Roberts v. International Business MacHines Corp.

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

George Roberts says IBM fired him because of his age. He insists an instant messaging conversation between two of the company’s human resources managers proves as much. The topic of that conversation was Mr. Roberts’s possible inclusion in a “Resource Action.” Less euphemistically, the pair were discussing whether to eliminate Mr. Roberts’s position on the ground that he didn’t have enough billable work to justify the expense of paying him. By the conversation’s end, the two HR managers agreed to remove Mr. Roberts from the Resource Action— that is, they chose to retain…