In Malone v. Town of Clarkstown et al, 19-cv-5503, 2022 WL 2834105 (S.D.N.Y. July 20, 2022), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for partial summary judgment on plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim (based on the conduct of a specific person) under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The defendant argued that it was entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff’s hostile work environment claims against the defendant Town, to the extent those claims are based on the alleged conduct by a single individual.
The court disagreed, explaining:
To establish a hostile work environment claim under Title VII, a plaintiff must produce enough evidence to show that the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult, that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment. Although not every instance of harassment will support a claim for a hostile work environment, whether an environment is hostile or abusive can be determined only by looking at all the circumstances including the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance. Accordingly, “[t]he Title VII framework often requires courts to consider the workplace conduct of multiple employees and supervisors in determining whether the plaintiff has experienced a hostile work environment.
Here, plaintiff asserts hostile work environment claims against the Town based on the conduct of multiple employees and supervisors in the aggregate, not the conduct of Connington during this single incident. Because determining whether the Town is entitled to judgment as a matter of law on plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim requires considering Connington’s conduct in the context of plaintiff’s workplace as a whole, partial summary judgment based on his conduct alone is improper and must be denied.
[Cleaned up.]
Accordingly, this decision teaches the importance, and necessity, of reviewing the evidence alleged to comprise a hostile work environment as a whole, rather than piecemeal.