Court Dismisses ADA Hostile Work Environment Claim Against FIT

In Kleinman v. Fashion Institute of Technology, No. 16 CIV. 4348 (KPF), 2017 WL 3016940 (S.D.N.Y. July 14, 2017) (J. Failla), the court, inter alia, dismissed plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Initially, the court noted that while the “Second Circuit has not yet decided whether a hostile work environment claim is cognizable under the ADA … district courts in the Second Circuit have evaluated ADA hostile work environment claims using the Title VII standard.”

Judge Katherine Polk Failla next summarized the legal framework/standard applicable to its evaluation of this claim:

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 quality or quantity that a reasonable employee would find the conditions of her employment altered for the worse. … Accordingly, an ADA plaintiff need not establish every element of a prima facie hostile work environment claim to survive a motion to dismiss. Rather, a complaint need only give plausible support to a minimal inference of discriminatory motivation. …

A prima facie hostile work environment claim has three elements — a plaintiff must plead facts that would tend to show that the complained of conduct: [i] [i]s objectively severe or pervasive — that is, … creates an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive; [ii] creates an environment that the plaintiff subjectively perceives as hostile or abusive; and [iii] creates such an environment because of the plaintiff’s [protected characteristic]. … In determining whether a plaintiff suffered a hostile work environment, a court must consider the totality of the circumstances, including [i] the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; [ii] its severity; [iii] whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and [iv] whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance.

In dismissing plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim, the court noted that the timely events alleged in the complaint to constitute a hostile work environment “occurred after Plaintiff went on medical leave.” Therefore, “none of Plaintiff’s timely allegations concern[] incidents that occurred at the Counseling Center [plaintiff’s worksite]”. Based on this, the court was “hard-pressed to conclude that these allegations demonstrate that Plaintiff’s workplace [was] permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that [was] sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [Plaintiff’s] employment and create an abusive working environment.” (Emphasis supplied by court.)

In any event, even if the timely allegations in the complaint concerned events that occurred at plaintiff’s worksite, the complaint’s “timely allegations suggest, at worst, that Plaintiff’s co-workers spoke ill of Plaintiff behind her back.” The complaint “falls far short of” alleging “that [plaintiff’s] workplace is so severely permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult, that the terms and conditions of [the plaintiff’s] employment were thereby altered.”

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