In Baldwin v. TMPL Lexington LLC et al, 23 Civ. 9899 (PAE), 2024 WL 3862150 (S.D.N.Y. August 19, 2024), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to compel arbitration, finding that she plausibly alleged sexual harassment under the New York City Human Rights Law, triggering the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (“EFAA”).
From the decision:
Defendants move to compel arbitration of a subset of Baldwin’s claims: those alleging FLSA and NYLL violations. These claims allege that defendants failed to pay Baldwin minimum and overtime wages, to pay her timely wages, and to provide her with wage statements and notices.
In moving to compel arbitration of these claims, defendants argue that these fall within the parties’ arbitration agreement, under which “[a]ll disputes shall be finally and conclusively resolved by final and binding arbitration before a neutral third party.” Arbitration Agreement at 2. Baldwin counters that the EFAA blocks arbitration of these claims. Because the AC plausibly pleads claims of sexual harassment and because the EFAA applies to “cases” containing sexual harassment claims and not merely such claims themselves, and because the claims in the AC all implicate conduct after the EFAA’s effective date, she argues, the FLSA and NYLL claims must also be resolved in court.
The motion to compel arbitration thus presents, in sequence, two issues. The first is whether the AC “alleg[es] conduct constituting a sexual harassment dispute or sexual assault dispute,” so as to come within the EFFA. 9 U.S.C. § 402(a). The second is whether the EFAA renders the arbitration agreement unenforceable as to the entirety of the AC’s claims, or only as to its sexual harassment/assault claims. Baldwin is correct on both issues. …
The first issue—whether the AC plausibly pleads conduct constituting sexual harassment —is easily resolved. Defendants have not moved to dismiss the AC’s sexual harassment claims under the NYSHRL and the NYCHRL.3 And these claims, the Court finds, are plausibly pled.
The Court need only examine the [Amended Complaint]’s claim under the NYCHRL, which supplies the most lenient liability standard. To plead sexual harassment under the NYCHRL, a plaintiff need only allege facts showing that she “was subject[ ] to ‘unwanted gender-based conduct.’ ” McHenry v. Fox News Network, LLC, 510 F. Supp. 3d 51, 66 (S.D.N.Y. 2020) (quoting Erasmus v. Deutsche Bank Ams. Holding Corp., No. 15 Civ. 1398 (PAE), 2015 WL 7736554, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 30, 2015)).
The [Amended Complaint] easily clears this bar. It pleads that Baldwin was repeatedly subject to gender-based conduct by Walsh. It alleges not only that Walsh groped Baldwin against her will, but that, over a period of months, he made sexual advances to Baldwin, sent her inappropriate text messages, made unsolicited comments about her body, and repeatedly pressed to go on dates with her. See, e.g., McHenry, 510 F. Supp. 3d at 69–70 (sustaining NYCHRL sexual harassment claim based on AC’s allegations “that on multiple occasions Murdoch sent McHenry sexually explicit, unwanted text messages” and that “Murdoch doctored photos to make it appear that McHenry had sent him an image of herself with ‘her cleavage and nearly bare breast shown’ ”); Mitura v. Finco Servs., Inc., No. 23 Civ. 2879 (VEC), 2024 WL 232323, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 22, 2024), reconsideration denied, 2024 WL 1160643 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 18, 2024) (sustaining NYCHRL and NYSHRL sexual harassment claims based on allegations that “Plaintiff was subjected to weekly, degrading comments and insults, including being called ‘a single woman,’ an ‘old woman,’ and an ‘old Asian woman with no kids’ ”); Friederick v. Passfeed, Inc., No. 21 Civ. 2066 (RA), 2022 WL 992798, at *8 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2022) (sustaining NYCHRL and NYSHRL sexual harassment claims based on allegations that “the day after [plaintiff] did not accept [defendant’s] invitation to go to the museum with him, he allegedly refused to look at a work project that she presented to him and ignored her for the remainder of the day” and “later reassigned one of her writing assignments to another [ ] employee”); Riggs v. Akamai Techs., No. 23 Civ. 06463 (LTS), 2024 WL 3347032, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. July 8, 2024) (sustaining NYCHRL and NYSHRL sexual harassment claims based on allegations that plaintiff’s supervisor and colleagues disparaged her work capacities based on gendered stereotypes, targeted her with “vulgar, sexual questions,” and “explicitly jok[ed] about her private relationships and [made] unsolicited comments about her sex life”).
Having found that the EFAA applies to the complaint’s sexual harassment claims, it next held that the EFAA applied to all of plaintiff’s claims, on the basis of its decision in the case of Johnson v. Everyrealm, Inc., 657 F.Supp.3d 535 (SDNY Feb. 24, 2023).