In Murray v. Brag Sales Inc. d/b/a Uneeda Enterprises et al, 2024 WL 4635479 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 31, 2024), the court denied plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration of the dismissal of his claim of employment discrimination asserted under the New York City Human Rights Law.
This decision is instructive on the geographic reach of that statute. From the decision:
Construing these submissions liberally in favor of the pro se litigant, the Court concludes that Murray has adequately alleged that he lived in New York City during the relevant period of his employment at Uneeda. However, Murray also alleges that he worked for Uneeda in Garden City, New York, located outside of New York City. (ECF No. 1 at 3.)
Residence in New York City alone does not place a plaintiff under the NYCHRL’s protection if he worked and experienced discrimination outside of the City. “Although the statute does not directly define the geographic scope of its coverage, New York courts have interpreted the NYCHRL as limiting the applicability of its protections to preventing discrimination within the City.” Rinaldi v. Nice, Ltd., No. 19-CV-424, 2021 WL 827767, *8 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 4, 2021), aff’d sub nom. Rinaldi v. Mills, No. 21-2630, 2022 WL 17480081 (2d Cir. Dec. 7, 2022) (citing Levy v. City Comm’n on Hum. Rts., 85 N.Y.2d 740, 743 (1995) (“The Administrative Code of the City of New York vests in the New York City Commission on Human Rights the authority and jurisdiction to eliminate and prevent discrimination within the City of New York.”)). The New York Court of Appeals has held that, to invoke the NYCHRL, a “nonresident plaintiff must demonstrate that the alleged discriminatory conduct had an ‘impact’ within the city.” Hoffman v. Parade Publ’ns, 15 N.Y.3d 285, 289 (2010). The Hoffman court understood this “impact requirement” to “confine[ ] the protections of the NYCHRL to those who are meant to be protected—those who work in the city.”2 Id. at 291 (emphasis added). Although Hoffman did not directly address resident plaintiffs, it cited approvingly cases that held, without reference to the plaintiff’s residence, that the NYCHRL applies only if the discriminatory act took place in New York City. See id. at 290 (citing Shah v. Wilco Sys., Inc., 27 A.D.3d 169, 175 (1st Dep’t 2005) (“[A]pplicability of the NYCHRL is limited to acts occurring within the boundaries of New York City.”), and Duffy v. Drake Beam Morin, No. 96-CV-5606, 1998 WL 252063, at *11 (S.D.N.Y. May 19, 1998) (“[B]oth New York State law and the New York City Administrative Code limit the applicability of the City Human Rights Law to acts occurring within the boundaries of New York City.”)).
Following Hoffman, many state and federal courts have concluded that the NYCHRL does not apply to plaintiffs whose only connection to the City is residence, but who worked—and thus suffered the alleged discrimination—outside of the City. The New York Appellate Division held that the NYCHRL “do[es] not apply to acts of discrimination against New York residents committed outside [its] boundaries by foreign defendants.” Hardwick v. Auriemma, 116 A.D.3d 465, 466 (1st Dep’t 2014). Similarly, districts courts applying Hoffman have consistently rejected NYCHRL claims brought by City residents who worked elsewhere, holding that “the location of the plaintiff’s workplace is where the impact of discriminatory conduct occurred.” Rinaldi v. Nice, Ltd., 2021 WL 827767, at *8; see also Huan Wang v. Air China Ltd., No. 17-CV-6662, 2020 WL 1140458, *18 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 9, 2020) (“[T]he relevant location for purposes of the impact analysis is Plaintiff’s place of employment, not her residence.”); Robles v. Cox & Co., 841 F. Supp. 2d 615, 624 (E.D.N.Y. 2012) (“[A] plaintiff’s residence is irrelevant to the impact analysis.” (quotation marks omitted)); McKinney v. Tanner, No. 18-CV-10548, 2019 WL 3067116, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. July 12, 2019) (same); Kearse v. ATC Healthcare Servs., No. 12-CV-233, 2013 WL 1496951, *2 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 8, 2013) (same). These courts reasoned that “the same rationale [as in Hoffman]—limiting the scope of the NYCHRL to cases where the discriminatory conduct had its impact within the City—is equally applicable to claims brought by City residents because to hold otherwise would create the same inconsistent and arbitrary results that the Hoffman court was trying to avoid, i.e., the possibility of holding an employer liable under the NYCHRL based solely on its employees’ chosen residence.” Mejia v. White Plains Self Storage Corp., No. 18-CV-12189, 2020 WL 247995, *4 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 16, 2020) (cleaned up) (collecting cases).
Here, Murray does not dispute that he worked for Uneeda in its Garden City office, outside of New York City. (ECF No. 1 at 3.) He alleges that Uneeda discriminated against him by failing to accommodate his disability, creating a hostile work environment, and firing him from the job (id. at 5)—all of which are acts that would occur at the workplace. Murray alleges, for example, that a supervisor yelled in his face when he was “sweep[ing] the warehouse” and then “fire[d] [him] on the spot.” (ECF No. 1-1 at 1.) Under these circumstances, the bare fact that Murray lived in New York City during the time period of his employment at Uneeda cannot bring him within the protection of the NYCHRL.
Accordingly, the court concluded that “[b]ecause the alleged discriminatory acts took place in Garden City, where Murray worked, and not in New York City, Murray’s NYCHRL claim was properly dismissed.”