In Santay v. Ice House LLC, Civil Action No. 24-cv-11583-ADB, 2024 WL 4804967 (D.Mass. Nov. 15, 2024), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s national origin-based hostile work environment claim.
After summarizing the black-letter law, and concluding that plaintiff sufficiently alleged a hostile work environment sexual harassment claim, the court applied the law to plaintiff’s national origin-based claim:
Although a closer call, at this stage, Plaintiff has also plausibly pled a claim for hostile work environment premised on national origin. Plaintiff has pled that Mr. Nieves “often made offensive comments in Spanish” toward Plaintiff, including that “she was worthless” and “a nobody in this country.” [Compl. ¶ 7]. Mr. Nieves would also threaten Plaintiff by telling her that she did not “have papers,” that he could “call immigration” whenever he wanted, that she could “be deported at any moment,” and that she “didn’t have any rights because she is not a U.S. citizen.” [Id.]. Viewing the allegations in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, it is plausible that this recurring conduct was both objectively and subjectively offensive because a reasonable person would feel intimidated, humiliated, and demeaned by threats of deportation and other immigration-based comments from a supervisor, and Plaintiff plausibly alleges that she in fact felt that way. Cabi v. Bos. Children’s Hosp., 161 F. Supp. 3d 136, 153 (D. Mass. 2016) (stating that the allegedly “frequent and regular nature” of defendant’s comments, which were “sex-based, ethnicity-based, race-based, and national-origin based,” “supports a finding that the harassment was pervasive” (cleaned up)).
The court held, however, that plaintiff did not plead a plausible claim for hostile work environment based on race, noting that plaintiff’s “complaint is devoid of any factual allegations as to her race other than that she is Black.”