In Sripirom v. Rivers Casino and Resort, 2019 WL 6711387 (NDNY Dec. 10, 2019), the court adopted a Report and Recommendation dismissing plaintiff’s employment discrimination claim.
The court recited the well-known rule that “[g]enerally, to satisfactorily plead a claim of employment discrimination under Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964], absent direct evidence of discrimination, what must be plausibly supported by facts alleged in the complaint is that the plaintiff is a member of a protected class, was qualified, suffered an adverse employment action, and has at least minimal support for the proposition that the employer was motivated by discriminatory intent.”
Applying the law, the court explained that plaintiff did not meet this standard:
While the complaint mentions disparate treatment, the best that can be plausibly gleaned from the pleading is that Plaintiff was terminated for swearing at work, Plaintiff thinks he should have faced some lesser sanction than termination for that behavior, and that Plaintiff’s coworker was not terminated despite possibly committing the same violation. Those facts alone do not plausibly allege all of the elements of an employment discrimination claim.
Therefore, the court concluded that to the extent plaintiff attempted to bring a Title VII employment discrimination claim, that claim must be dismissed.