In Beniquez v. New York Sate Unified Court System and Gerald Filomio, 23cv7735 (DLC), 2025 WL 861299 (S.D.N.Y. March 18, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied an individual defendant’s motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff’s claims of gender discrimination (hostile work environment sexual harassment) asserted under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws.
From the decision:
Under the NYCHRL and NYSHRL, “the plaintiff need only show differential treatment — that she is treated less well — because of discriminatory intent,” regardless of the treatment’s severity and pervasiveness.3 Mihalik, 715 F.3d at 110 (citation omitted). Even so, “the NYCHRL is not a general civility code” and a defendant may “avoid liability if the conduct complained of consists of nothing more than what a reasonable victim of discrimination would consider petty slights and trivial inconveniences.” Williams, 61 F.4th at 69 (citation omitted).
Beniquez has presented sufficient evidence to raise a question of fact as to whether Filomio created or participated in a hostile work environment. She has submitted evidence that, beginning in July 2021, he engaged in a series of unwanted communications and gestures that may have been reasonably perceived as romantic or sexual advances. These communications included the spa gift certificate, offers of other gifts, repeated contact without professional justification at work and elsewhere, and telling Beniquez she was attractive, that he wanted to hear her voice, and that “only recently as I began to know you did I feel anything for you.” On one occasion, July 12, Beniquez alleges that these advances became physical, when she says Filomio grabbed her by the waist and kissed her on the neck. Filomio’s unwanted personal communications continued after Beniquez repeatedly and explicitly asked that they stop, and she says that Filomio induced her to speak with him by falsely telling her he wanted to talk about work. Many of these interactions happened within the workplace and while Beniquez says she was in a subordinate position with respect to Filomio, such that she felt she could not be seen as rejecting his requests.
Altogether, Beniquez has a raised a triable issue of fact as to whether Filomio’s conduct created a gender-based hostile work environment affecting the “conditions” of her employment, and thus that she was treated “less well” because of her gender in violation of the NYSHRL and NYCHRL. Based on the present record, a reasonable jury could find that Filomio’s unwanted advances amounted to gender-based harassment that exceeded “petty slights and trivial inconveniences.” Williams, 61 F.4th at 69 (citation omitted).
The court further rejected defendant’s argument that plaintiff failed to allege that his conduct was “purely gender-based”, since it “implies a misunderstanding of the law, which requires only that the plaintiff show she was treated less well ‘at least in part for a discriminatory reason.'”