In Lee v. Riverbay Corporation, No. 22-CV-7504-LTS, 2024 WL 4312166 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 27, 2024), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law.
As to Title VII, the court explained:
Considering Plaintiff’s allegations as a whole, the Court finds that Plaintiff has proffered sufficient facts to support a viable hostile work environment claim. The sole element in dispute is whether Plaintiff has objectively established that the inappropriate conduct alleged is so severe or pervasive that a reasonable employee would find it to be abusive. Defendants contend that the alleged comments were “limited to several alleged jokes,” point out that there are no allegations that racial slurs were used, and that Plaintiff was not threatened, physically or otherwise, arguing that no objectively reasonable person would have found the workplace “hostile or abusive.” (Defs. Mem. at 17.) Moreover, Defendants assert that a number of the alleged comments are “not about Plaintiff’s protected class,” nor make any “discernable showing of animus toward Plaintiff’s protected class.” (Docket entry no. 22 (“Reply Mem.”) at 6.) Plaintiff disputes this characterization, and asserts that he was “subjected to a generally racist and intolerant work environment.” (Pl. Mem. at 16.)
Read in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, the Amended Complaint suggests a workplace permeated with unchecked racial and ethnic hostility that could objectively and subjectively have been perceived as hostile to him. Plaintiff has alleged at least eight specific incidents, and continuing epithets and inappropriate comments uttered throughout his employment by at least one employee, that were clearly based upon his race, color, or national origin. Plaintiff alleges that Mitchell, the Assistant General Manager at Riverbay and a supervisor of Plaintiff (Amend. Compl. ¶ 14), began asking Plaintiff why he “did not own a dry-cleaning business like other Korean people” whenever the subject of dry-cleaning arose (id. ¶¶ 22, 24), which was often, given the demographics of Riverbay’s commercial property management portfolio (id. ¶ 23), made a similar joke to a colleague prior to a Board meeting, in front of Plaintiff, that Plaintiff “used to work with ‘Korean dry cleaners’ ” (id. ¶ 28), referred to Plaintiff as “Bruce Lee,” rather than using his actual name (id. ¶¶ 27, 32), and at one point interrupted a meeting to ridicule Plaintiff in front of other colleagues (id. ¶ 32 (“Look at Bruce Lee over here, look at what he looks like when he smiles, look at his face[.]”)). Arguably the most egregious example alleged by Plaintiff took place on June 9, 2021, when Mitchell made repeated jokes about Plaintiff’s color and national origin prior to the start of a meeting of the Riverbay Board of Directors. (Id. ¶¶ 47-51.) Defendants Klehammer and Ellison were alleged to have been present and to have made additional jokes regarding Mitchell’s comments being reported to human resources. (Id. ¶¶ 49-50.)
Plaintiff also details repeated incidents in which colleagues who have not been named as defendants in this action made “jokes” or comments that inappropriately associated Plaintiff with the COVID-19 pandemic based upon his Asian heritage. (Id. ¶¶ 36, 61). This conduct is alleged to have occurred both before and after Plaintiff reported the comments to Munns, the Director of the Legal Department. (Id. ¶ 37.)
Although Defendants characterize these continuing comments as “jokes,” the Second Circuit has explained that “a work environment may be actionable if the conduct there is either so severe or so pervasive as to alter the working conditions of a reasonable employee.” Terry, 336 F.3d at 149 (emphasis in original) (citation omitted). Here, where Plaintiff has alleged frequent insulting and racially-charged comments that continued for years—despite multiple reports and acknowledgement by at least one superior that such comments were inappropriate—Plaintiff has pleaded sufficient facts to establish that a reasonable person would find the conduct to be hostile or abusive. The fact that a number of these comments came from individuals alleged to be supervisors of Plaintiff “underscore[es] the seriousness of the conduct.” Moore v. DeJoy, No. 18-CV-9967-JPC, 2021 WL 4523503, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 30, 2021) (citing St. Louis v. N.Y.C. Health & Hosp. Corp., 682 F. Supp. 2d 216, 230 (E.D.N.Y. 2010)).
Based on this, the court denied the motion to dismiss plaintiff’s Title VII hostile work environment claim.
And, since the court held that since plaintiff’s Title VII claim survived dismissal, the same conclusion was warranted with respect to their claims under the New York City Human Rights Law, as well as the post-October 2019 New York State Human Rights Human Rights Law claims.