In Wu v. Wunderkind Corp., No. 155165/2023, 2024 WL 4307855 (N.Y. Sup Ct, New York County Sep. 26, 2024), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claims of retaliation asserted under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws.
From the decision:
The branch of defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s retaliation claims under NYSHRL and NYCHRL is also denied. To state a claim for retaliation, plaintiff must allege that: (1) [he] engaged in a protected activity; (2) the employer was aware of the activity; (3) the employer acted in a manner reasonably likely to deter plaintiff from engaging in protected activity; and (4) a causal connection existed between the protected activity and the alleged retaliatory action (See e.g., Fletcher v Dakota, Inc., 99 AD3d 43, 51 [1st Dept 2012]). “In this context, protected activity refers to actions taken to protest or oppose statutorily prohibited discrimination” (Thomas v Mintz, 60 Misc 3d 1218(A) [Sup Ct, NY County 2018] [internal citations omitted], affd as mod, 182 AD3d 490 [1st Dept 2020]).
Plaintiff alleges that he engaged in a protected activity when he contacted Wunderkind’s Human Resources department to discuss the process of filing a discrimination complaint (See Madrigal v Montefiore Med. Ctr., 191 AD3d 407 [1st Dept 2021] [“Plaintiff engaged in protected activity by repeatedly complaining to her employer that supervisors were discriminating against her”]; see also Krebaum v Capital One, N.A., 138 AD3d 528, 528 [1st Dept 2016]). His termination the next day is sufficiently close in time to the protected activity to establish a causal connection for pleading purposes (See Herskowitz v State, 222 AD3d 587, 588 [1st Dept 2023]).
To the extent defendant argues that the complaint’s allegation that “Plaintiff contacted HR the same day, enquiring about filing a complaint regarding the discrimination he was experiencing, and booked a call to discuss the matter further the next day, May 2, 2023” cannot be read as at least implying that plaintiff informed HR that the complaint he intended to file was about discriminatory conduct, the Court disagrees.
The court distinguished this case from those in which, for example, a plaintiff makes “no reference to the fact that she was female and did not otherwise implicate gender” such that the complaints in question did not constitute “protected activity.”