Submit a comprehensive answer, to include IRAC(s) of the relevant cause(s) of action, to the following Employment Discrimination Hypothetical:

You have joined the General Counsel's office of Health Third Health System as a paralegal. Its main office is in Bristol, Connecticut and it employs 510 full-time employees. Part of your job duties is to assist the General Counsel in answering legal questions from managers. Today you received the following inquiry:

IT/IS is the department responsible for keeping Health Third's website and supporting technology up and running. The head web developer calls you and tells you that TomTurtle, an fellow develop who has been with the company for 10 years and is 55 years old, appears to be getting absent minded and slowing down. In fact, the head developor says that he has been telling Turtle that he is working too slowly and is "absent-minded professor." Today, Turtle forgot to enter several key lines of code and caused the website to crash for 10 minutes. Otherwise, Tom's work has been exemplary, per his annual reviews.

The head engineer wants to fire him now and stop what he sees as a downward spiral.

What legal issues and/or causes of action might the manager and/or company face? What defenses might the company assert? What questions may you want to ask the manager to help make a better recommendation?