In Gandhi v. New York State Unified Court System et al, 1:20-CV-120 (LEK), 2024 WL 365119 (N.D.N.Y. Jan. 31, 2024), the court, inter alia, denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff’s religion-based discrimination claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In sum, plaintiff alleges that defendant engaged in religious discrimination by terminating plaintiff’s employment in response to plaintiff’s request for time off to “travel to India … for religious purposes.”
In support, plaintiff alleges that an individual defendant told plaintiff “I don’t care for your religion or spirituality; you are not going to get this kind of time off again” several months before Plaintiff was fired, and one month before plaintiff was fired, asked plaintiff if she “go[es] home to pray because [she] want[s] or [has] to.”
The court summarized the black letter law as follows:
Title VII specifies that an employer may not “discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). To establish a prima facie case of unlawful employment discharge based on religious discrimination, a plaintiff must demonstrate that (1) he is a member of a protected class; (2) he was qualified for the position or is performing his duties satisfactorily; (3) he suffered an adverse employment action; and (4) that action occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of discriminatory intent.
The court rejected defendants’ argument that plaintiff did not meet the “qualified” element, and defendants did not challenge the third (adverse employment action) element.
As to the “inference of discriminatory intent” element, the court explained:
Defendants invoke this Circuit’s “stray remarks” doctrine to explain away the alleged statements made by Mancino. Mot. at 25. That doctrine holds that “the stray remarks of a decision-maker, without more, cannot prove a claim of employment discrimination.” Abdu–Brisson, 239 F.3d at 468. Yet the Second Circuit has also made clear that if “other indicia of discrimination are properly presented, the remarks can no longer be deemed ‘stray,’ and the jury has a right to conclude that they bear a more ominous significance.” Id. (quoting Danzer v. Norden Systems, Inc., 151 F.3d 50, 56 (2d Cir. 1998)).
The stray remarks doctrine does not save UCS. Here, there are “other indicia of discrimination” that indicate that Mancino’s comments “bear a more ominous significance.” Id. Specifically, Mancino’s comments—“I don’t care for your religion or spirituality; you are not going to get this kind of time off again,” Am. Compl. at 10—seem to indicate that some sort of action would be taken in the future towards Plaintiff. And given that this comment was made in rather close temporal proximity to Plaintiff’s firing, the “the sequence of events leading to the plaintiff’s adverse employment action” could be seen as “giving rise to an inference of discrimination.” St. Juste, 8 F. Supp. 3d at 309. Finally, that Mancino allegedly made another derogatory comment one month before Plaintiff’s termination provides further indicia of discrimination. Thus, the question of whether there is an inference of discriminatory intent is best left to be answered by a jury and not this Court.
The court concluded that “because Defendants fail to win on at least one the Title VII religious discrimination elements at this juncture, the Court denies Defendants’ request for summary judgment on this claim.”