Source: law/R7-GOOD-CAUSE.md
# Round 7 — limit the catalogued good-cause qualification [QA2's pinned review](../qa/law-wave2-QA2-pinned.md) identifies one residual formula overreach. This patch retains the existing `good-cause` ID and exact §623(f)(3) quote, but removes its universal negation from `disparate-treatment`, `agency-discrimination` and `union-discrimination`. The new `good-cause-scope` governing constraint applies the qualification only to employer discharge or disciplinary conduct under the modeled employer treatment route. Hiring, other non-disciplinary terms, agency referral/classification, union membership/referral and other routes do not receive a blanket good-cause exception. An agency or union acting as employer is assessed under its employer route, not by adding a defense to its separate agency/union claim formula. This scopes the catalogue, not the words of the statute. The introductory text of subsection (f) names employers, agencies and labor organizations; the preserved (f)(3) text specifies discharge or discipline. The source text is not rewritten and this patch does not decide a separate, unmodeled agency/union disciplinary theory. The governing constraint must be read with the descriptive formulas; those formulas are not a standalone executable liability solver. Sources checked: [official §623](https://uscode.house.gov/us/usc/t29/s623/) and [EEOC discharge/discipline guidance](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/cm-612-dischargediscipline). A proffered legitimate reason remains subject to pretext scrutiny; the claimant's ultimate age-causation burden is not replaced by accepting any asserted reason. ## Verification - All fifteen LAW files check green: 388 statutory spans, 421 printed case-rule spans, zero errors. All pre-existing ADEA element/claim IDs and all LAW quote tuples are unchanged. - All 165 CASE files retain identical quote sets against pre-fix `fa0ab35`; no CASE file was edited. The existing pilot Moncrieffe kind warning is unrelated. - Canonical DB reload succeeds. The new governing constraint and its referenced elements are stored; no ADEA claim expression directly contains good-cause. Integrity and foreign keys pass; 348 merits instances are unchanged. - Bounded independent peer review confirmed the actor/action scope and retained defense. It also identified a verifier error path, corrected to fail on grep errors rather than mistaking them for absence. - `verify_r6_master.sh` now checks the new constraint/scope and negatively checks for residual good-cause references in any claim formula, using fetched Git objects. Post-push proof is captured separately; QA2 substantive recheck is pending.