In McFarlane v. Community Health Center of Richmond, Inc., No. 25-CV-00410 (NCM) (RML), 2025 WL 3625900 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 15, 2025), the court, inter alia, held that plaintiff sufficiently alleged a retaliation claim 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:
Defendant does not dispute whether plaintiff engaged in protected activity, whether it was aware of that activity, or whether plaintiff’s termination was an adverse employment action. Instead, defendant argues that plaintiff’s retaliation claim fails for lack of causation. Specifically, defendant argues that the time that lapsed between plaintiff’s alleged protected activity in May 2022 and being put on leave in December 2023, “is far too long to support any inference of retaliatory intent,” and that plaintiff fails to point to direct evidence of retaliatory intent. Mot. 12–13. The Court disagrees.
Plaintiff alleges that shortly after the interaction in which “Flores called [p]laintiff a negro,” plaintiff reported Flores’s conduct to her supervisor and defendant’s HR department. Compl. ¶ 26. In the ensuing weeks, after Flores repeatedly referred to plaintiff by the name of another Black employee, plaintiff made at least three complaints to one of defendant’s directors about Flores’s harassing conduct. Compl. ¶ 28. In total, plaintiff “made at least six (6) complaints regarding racial discrimination” to her supervisor and CHCR’s HR department, although nothing was ever done to investigate plaintiff’s complaints. Compl. ¶ 30. And, importantly, plaintiff’s termination letter stated “that [p]laintiff engaged in unspecified unprofessional and confrontational behavior towards department supervisors.” Compl. ¶ 35.
At the pleading stage, these allegations are more than sufficient to support a reasonable inference that plaintiff’s termination, for “unprofessional and confrontational behavior towards department supervisors,” was caused by her numerous complaints concerning racial discrimination in the workplace, i.e., retaliatory animus. See e.g., White v. Dep’t of Corr. Servs., 814 F. Supp. 2d 374, 390 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (“Complaints by an employer about a plaintiff’s attitude or demeanor have been considered to be one indicator of retaliatory animus.”); Mandell v. County of Suffolk, 316 F.3d 368, 383 (2d Cir. 2003) (concluding that evaluation in the plaintiff’s file stating that the plaintiff’s “attitude should be taken into account when placing him in any future assignment,” months after engaging in protected activity served as direct evidence of retaliatory animus); Henderson v. Center for Comm. Alternatives, 911 F. Supp. 689, 702 (S.D.N.Y. 1996) (concluding that an issue of fact existed as to whether the plaintiff demonstrated the defendant’s retaliatory animus based on evidence that the defendant’s executive director suggested that the plaintiff should “learn how to present himself better” after the plaintiff objected to one of the defendant’s practices that the plaintiff believed to be discriminatory); accord Suarez v. City of New York, Nos. 11-cv-05812, 14-cv-05403, 2019 WL 13273450, at *16 (E.D.N.Y. June 10, 2019) (“It has been consistently held that negative reactions by an employer to a plaintiff’s complaints of discrimination have been deemed indicative of retaliatory animus.”).
For this reason, defendant’s insistence that plaintiff cannot establish causation due to the temporal gap between her initial complaints of racial discrimination and her eventual termination is unavailing. See Mot. 12–13. Although, in general, a lengthy temporal gap is insufficient on its own to support an inference of causation, such a length of time does not defeat an inference where, as here, plaintiff does not rely only “on temporal proximity as affirmative evidence of causation[,] [but] offers instead direct evidence of retaliatory animus.” Mandell, 316 F.3d at 384; see also Williams, 2019 WL 4393546, at *14 (“[A] mere time-gap, standing alone, is not sufficient to sever the chain of causation.”); Birkholz v. City of New York, No. 10-cv-04719, 2012 WL 580522, at *10 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 22, 2012) (reasoning that allegations of retaliatory animus including “an unwarranted letter of insubordination” supported inference of causation even where the adverse action “occurred approximately one year after [the] [p]laintiff objected to … discriminatory remarks”); Patane v. Clark, 508 F.3d 106, 116–17 (2d Cir. 2007) (finding that one year gap was insufficient to defeat causal connection where the plaintiff provided direct evidence of retaliatory animus).
Based on this, the court held that “plaintiff’s allegations support a reasonable inference of a causal connection between her protected activity and eventual termination” and, therefore, that denial of defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s retaliation claim was warranted.