In Beatty v. NYC District Council of Carpenters and Joiners of America, 1:23-cv-02126 (ALC) (SN), 2025 WL 963307 (S.D.N.Y. March 31, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s sex-based hostile work environment claims asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law.
Among other things, plaintiff alleges that Council Representative Glen Hatcher made demeaning comments about plaintiff, including calling her a “heifer”, “ugly”, and offensive hair and appearance-related jokes.
As to plaintiff’s claim under Title VII and the state law, the court explained:
A reasonable juror could conclude that Beatty’s workplace was permeated with discriminatory intimidation and harassment severe enough to create an abusive working environment. It is undisputed that “beginning in 2018, Vesely became increasingly hostile” and “basically stopped talking with her.” ECF No. 37 at 4 (internal quotations omitted). This peaked when Vesely berated her about a workplace issue in May of 2018, which Beatty reported to their supervisors, Capurso and DiNapoli. See id. Beatty testified that Vesely’s harassment continued for another year following this meeting. See ECF No. 42 at 20–21. She reported these incidents to Capurso, who “responded with his stock answer, ‘We’ll talk to him.’ ” Id. at 21; see also ECF No. 44. Plaintiff also alleges offensive hair and appearance-related jokes and derogatory remarks were made by her co-workers between 2018 and 2022. ECF No. 36 ¶¶ 101–27.
Defendant argues that the comments about Beatty’s hair “are inactionable as ‘mere offensive utterance[s].’ ” ECF No. 37 at 11 (quoting Cristofaro v. Lake Shore Cent. Sch. Dist., 473 F. App’x 28, 30 (2d Cir. 2012)). “As a general rule, incidents must be more than ‘episodic; they must be sufficiently continuous and concerted in order to be deemed pervasive.’ ” Alfano v. Costello, 294 F.3d 365, 374 (2d Cir. 2002) (quoting Perry v. Ethan Allen, Inc., 115 F.3d 143, 149 (2d Cir. 1997)). “Isolated acts, unless very serious, do not meet the threshold of severity or pervasiveness.” Id. But “[t]here is no fixed number of incidents that a plaintiff must endure in order to establish a hostile work environment; rather, we view the circumstances in their totality, examining the nature, severity, and frequency of the conduct.” Id. at 379.
While the District Council may be correct that hair comments alone would not establish a hostile work environment, those are not the only comments on which Beatty relies. Considering the hair comments, alongside the others made by Hatcher and Vesely, the Court finds a reasonable jury could conclude that the conduct “alter[ed] the conditions of the [Plaintiff]’s employment and create[d] an abusive working environment.” Demoret v. Zegarelli, 451 F.3d 140, 149 (2d Cir. 2006).
Defendant argues that, even if this conduct is sufficient to establish a hostile work environment, many of the comments fail to “demonstrate that the hostile conduct at issue was carried out because of her membership in a protected class.” Guzman v. City of N.Y., 93 F. Supp. 3d 248, 263 (S.D.N.Y. 2015); see also ECF No. 37 at 13 (quoting id.). “Facially neutral incidents may be included … among the ‘totality of the circumstances’ that courts consider in any hostile work environment claim, so long as a reasonable fact-finder could conclude that they were, in fact, based on sex.” Alfano, 294 F.3d at 378. “But this requires some circumstantial or other basis for inferring that incidents sex-neutral on their face were in fact discriminatory.” Id.
It is not disputed that some of the comments made to or about Beatty provide an inference that they were based on sex. In addition to comments about Beatty, Plaintiff provides evidence of comments made to other female employees that were not gender-neutral. See ECF No. 39-4 at 19 (deposition testimony of Yariela Carvajal, stating comments were made about women’s outfits and bodies in the workplace). While some of the comments made to Beatty were facially neutral, drawing all inferences in her favor, the other evidence of “a gender-based hostile or abusive environment … [presents] a question of fact” inappropriate for the Court to resolve at this stage. Grandy v. Manhattan & Bronx Surface Transit Operating Auth., No. 16-CV-6278 (VEC), 2018 WL 4625768, at *9 n.13 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 26, 2018); see also id. at *9 (highlighting gender-based comments about other female employees as circumstantial evidence of a hostile work environment).
Having reached this conclusion on plaintiff’s federal and state claims, the court held that plaintiff also met the lower standard applicable under the City law.