Eliza Dermody, an attorney at Bernabei & Wachtel PLLC — a Washington, D.C., based law firm representing Spaeth — said his qualifications were “exemplary” and a number of younger, less-qualified applicants were hired instead.

Spaeth, 61, was a Rhodes Scholar, graduated from Stanford University’s Law School, was a clerk in the U.S. Supreme Court and served as North Dakota’s attorney general.

“There were three people who were much younger than him that were hired at Michigan State, as was the case with many of the other schools,” Dermody said.

Spaeth applied to more than 100 other colleges and universities and was denied interviews at all of them.

Of the numerous colleges Spaeth plans to sue, the MSU College of Law is the first to have a lawsuit officially filed against it. Spaeth is required by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to wait a certain amount of time after a claim is filed with them before he can file a lawsuit, Dermody said.

The MSU College of Law could not be reached for comment Monday night.

Of the hundreds of applicants for the teaching positions, 30 were brought in for interviews, and the instructors hired were between the ages of 30 and 60, MSU College of Law Dean Joan Howarth said in a previous statement.

“Reviewing the one-page form that Mr. Spaeth submitted to the registry, I see that the areas of teaching interest he listed did not match our hiring needs,” Howarth said in the statement. “Therefore, he was one of more than 800 attorneys in the registry — most of whom have excellent credentials — who were not invited to interview.”

Howarth went on, stating the MSU College of Law does not discriminate, and the allegations are “mystifying”.

The lawsuit was filed July 28, and after getting an extension, MSU College of Law is required to respond by Oct. 14.