In Underwood v. Roswell Park Cancer Inst., No. 15-CV-684-FPG, 2017 WL 131740 (W.D.N.Y. Jan. 13, 2017), the court held that the plaintiff – an African American surgeon – plausibly alleged that he was subjected to a racially hostile work environment.
“To state a claim for a racially hostile work environment, a plaintiff must plead facts that would tend to show (1) that the complained-of conduct is objectively severe or pervasive, such that it creates an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive; (2) that the plaintiff subjectively perceived the environment to be hostile or abusive; and (3) that the complained-of conduct created such an environment because of the plaintiff’s race.”
In finding that plaintiff plausibly alleged this claim, it pointed to several of plaintiff’s allegations, including[1]The court cited 18 specific allegations to support its conclusion that his supervisor:
- referred to him as “an affirmative action program achievement” and a “token Black”;
- imposed on him a restrictive policy that was not imposed on any of his white colleagues;
- replaced him with a white surgeon;
- falsely accused him of verbal abuse;
- transferred a portion of his case load to a white surgeon who was new to the department;
- reassigned plaintiff’s office to a white surgeon; and
- accused plaintiff of malpractice although several white members of plaintiff’s department had worse clinical morbidities than him.
Moreover, the court flatly rejected defendants’ argument “that in the context of a hostile work environment claim, the Court should disregard all allegations that could be classified as discrete acts of discrimination and should instead focus solely on allegations of insults, slurs, and offensive comments.”
The court’s explanation is instructive on the nature of what a “hostile work environment” claim entails:
[W]hile the Court recognizes that hostile work environment claims tend to involve personal attacks and harassing comments directed at the plaintiff, the scope of hostile work environment claims need not be limited to only those types of allegations. Rather, the focus should be on any allegations that could plausibly contribute to the wrong that hostile work environment claims are designed to remedy; namely, requiring people to work in a discriminatorily hostile or abusive environment. To disregard such allegations solely because they also could be actionable on their own as discrete acts of discrimination would run afoul of the principle that “whether an environment is hostile or abusive can be determined only by looking at all the circumstances and no single factor is required.
The court thus concluded that “[d]rawing all reasonable inferences in Dr. Underwood’s favor, as the Court must do at this stage of the litigation, Dr. Underwood has sufficiently alleged that he was subjected to a racially hostile work environment at Roswell Park” and denied defendants’ motions to dismiss.
| ↩1 | The court cited 18 specific allegations to support its conclusion |
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