Hostile Work Environment Claim Survives Dismissal; Court Cites Sex and Race-Based Comments

In Ajala v. Limani 51, LLC, No. 153433/2023, 2024 WL 5169823 (N.Y. Sup Ct, New York County Dec. 17, 2024), the court held that plaintiff sufficiently alleged a hostile work environment claims under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws.

From the decision:

A racially hostile work environment exists when the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive work environment” (Forrest v Jewish Guild for the Blind, 3 NY3d 295, 310 [2004] [internal quotation marks and citations omitted]). The court must consider “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”

Here, plaintiff sufficiently pleads that the alleged conduct of these defendants created a hostile work environment. The amended complaint’s detailed allegations demonstrate that plaintiff was subjected to a constant barrage of disparaging and derogatory remarks about sex and racial comments (see NYSCEF Doc No. 23 ¶ 68, 74, 93, 102; see also Eustache v Board of Educ. of the City Sch. Dist. of the City of N.Y., 228 AD3d 482, 484 [1st Dept 2024] [“[defendant’s] alleged comments about plaintiff’s race . . . signaled her discriminatory views on race in the workplace”]). As set forth above, considering the liberal pleading standards afforded these claims and viewing plaintiff’s pleadings in the light most favorable to plaintiff, he has sufficiently pleaded that his working conditions were beyond the reasonable person standard set forth above.

Based on the foregoing, the court denied defendants’ motion to dismiss.

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