In Byas v. Yonkers Public Schools, No. 23-CV-8437 (KMK), 2026 WL 2689831 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 11, 2026), the court, inter alia, granted defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
Plaintiff’s second cause of action is a hostile work environment claim under Title VII. (See FAC ¶¶ 144–45.) “At the motion to dismiss stage, … a plaintiff need only plead facts sufficient to support the conclusion that she was faced with harassment of such a quality or quantity that a reasonable employee would find the conditions of her employment altered for the worse.” Cowan v. City of Mount Vernon, No. 14-CV-8871, 2017 WL 1169667, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 28, 2017).6 “The conduct complained of must be severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would find it hostile or abusive, and the victim must subjectively perceive the work environment to be abusive.” Farmer v. Shake Shack Enters., LLC, 473 F. Supp. 3d 309, 334 (S.D.N.Y. 2020). And “incidents of harassment, generally, ‘must be more than episodic; they must be sufficiently continuous and concerted in order to be deemed pervasive,’ ” because “ ‘[i]solated acts, unless very serious, do not meet the threshold of severity or pervasiveness.’ ”
The Court previously dismissed Plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim, finding her allegations, “individually and taken together, fail[ed] to establish the kind of severity and pervasiveness that can amount to an actionable hostile work environment claim” and that Plaintiff “failed to establish causation—that is, that any of the conduct she claims created a hostile work environment was the result of her race.” Byas, 2025 WL 963977, at *8. Substantially all the allegations in Plaintiff’s opposition materials on her hostile work environment claims—which amounts to a nearly paragraph-by-paragraph recital of the entire FAC—are the same as those in the TAC and, for the same reasons the Court previously discussed, either fail to meet the requisite severity threshold, draw a causal connection to Plaintiff’s race, or both. See id. at *8–9.
Plaintiff’s new allegations continue to fall short of a hostile work environment claim for the same reasons. First, the new allegations’ severity and pervasiveness are still below the bar for a Title VII hostile work environment claim. Plaintiff alleges, for example, that two other teachers insulted her: one described her as “disgusting, grimy, a cheater, not a team player,” and claimed she did not “support her coworkers,” though the FAC is unclear on whether Plaintiff was present for that commentary, (FAC ¶ 120), and another “verbally attacked and attempted to antagonize” Plaintiff at a meeting, (id. ¶ 124). Plaintiff also claims she was instructed by Morales to cover up a chalkboard herself when all teachers were later advised to ask custodians to help them do so, and that her schedule was changed. (See id. ¶¶ 116, 134.) These allegations, considered alongside those the Court previously found did not amount to the “kinds of conduct that courts have found to be sufficiently pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment,” Byas, 2025 WL 963977, at *8, still fail to allege the severity and pervasiveness necessary for a Title VII hostile work environment claim. The FAC does not support a reasonable inference that the two new insults (only one of which is laid out in any detail), even viewed in the context of the previous years’ allegations, were so severe or occurred so frequently as to effect a change in Plaintiff’s working conditions. See Vega v. Regent Hosp. Linen Servs., LLC, No. 24-CV-2911, 2025 WL 2644224, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 15, 2025) (explaining that while “rude and demeaning comments that occur on a daily basis may be sufficient to support a hostile work environment claim,” “sporadic or isolated episodes of name-calling, inappropriate behavior by a supervisor, and other perceived slights, however regrettable, do not constitute a hostile work environment even if taken as true” (quotation marks omitted and alterations adopted)). The same goes for the chalkboard and schedule incidents, neither of which “was ‘extraordinarily severe,’ ” and Plaintiff did not “allege that they unreasonably interfered with her work performance,” though Plaintiff makes clear that they were unwanted. Luna v. NYC Taxi & Limousine Comm’n, No. 21-CV-1408, 2022 WL 20319227, at *14 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 7, 2022); see also Carvalho v. Assoc. Brands, Inc., No. 15-CV-72, 2016 WL 8709809, at *9 (W.D.N.Y. May 13, 2026) (dismissing hostile work environment claim where “minor inconveniences” and “unfavorable job assignments” were “neither severe nor pervasive” and thus “insufficient to establish a hostile work environment”).
Second, as before, Plaintiff fails to plausibly allege any of these incidents were connected to her race. Plaintiff has not connected the “verbal[ ] attack[s]” she mentions, (see FAC ¶ 124), to her race—rather, the FAC suggests they arose in the context of her fraught relationship with her union in her role as union alternate, (see generally id. ¶¶ 117–18, 128–32). See Chinnery v. New York State Off. of Children & Family Servs., No. 10-CV-882, 2014 WL 1651950, at *12 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 25, 2014) (“Mere ‘workplace bullying’ is not enough to give rise to an actionable hostile work environment claim. Rather, there must be a showing that the conduct occurred because of the employee’s membership in a protected class.”), report and recommendation adopted, 2015 WL 1029601 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 10, 2015); contra Wilson v. Yonkers Pub. Schs., No. 24-CV-184, 2025 WL 2689081, at *9 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 19, 2025) (finding a plausible connection to the plaintiff’s race, along with sufficient severity and pervasiveness to justify a claim, where, inter alia, individuals at the plaintiff’s workplace “plac[ed] a racially demeaning image of a monkey on [the plaintiff’s] desk” and staff emailed the plaintiff “four messages containing disturbing and degrading gay pornography depicting Black men”). Nor has Plaintiff alleged the changes in her schedule or the chalkboard incident had anything to do with her race. See Farrar v. Town of Stratford, 537 F. Supp. 2d 332, 352 (D. Conn. 2008) (“Whatever conflicts there may have been … there is no evidence that they were anything but personality conflicts, which are beyond the scope of … hostile work environment claims.”).
The court thus concluded that plaintiff has not plausibly alleged a hostile work environment claim, and accordingly granted defendant’s motion.