In Greene v. Middletown, filed April 29, 2014, the Southern District of New York granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s disability discrimination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In reaching its decision, Judge Cote cited and applied the “stray remarks” doctrine, which is used to evaluate whether allegedly discriminatory comments are sufficiently probative of the defendant’s alleged discriminatory animus.
Plaintiff, a hand-amputee, claimed that during a meeting in which defendant school district’s superintendent told her that she was being suspended and that he would be recommending her termination, he referred to plaintiff as a “poor woe is me type” while looking at her amputated arm. Defendant claimed “that his comment was a reference to Greene consistently painting herself as the victim of unfair treatment, while refusing to acknowledge the role that her own behavior had played in creating her predicament.”
In granting summary judgment to defendant, the court held:
Assuming for present purposes that Greene has met the first three prongs of establishing her prima facie case of disability discrimination, Greene has failed to meet the fourth prong. Even taking all inferences in favor of Greene on the undisputed facts—i.e., accepting for present purposes that Greene performed her duties well and that her unfavorable reviews from her supervisors were unfounded-Greene has failed to point to any evidence raising an inference that her discharge was because of her disability.
Greene’s sole argument for why she has established a prima facie disability discrimination claim is to point to Dr. Eastwood’s “poor woe is me type” statement during the April 13, 2011 meeting. Under the standards set forth above, this is a “stray remark” that is insufficient to establish a prima facie case of discrimination. The comment itself is “remote and oblique.” It does not specifically reference her disability, even when considered in conjunction with the assertion that Dr. Eastwood glanced at Greene’s amputated limb when he said it. Rather, it is a statement that refers far more directly to the long history of discord between Greene and her supervisors, and Greene’s repeated protests that her discharge is groundless. The comment does not evince[ ] a discriminatory state of mind.
As significantly, the comment is remote with respect to the alleged adverse action. While Dr. Eastwood is a decision-maker, it is undisputed that his recommendation to discharge Greene rested on the many unfavorable evaluations issued by [her supervisors]. Accordingly, to the extent that Greene claims that her discharge was the product of disability discrimination, she should also point to evidence that [her supervisors] discriminated against her on the basis of her disability in issuing these unfavorable evaluations. There is no such evidence in the record here. While Greene testified that she assumed they were discriminating against her, that assumption does not raise a question of fact that either [of her supervisors] harbored a discriminatory animus. As such, no reasonable juror could view [Dr. Eastwood’s] remark as discriminatory.
The court distinguished the cases cited by plaintiff, on the ground that the remarks at issue in those cases were direct, as opposed to circumstantial, evidence of discrimination. It also concluded that the defendant presented a legitimate, non-discriminatory basis for firing plaintiff, and that plaintiff failed to offer evidence from which a rational jury could conclude that those reasons were a pretext for disability discrimination.