In Ruiz v. Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Anthony Botting, 2025 WL 1642406 (S.D.N.Y. June 10, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim asserted under the New York City Human Rights Law.
From the decision:
I turn next to Plaintiff’s claim under the NYCHRL that Botting created a hostile work environment. Under the NYCHRL, to state a hostile work environment claim, Ruiz need only show he was “treated less well than other employees because of his protected status.” Mitchell, 745 F. Supp. 3d at 106 (alteration adopted) (quoting Chin v. N.Y.C. Hous. Auth., 965 N.Y.S.2d 42, 44 (1st Dep’t 2013)). However, the “conduct alleged must exceed what a reasonable victim of discrimination would consider petty slights and mere inconveniences, and mere personality conflicts will not suffice to establish a hostile work environment” under the NYCHRL. Id. (quoting Bilitch v. N.Y.C. Health & Hosps. Corp., 148 N.Y.S.3d 238, 245 (2d Dep’t 2021) (alteration adopted)). Under the NYCHRL, the plaintiff need only demonstrate that the poor treatment he experienced occurred “at least in part for a discriminatory reason.”
I conclude that Ruiz’s NYCHRL hostile-work-environment claim survives Botting’s motion to dismiss. Ruiz alleges that beginning at the 2015 dinner, and at nearly every subsequent opportunity, Botting subjected him to relentless and consistent hostility and criticism. When Botting was Ruiz’s direct supervisor, he frequently called, emailed, and instant-messaged Ruiz to “berat[e] him … with criticisms over minor issues.” (Compl. ¶ 23.) According to Ruiz, Botting’s treatment of him was so bad that once his coworkers told him that “they had never seen such behavior,” (id. ¶ 21), and a supervisor told Ruiz that Botting’s behavior was so “unacceptable” that he “would receive a strong warning,” (id. ¶ 37). Viewing Ruiz’s complaint in his favor and at this early stage of the case, it is reasonable to infer that Botting’s frequent and intense mistreatment of him went beyond “petty slights and trivial inconveniences” and transformed his workplace into an abusive environment. Mitchell, 745 F. Supp. 3d at 106 (internal quotation marks omitted). Additionally, Botting’s potentially-race-related reassignment of Ruiz’s trading responsibilities, (see Compl. ¶¶ 24–25), his unwarranted praise of white employees and criticisms of nonwhite employees, (see id. ¶ 30), and his tacit acceptance of his subordinate’s racist comments, (see id. ¶ 34)—in the “more relaxed” NYCHRL context—suffice to suggest that Botting’s treatment of Ruiz was at least in part racially motivated. Lee, 751 F. Supp. 3d at 287 (citing Bermudez, 783 F. Supp. 2d at 579). Thus, Ruiz states a hostile-work-environment claim against Botting under the NYCHRL.
The court did, however, grant Botting’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claim under the New York State Human Rights Law, since Botting was an employee of the Bank, and not an “employer” under that statute.