In Mikesh v. County of Ulster, 2025 N.Y. Slip Op. 01987, 2025 WL 993793 (N.Y.A.D. 3 Dept., Apr. 03, 2025), the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department reversed a lower court’s summary judgment dismissal of plaintiff’s sexual harassment claim under the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL).
From the decision:
There is no dispute that plaintiff is a member of a protected class and was qualified to hold the position from which she was demoted, which demotion ultimately caused her to resign. Contrary to defendants’ contention, plaintiff’s demotion and decrease in wages were adverse employment actions (see Forrest v. Jewish Guild for the Blind, 3 NY3d 295, 306 [2004]; James v. City of New York, 144 AD3d 466, 467 [1st Dept 2016] ). Therefore, whether plaintiff’s demotion was due to gender-based discrimination turns on whether it occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of discrimination. We think a reasonable jury could have concluded that it did. The gravamen of plaintiff’s allegations is that Gulnick’s sexist views toward women fostered a workplace where women’s legitimate grievances were met with dismissal and ridicule, and conflicts that would otherwise have been dealt with were instead allowed to fester. When plaintiff sought to have her valid claims of harassment addressed in-house and ultimately in an outside mediation, Gulnick’s rebuke of her efforts envenomed with discriminatory commentary turned to anger, ultimately leading to plaintiff’s demotion and decrease in wages.
The record supports this conclusion in several ways. As principal account clerk, plaintiff reported Trojak’s initial bullying to the deputy commissioners, who acknowledged there was “nothing” that could be done because Gulnick refused to address it. Plaintiff testified that Gulnick even acknowledged this, telling her that Trojak had done this before to two other principal account clerks – both women – and that this was “just the way she is.” After plaintiff was promoted and raised several complaints to Gulnick, such concerns were informally handled without any abatement in Trojak’s constant harassment. When plaintiff reiterated her concerns, it only uncloaked Gulnick’s discriminatory motives for his inaction, namely preferring to work with men over women – which he admitted at his deposition to “joking[ ]” about when plaintiff was in his office crying – and that the entire dispute was “women being dramatic” and that it was “always the women with big personalities, too many women.” After Gulnick failed to take reasonable steps to eliminate Trojak’s caustic and undermining behavior – which had victimized two others before plaintiff and led to issues with plaintiff’s ability to perform her job duties and resulted in a nearly $1 million mistake by Trojak – it was not until plaintiff threatened to contact the personnel office that Gulnick acquiesced in formally handling her complaints. In doing so, Gulnick’s views toward women and discriminatory motives were now exposed to an outside party, where the mediator ultimately learned of the prolonged conflict involving Trojak, Gulnick’s inaction and the fractured environment within the office due to this lack of action and control by Gulnick. The mediator also learned of Gulnick’s alleged affair with a coworker, who had been promoted despite her poor work performance, excessive use of overtime and an office-wide concern over favoritism. Despite the testimony from plaintiff and Trojak that indicated the mediator had learned of the affair before the mediation session, and not from either of them, Gulnick paired that discovery with a blanket allegation that plaintiff breached his “confidences” to terminate her as his secretary. He specifically claimed that confidential information discussed in closed-door meetings had become widely known to others in the office shortly after those meetings; he blamed plaintiff for spreading this information and relied on this to justify her termination and demotion. But, since the record indicates that she was not involved in such meetings and that her testimony was that she could not hear any conversations from inside his office when the door was closed, we agree with plaintiff that, based on the series of events, there is a question of fact as to whether Gulnick’s explanation was pretextual. This is particularly so in light of plaintiff’s options following her termination, which were to return as principal account clerk under Trojak or join a different department that would still be subject to Trojak’s review, and therefore Gulnick manufactured only an illusory conclusion to the situation which was far from being a reasonable step to address the harassment (see Russell v. New York Univ., 42 NY3d at 389). Based on the foregoing, when viewed in a light most favorable to plaintiff, we conclude that a question of fact exists whether plaintiff’s termination, demotion and ultimate separation from her employment with the County arose under circumstances supporting an inference of gender-based discrimination, to which Gulnick’s verbal comments and plaintiff’s adverse employment outcome were sufficiently linked in the record before us to allow a reasonable juror to reach such conclusion (see Chiara v. Town of New Castle, 126 AD3d at 124).
The court reached the same conclusion as to plaintiff’s hostile work environment cause of action.