Georgetown University might have picked the wrong candidate to reject.

George Mazza, 62, is a longtime senior counsel in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. But what he wants now is to get a Ph.D in theology from Georgetown.

If you're accepted, it's a sweet deal: every doctoral student gets full tuition, health insurance and a living stipend for five years, plus money for travel. But it's also a small program—based on the department's website, there are only 20 students.

Mazza didn't get in. On Monday, he sued the university in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming age discrimination.

Mazza argues he was highly qualified based on his academic and professional experience—in addition to his law degree from Georgetown, he's got a master's degree from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, a Master of Divinity degree from St. Meinrad School of Theology and an M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

For more than 20 years, he's been a DOJ lawyer, supervising lawyers in the Civil Rights Division and has represented DOJ as part of a White House interagency initiative on religious issues.

“The plaintiff understood he was well-positioned for admission,” wrote Mazza's lawyers, Raymond Fay of the Fay Law Group and Christopher Mackaronis of Stone Mattheis Xenopoulos & Brew. One faculty member even volunteered to work with him to guide his doctoral studies, “a gesture he would not have made had he thought the plaintiff unqualified for admission.”

Here's where the complaint raises an interesting question: What is the purpose of a Ph.D program, especially one like this, where they pay you to go to school? Is it for the personal edification of the student? Or is it to train a new generation of college professors?

When Mazza pressed Georgetown to explain why he was rejected, admissions committee member Dr. Peter Phan told him that “the preeminent selection criteria was whether the admissions candidate would likely find on graduation a full-time, tenure-track faculty position at a major university,” the complaint states.

Mazza would likely be 68 when he graduates, and Phan allegedly told him that “no major university would consider him for a full-time, tenure-track position because of his age, and because of that, the admissions committee could not justify offering him a position within the doctoral program despite his qualifications.”

To Mazza's lawyers, that's solid evidence of age discrimination. “The plaintiff's age was a motivating factor in his non-selection. But for his age, the plaintiff would have been selected,” they wrote.

They allege that the university violated the Age Act, which makes it unlawful for any program receiving federal financial assistance to exclude someone based on age.

Mazza wants the court to force Georgetown to admit him this fall, and to award compensatory damages and attorneys' fees.

Neither Fay, who represents Mazza, nor a university spokesman responded to requests for comment.

 

Lottery Winner Fights For Right to Stay Anonymous

You hear the stories so often, there must be something to them: People win the lottery and then they're miserable.

Of course, I'm sure that wouldn't happen to me, but I also always figured if I won the lottery (admittedly unlikely, since I don't buy lottery tickets), I would want to remain anonymous.

But lottery officials don't make that easy, as a Jane Doe in New Hampshire has discovered.

Last month, she won a $560 million Powerball jackpot. She signed the back of the ticket, because that's what the lottery website says to do if you win. Turns out, signing the ticket meant she agreed to have her name and hometown publicly disclosed. The only way to stay anonymous was if she created a trust and had the trustee sign the ticket on her behalf.

Who knew, right?

Her lawyer, Steven Gordon, was in Hillsborough County Superior Court in New Hampshire on Tuesday, trying to convince Judge Charles Temple that there's a substantial privacy interest in allowing his client to claim her winnings anonymously.

“We come to the court today in a Catch-22 … Not surprisingly, Ms. Doe would like to cash her ticket,” said Gordon, according to The New Hampshire Union Leader. “The ticket and the prize sits in limbo.”

Whoever the winner is, she had enough sense to pick a top New Hampshire lawyer. A name partner at Shaheen & Gordon, he won a record-breaking $275 million jury verdict in September of 2017 on behalf of three businessmen in a New Hampshire defamation lawsuit. But he's not a plaintiff's lawyer. A former AUSA, much of his practice focuses on corporate disputes related to breaches of fiduciary duties, contract disputes and shareholder disputes. 

In Jane Doe's complaint against the New Hampshire Lottery Commission, she said she “deeply values” her privacy and wants to use her winnings to support charitable causes “far from the glare and misfortune that has often fallen upon other lottery 'winners.'”

She wants the court to let her withhold disclosure of her name, or allow her to white-out her name on the back of the ticket and replace it with the trust.

The New Hampshire Lottery Commission says no.

“The lottery ticket is a public document,” Assistant Attorney General John Conforti told the court, according to the Union Leader, arguing that her name must be released under the state's Right-to-Know law.

The judge promised to issue a decision in the near future.

 

Quote of the day

“We need a leader who knows Miranda, not HR propaganda.”

—From a sign at a protest by public defenders in Los Angeles, who object to the appointment of their new interim leader, Nicole Davis Tinkham, who has never tried a criminal case.

 

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