc rehearing so as to avoid reconsideration of the panel's decision is formed by the votes of those who unsuccessfully voted against a plenary in banc rehearing.

.Whether a narrow one-vote majority of the Supreme Court should exercise its power to dismiss a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted has occasioned serious dispute within the Court.
*1380Compare New York v. Uplinger, 467 U.S. 246, 104 S.Ct. 2332, 81 L.Ed.2d 201 (1984) (5-4 vote to dismiss writ of certiorari as improvidently granted); id. at 249, 104 S.Ct. at 2334 (Stevens, J., concurring) (justifying Court's 5-4 action), with Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 648, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1874, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974) (Opinion of Stewart, J., with whom White, J., joins) (opposing 5-4 dismissals); Triangle Improvement Council v. Ritchie, 402 U.S. 497, 508 & n. 7, 91 S.Ct. 1650, 1655 & n. 7, 29 L.Ed.2d 61 (1971) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (same); Ferguson v. Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc., 352 U.S. 521, 528, 77 S.Ct. 457, 459 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (“No Justice is likely to vote to dismiss a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted after argument has been heard, even though he is not convinced that the case is within the rules of the Court governing the granting of certiorari. In the usual instance, a doubting Justice respects the judgment of his brethren that the case does concern issues important enough for the Court's consideration and adjudication.”); United States v. Shannon, 342 U.S. 288, 298, 72 S.Ct. 281, 285, 96 L.Ed. 321 (1952) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (“If four can grant [a writ of certiorari] and the opposing five dismiss, then the four cannot get a decision of the case on the merits. The integrity of the four-vote rule on certiorari would then be impaired.").
In Uplinger, Justice Stevens maintained that the intense scrutiny of a Supreme Court case after full briefing and argument, compared to the summary examination at the time a writ of certiorari is selected for a grant from among 100 petitions considered each week is itself an intervening circumstance that permits a 5-4 majority to dismiss a writ as improvidently granted. Uplinger, 467 U.S. at 250, 104 S.Ct. at 2334-35 (Stevens, J., concurring). He also relied on the Court’s normal reluctance to decide constitution-id issues prematurely. Id. at 251, 104 S.Ct. at 2335.
Whatever the appropriate course for the Supreme Court to follow, a court of appeals ought not to use a one-vote edge to remove significant issues from the purview of an in banc court that was convened for plenary review. Our Court is not burdened with a flood of certiorari petitions. A vote on whether to grant in banc review is a rare event in this Court, see Jon O. Newman, In Banc Practice in the Second Circuit, 1989-93, 60 Brooklyn L.Rev. 491, 501-02 (1994), and the grant in this case was made only after extended consideration.

. The majority professes to be unable to think of any reasons that might warrant the in banc court's discharge of the responsibility it undertook when it granted plenary review. 114 F.3d at 1347 n.ll. I would have thought that concern for colleagues on this Court, who have spent considerable time considering the fact-based issues that prompted the call for a plenary in banc rehearing, as well as for district judges, who would be enlightened by seeing how the in banc court applies its newly announced “principles,” might have occurred to the majority.

. In a spirited concurring opinion, Judge Jacobs, the author of the panel opinion, undertakes to respond to the discussion in the following Part A(4), concerning the panel's rejection of the District Court’s ultimate finding of discrimination based on marital status. Judge Jacobs’s detailed examination of the evidence persuasively demonstrates why the findings he would have made had he been the trier of fact would not have been clearly erroneous. However, they also demonstrate, perhaps more effectively than anything in this dissenting opinion, that the panel rejected Judge Motley's ultimate finding of discrimination because it performed the role of super fact-finder, not the more limited reviewing role to which an appellate court is appropriately confined.

. When asked at oral argument on this appeal about this specific instance of bias in evaluating Dr. Fisher, compared to male and unmarried female tenure candidates, counsel for Vassar acknowledged its unfairness.

. It is remotely arguable that the significance of the findings concerning discriminatory use of student evaluations is slightly lessened by finding 55, in which Judge Motley pointed out that a comparison of Dr. Fisher’s evaluations to the favorable evaluations accorded to Dr. Norrod, a single woman granted tenure, "does not give a true picture of the situation.” Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1210 (finding 55). As the Judge noted, Dr. Norrod carried a significantly lighter teaching load than did Dr. Fisher. It is difficult to see how this observation lessens the probative force of the unfair evaluation method that was applied only to the one married woman considered for tenure. The blunt fact remains that a more rigorous evaluation method was applied to Dr. Fisher than to men or single women.

. Judge Motley also found that in at least the 30 years from 1956 to 1986, Vassar had not granted tenure to any married woman in the six “hard” sciences of biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics, and computer science. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1218 (finding 97). The panel disregarded the significance of this finding on three grounds. The panel noted, first, that Vassar regarded psychology as one of the "hard” sciences; second, that two married women in the psychology department were granted tenure after Dr. Fisher's tenure denial; and, third, that two married women were granted tenure in other "hard” sciences departments, also after Dr. Fisher was denied tenure. Fisher II, 70 F.3d at 1446. Whether or not psychology is properly regarded as a "hard” science, the absence of tenure awards to married women in Dr. Fisher’s department and in several other "hard” sciences departments is not totally lacking in probative value. Since the evidence and findings discussed in the text abundantly support Judge Motley’s ultimate finding, this subsidiary point need not be pursued.

. Judge Motley considered and rejected the probative force of two items of evidence claimed by the plaintiff to be direct proof of age discrimination. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1231 n. 25.

. In fact, the District Court’s judgment did not order Vassar to give Dr. Fisher unqualified tenure. It ordered reinstatement with tenure, subject to an evaluation by the college after two years for "retention” and promotion to the rank of full professor. Fisher I, 852 F.Supp. at 1235.

. We have observed that tenure at an institution of higher education compared to continued employment has a significance that makes appropriate a higher standard of qualification. "[A]dvancement to tenure entails what is close to a life-long commitment by a university, and therefore requires much more than the showing of performance 'of sufficient quality to merit continued employment'____” Lieberman v. Gant, 630 F.2d 60, 64 (2d Cir.1980) (citing Flowers v. Crouch-Walker Corp., 552 F.2d 1277, 1283 (7th Cir.1977)) (footnote omitted). Since the majority accepts the District Court's finding that the proffered explanation — Dr. Fisher "did not meet the posted standards for tenure” — was pretextual, there can be no claim in this case that Dr. Fisher is not qualified for tenure.