In Troeger v. JetBlue Airways Corp., 2024 WL 5146185 (S.D.N.Y. December 17, 2024), the court denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
After summarizing the black-letter law, the court applied it to the facts as follows:
Here, Troeger does not allege any single incident that, on its own, is sufficiently severe to constitute a hostile work environment. Instead, he argues that “[t]he comments, acts and events” in the Second Amended Complaint “cannot be viewed in isolation,” but instead “holistically and as a mosaic.”6 (Opp. to JB at 25.) Troeger’s allegations, considered together and presumed true, satisfy the requirement at this stage. Troeger alleges that he was repeatedly and falsely accused of being an “addict” by his supervisors. (See SAC ¶¶ 62, 91.) He alleges that he was required to spend time across the country at a treatment facility for a condition he did not have. (SAC ¶ 173.) He alleges that Petersen shared with him “confidential medical information he had received from Cornerstone regarding an American Airlines pilot,” raising the inference that JetBlue employees were accessing Troeger’s private information through Cornerstone. (Id. ¶ 74.) He alleges that, while at monthly meetings hosted by JetBlue, he was “forced to speak about his ‘recovery’ from a substance use he did not have and his submission to a higher power he did not believe in.” (Id. ¶ 79.) He alleges that during at least one meeting, his supervisors loudly announced that they would need to speak to him alone afterwards, that another pilot “demanded to attend the meeting,” and that Troeger was “harassed” for what Troeger “had ‘going on’ ” and for having an attorney. (Id. ¶ 91.) And he alleges that at a later meeting, Petersen stated falsely, “in front of everyone,” “Chad[,] you had meth in your system, you were out doing meth.” (Id. ¶ 92.) Troeger alleges that this conduct occurred over two years, during which he had to “continually lie about whether he had a substance abuse disorder and his belief in God.” (Id. ¶ 93.)7
The totality of the circumstances alleged by Troeger constitute a plausible showing of a hostile work environment. Like in Terry itself, Troeger’s supervisors publicly accused him of egregious conduct—in that case, of “having a nervous breakdown” and making “threats against INS employees,” Terry, 336 F.3d at 148—and in this case, of having an untreated meth addiction. Moreover, repeatedly forcing Troeger to lie about his religious beliefs, and to falsely aver that he had an addiction, over the course of two years, was a “continuous and concerted” form of abuse. Other courts have found required regular religious practice at work to constitute a hostile work environment. EEOC v. United Health Programs of Am., Inc., 213 F. Supp. 3d 377, 416-17 (E.D.N.Y. 2016); EEOC v. Preferred Mgmt. Corp., 216 F. Supp. 2d 763, 837 (S.D. Ind. 2002); Garcimonde-Fisher v. Area203 Mktg., LLC, 105 F. Supp. 3d 825, 840-41 (E.D. Tenn. 2015); but see Cook v. SyncStream Sols., LLC, 417 F. Supp. 770, 776 (E.D. La. 2019) (holding that optional morning prayers did not constitute a hostile work environment for a nonadherent). The combination of repeated—and public—accusations of drug addiction in the workplace, coupled with mandatory religious affirmations that Troeger alleges were required to keep his job, are sufficient to “alter the working conditions of a reasonable employee.” Terry, 336 F.3d at 149.
The court further held that plaintiff “has alleged facts sufficient to allow a fact-finder to conclude that defendants’ alleged hostility was based on a prohibited factor.”