In Amy Cooper v. Franklin Templeton Investments, 2023 WL 3882977, (2d Cir. June 8, 2023), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of employment discrimination claims asserted by Amy Cooper – yes, that Amy Cooper. – against her employer.
From the decision:
We agree with the district court that Plaintiff fails to allege facts giving rise to even a minimal inference of discriminatory motivation with respect to her termination. To the extent that Plaintiff contends that Defendants “implicated the race of their employee with each of [their] communications to the public, by repeatedly connecting [their] stated stance against racism with their termination of the Plaintiff,” Appellant’s Br. 41, that argument fails as a matter of law. Defendants’ statements made no mention of Plaintiff’s race, and even to the extent they could be read as accusing Plaintiff of being a racist, “a statement that someone is a ‘racist,’ while potentially indicating unfair dislike, does not indicate that the object of the statement is being rejected because of h[er] race. ‘Racism’ is not a race, and discrimination on the basis of alleged racism is not the same as discrimination on the basis of race.” Maraschiello v. City of Buffalo Police Dep’t, 709 F.3d 87, 97 (2d Cir. 2013) (citation omitted).
Plaintiff’s effort to raise an inference of discrimination based on Defendants’ treatment of other individuals is equally unavailing. “A plaintiff may raise such an inference by showing that the employer subjected h[er] to disparate treatment, that is, treated h[er] less favorably than a similarly situated employee outside h[er] protected group.” Graham v. Long Island R.R., 230 F.3d 34, 39 (2d Cir. 2000). “An employee is similarly situated to co-employees if they were (1) subject to the same performance evaluation and discipline standards and (2) engaged in comparable conduct.” Ruiz, 609 F.3d at 493–94 (internal quotation marks omitted). “In other words, the comparator must be similarly situated to the plaintiff in all material respects.” Id. at 494 (internal quotation marks omitted). On de novo review, we agree with the district court that we cannot plausibly infer from Plaintiff’s allegations that Plaintiff’s alleged comparators meet these standards. As the district court held, the three proffered comparators each “occupied roles that were vastly different on their face” and allegedly engaged in misconduct that “is simply too different in kind to be comparable to [Plaintiff’s] conduct in this case.”
The court additionally affirmed the dismissal of plaintiff’s defamation claims.