In Krul v. Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General, United States Postal Service, 2023 WL 8449589 (N.D.N.Y. Dec. 6, 2023), the court, inter alia, granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on her claim of sex-based hostile work environment.
While the court determined that the plaintiff satisfied the subjective component of her claim, her claim faltered on its objective component.
From the decision:
Importantly, one of the only times plaintiff even offers any account of any alleged sex-based “harassment” is from June 2016, when plaintiff asserts that Kelley “mocked” her in the presence of two male co-workers “using a female high-pitched whiny tone.” But this single assertion, even paired with her more generalized accusation that Kelley always “mimicked, mocked, taunted, and laughed at [her],” is not enough to generate a triable issue of fact on the objective component of this claim.
To be clear, the Court recognizes that prior fact patterns in hostile work environment cases do not set some bar that must be cleared. Indeed, the Second Circuit has explicitly held that “[p]rior cases in which [a panel has] concluded that a reasonable juror could find that the work environment was objectively hostile do not ‘establish a baseline’ that subsequent plaintiffs must reach in order to prevail.” Schiano v. Quality Payroll Sys., Inc., 445 F.3d 597, 606 (2d Cir. 2006) (quoting Richardson v. N.Y. State Dep’t of Corr. Serv., 180 F.3d 426, 439 (2d Cir. 1999)).
The Court also recognizes that this “severe or pervasive” standard creates a disjunctive test, which can be satisfied with evidence that creates an issue of fact about severity, pervasiveness, or even a mix of both. Pucino, 618 F.3d at 119 (“In establishing this element, a plaintiff need not show that her hostile working environment was both severe and pervasive; only that it was sufficiently severe or sufficiently pervasive, or a sufficient combination of these elements, to have altered her working conditions.”).
But “[z]ero plus zero is zero,” Tepperwien v. Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., 663 F.3d 556, 572 (2d Cir. 2011), and that basic equation holds true no matter how many zeroes you try to add.
The court concluded that “[s]imply put, plaintiff’s assertions of misconduct (almost all of which are facially sex-neutral events of clearly trivial magnitude) would be insufficient to permit a rational factfinder to conclude that her working environment ever became objectively hostile” and, therefore, that defendant is entitled to summary judgment on this claim.