In Hechavarria v. Scorch Bar & Grill Inc., 23-CV-1743 (NGG) (VMS), 2025 WL 2476346 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 28, 2025), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, inter alia, denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claims.
Plaintiff contends, among other things, that he was engaged in an interaction in which defendant restaurant Scorch Bar & Grill’s owner “called Plaintiff a ‘hood booger,’ a ‘slave,’ and a ‘n****r’” and said that plaintiff “had no human rights.”
From the decision:
In this case, in order to survive summary judgment, Plaintiff must show, subjectively and objectively, that this single event was “very serious.” Alfano, 294 F.3d at 374. Plaintiff meets the subjectivity requirement for a hostile work environment. At his deposition, Plaintiff testified that after the December 23, 2022, incident, he felt “dead,” “like a piece of s**t,” and “like [Mr. Young] literally robbed me from what we supposed [sic] to be standing for.” Hechavarria Dep. 154:22-25. Plaintiff also testified that Mr. Young “really messed [him] up mentally,” and that Plaintiff could not get Mr. Young’s words out of his head. Id. 226:3-10. (“I hear the E-R all the g*****n time when anybody says it now. That’s how much he pushed it out.”). Following the incident, Plaintiff testified that he didn’t “even want to be black no more[.]” Id. 156:10-11. Even though Plaintiff did not work at Scorch after the December 23, 2022, incident, and the restaurant closed permanently a few months later, see Pl.’s Rule 56.1 Statement ¶¶ 96-97, the emotional toll of the event lingered. See id. 224:20-225:4. This Court finds that Plaintiff proved that he “subjectively perceive[d] that environment [at Scorch] to be abusive,” as well as “very serious.”
Defendants’ summary judgment motion turns on whether a rational juror could find that Plaintiff’s belief was reasonable. See Banks, 81 F.4th at 262. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, this Court finds that Plaintiff also satisfies this objective standard.
There are significant disputes as to the full sequence of events on December 23, 2022. It is not in dispute that Mr. Young and Plaintiff got into a verbal altercation, during which Mr. Young called Plaintiff “incompetent,” and a “b***h-a** n****” (although the parties dispute the tone and pronunciation of the word), and said to Plaintiff, “f**k your human rights.” Everything else is hotly contested. If a jury were to believe Defendants’ version of the events, Mr. Young maintained his composure while Plaintiff became increasingly aggressive and pushed Mr. Young, and Mr. Young did not call Plaintiff any names other than the ones caught on video. Under this narrative, Mr. Young only called Plaintiff names when Plaintiff refused to leave Scorch, after being told to do so. Mr. Young never told Plaintiff to come back to work after this altercation.
But, if a jury were to believe Plaintiff, they would find that Mr. Young was “belligerent” and physically threatening towards Plaintiff, and that he tried to engage Plaintiff in a physical fight. A jury could also find that Mr. Young, after fighting with Plaintiff in the kitchen, followed Plaintiff down into the basement and continued the altercation while Plaintiff was gathering his belongings to leave the premises, as advised by Mr. Golightly. Throughout this altercation, Mr. Young repeatedly called Plaintiff a “hood booger,” a “slave,” and a “n****r,” and said “f**k your human rights” in two separate locations loudly enough for customers to hear in one of them. These drastically different alleged facts are material to Plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim.
In support of their argument for summary judgment, Defendants cite three cases in which the court dismissed a plaintiff’s hostile work environment claims, based the word “n****r” in the workplace. These cases are all distinguishable. Both Blue v. City of Hartford and Boakye-Yiadom v. Laria involved instances in which the plaintiff was subjected to the racially offensive slur by a co-worker, not a supervisor. Although the objectionable conduct in Miller came from a supervisor, none of the racial slurs or other offensive statements was directed at the plaintiff, but rather were said to other people in the plaintiff’s presence. The only conduct in Miller directed at the plaintiff involved the defendant showing the plaintiff an internet video “making fun of an African American woman[.]” Id. Defendants have not cited any authority in which the court evaluated a hostile work environment claim when a supervisor directed the racial slurs at a subordinate.
Plaintiff, however, has. In Lovejoy v. Gure-Perez, the Eastern District of New York found that the plaintiff endured a hostile work environment when “she was called ‘n****r’ by her supervisor in an aggressive and intimating tone, with saliva falling onto her body, and loudly enough for others to hear it.” Lovejoy, 2014 WL 2459656, at *5. Accepting Plaintiff’s testimony, these same events all happened to him.
Defendants’ attempts to distinguish Lovejoy are not persuasive. Defendants correctly note that in Lovejoy, the plaintiff was subject to more than one incident of racial animus. These other instances of racist behavior do not successfully differentiate Lovejoy from this case because the court in Lovejoy stated that “[e]ven if plaintiff established that being called ‘n****r’ was the only incident of racial animus, this would suffice for a hostile work environment claim.” Moreover, Plaintiff’s allegations involve multiple offensive remarks to Plaintiff and physically threatening conduct in two locations, despite a friend’s efforts to diffuse the situation.
Defendants correctly point out that the Second Circuit has not yet found a case where a one-time use of the word “n****r,” said from a supervisor to a subordinate, sufficiently created a hostile work environment. But, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, this is not a case where the defendant just said a racial slur one time to the plaintiff. This is a case in which, accepting Plaintiff’s testimony (albeit, sometimes conflicting) as true, Mr. Young physically threatened Plaintiff in two areas of the restaurant and subjected him to a steady stream of insults, including references to slavery, statements that Plaintiff had no rights, and “probably the most offensive word in English.” In addition, Mr. Young spoke so loudly that spit was “flying on [Plaintiff’s] face,” and customers could hear the exchange from the restaurant’s kitchen. Mr. Young continued this tirade even when Plaintiff made a reference to the New York State Division of Human Rights. Under the totality of the circumstances, the December 23, 2022, incident closely resembles other cases in which the Second Circuit found a hostile work environment based on a single event.
(Cleaned up.)
The court also rejected defendants’ argument attributing Mr. Young’s outburst toward plaintiff to “personal animosity” rather than plaintiff’s race, noting that it was required to “accept Plaintiff’s testimony for the purposes of this motion, and that testimony suggests racial animosity.”
Accordingly, the court held that plaintiff presented sufficient facts to defeat defendants’ motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and the New York City Human Rights Law.